Electric car battery manufacturing to the U.S.

Boston Power plans battery plant for cars, laptops

Battery company Boston Power thinks it can bring electric car battery manufacturing to the U.S. with some help from government stimulus funds.
The Westborough, Mass.-based company on Monday is scheduled to hold a press event in nearby Auburn where it plans to build a factory to make lithium-ion batteries for laptops and electric vehicles.
Construction of the facility, which used to be a distribution center for a clothing retailer, is contingent on a grant from the U.S. Department of Energy's advanced battery and cell manufacturing grant program.

CNET green tech

Limited Lithium Supplies Could Restrict Electric Car Growth

If it is undoubtedly premature to say that lithium is the oil of the new century, this raw material is still the subject of sudden interest, shown by the increase in its price from about $350 a tonne in 2003 to nearly $3,000 today.

The explanation is tied to developments in battery technology. For a long time these have functioned with lead: heavy in weight and low in energy. Good at starting engines but not to power them. In the 1980s nickel cadmium batteries reduced the weight but not sufficiently to ensure the success of electric cars, several thousand of which were launched in France. The breakthrough came from batteries using lithium, a very light metal that can hold a lot of energy. In particular, lithium ion batteries “for the same energy occupy half the volume of a nickel cadmium battery”, explains Franck Cecchi, operations director at JC-S, a company that specializes in this technology.

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