See Your Gas Savings Sooner With New Batteries

EnerDel, a car battery company, predicts that advances in lithium ion batteries in development now will significantly cut the cost of hybrid cars, so folks who wait to buy their hybrid could see their gas savings in as few as two years after purchase. According to Wall Street Journal, should you sell your gass-guzzler and run out and buy a Prius today, it’d take about 7 years before you notice a savings on gas money since the car is pretty pricey. But should the planned advances for lithium ion batteries see daylight, that amount of time will be cut down to less than two years.

EnerDel plans to start a manufacturing line capable of making 300,000 lithium ion batteries a year for hybrid electric cars, starting in 2010. They like lithium ion because compared to nickel-based batteries, lithium is smaller, lighter, and holds twice the energy density…and is far cheaper.

Getting more life for the charge is a big deal in lithium ion battery research. While lithium ion batteries have a habit of losing their charge capacity after awhile, EnerDel says their batteries keep their charge capacity for up to 300,000 cycles, or 10 years of life. That's a long time for a battery's charge capacity. EnerDel has a deal to supply car batteries to Think Global for their all-electric towncar, plus two more deals in the works. They are making another prediction that by 2011, lithium ion batteries will be utilized by 75 different car models, showing that car manufacturers are getting serious about ditching all-gas vehicles in the very near future.

Via cnet
Photo via Burning Image

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