The official ceremony to herald the start of the operation of Shangluo New Material and Battery Industrial Park was held on May 31. The new industry cluster is situated in the High-Tech Development Zone of Shangluo, a city in the Chinese province of Shaanxi. The total investment in this project is estimated to amount to around RMB 1.09 billion. ...  more

At a recent event hosted by the Minerals Council of Australia, Robyn Denholm, chairperson of Tesla, said her company plans to spend more than USD 1 billion a year to procure raw materials from Australia. Tesla especially wants to tap into the country’s rich reserves of lithium and nickel. Presently, Tesla sources three-fourths of its lithium and over a one-third of its nickel from the country. ...  more

After several battery fire incidents, LG Energy Solution has announced on the recalling of energy storage system (ESS) batteries manufactured between April 2017 and September 2018, and will be offering free replacements. LG Energy Solution is expected to lose $350 million accordingly.  ...  more

Competition in the global EV battery market has been intensifying. Case in point, according to Korean energy research consultancy SNE Research, the three major Korean EV battery manufacturers saw their market shares plummet in January and February this year under mounting pressure from Chinese competitors, among which CATL and BYD saw significant growths. ...  more

Automotive lithium iron phosphate (LFP) battery has hit record high in energy density, and the demand has amplified alongside the production expansion of Tesla. Guoxuan High-Tech plans to manufacture the new batteries starting from the end of 2021, and the Chinese leader in lithium battery, CATL, once again added another RMB 1.8 billion for the factory expansion in Yibin or Sichuan, with a potential production capacity of 80K tons. ...  more

The miraculous sky blue-colored mineral, known as petrovite, is perhaps the key to speeding up the commercialization of sodium-ion batteries. ...  more

Retirement has not stopped Bill Gates from chairing TerraPower, a nuclear technology company. TerraPower will soon develop its own nuclear technology for nautical applications in support of the marine industry’s transition from conventional energy to clean power. ...  more

Sweden-based battery developer Nilar International AB has received a loan of EUR 47 million (USD 55.45 million) from the European Investment Bank (EIB) to expand its production capacity and boost its R&D capability. The signing of the loan agreement took place on October 5. ...  more

Recent advances in material technology have led to the development of new types of energy storage devices that greatly surpass conventional lithium-ion batteries in terms of performance. This September, Skeleton Technologies GmbH announced that it is teaming up with the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) to develop a “SuperBattery”. Skeleton is a startup based in Estonia, while KIT is one of Germany’s major research and educational institutions. According to the press release from Skeleton, the SuperBattery is designed to be fully charged in just 15 seconds and has a huge potential in the application field of electric vehicles (EV). ...  more

Lithium-ion batteries now represent the most common type of rechargeable battery. They are used in a wide range of applications from consumer electronics (e.g., batteries for smartphones and laptop computers) to electric vehicles to utility-scale energy storage systems. However, many alternative battery technologies have emerged in the recent years and are poised to compete head-to-head against lithium-ion batteries. ...  more