Pilot Production Begins for New Electric Vehicle Batteries

Some Vehicles Will Drive Twice As Far On One Charge, But Costly

But the powerful new batteries that last three times longer and work better in cold weather than today’s advanced lead-acid batteries are several times more expensive, according to the United States Advanced Battery Consortium (USABC).  

“The start-up of pilot production of nickel metal hydride batteries for electric vehicles is a significant step toward giving consumers more choices in electric cars,” said Robert Hayden, executive director of the Electric Vehicle Association of the Americas.  “This is essential for bringing down the cost of these longer-range batteries.  Moving into pilot production is an impressive success story for the USABC.”

Developed through a unique government-industry partnership, the maintenance-free and recyclable nickel metal hydride battery packs for electric vehicles are being manufactured by GM-Ovonic Co. of Troy, Mich., and Saft America, Inc. of Valdosta, Ga.  Some of these battery packs are in vehicles on the road already, while others will make their way into vehicles this fall, says Bob Davis, Chrysler’s representative to the USABC. 

The batteries from GM-Ovonic are being made available in GM’s EV1 electric car and S-10 Electric pickup truck.  The Saft batteries will appear in Chrysler EPIC minivans after midyear.  Ford will offer nickel metal hydride batteries in its electric Ranger EV in the latter half of the year.

Since 1992, the USABC has spent over $90 million on the research and development of nickel metal hydride batteries.  Funding for the projects is split equally between industry and DOE.

During the past decade, nickel metal hydride batteries have proven themselves in laptop computers, cellular phones, video cameras and other products in use worldwide.  But adapting nickel metal hydride technology for electric vehicle application has been challenging for battery developers because of the need to provide electric vehicles with the same performance as conventionally-powered vehicles at a significantly lower cost per unit of energy compared to the smaller consumer batteries.  Battery developers have had over one hundred years’ experience working with lead-acid battery technology, whereas nickel metal hydride batteries were invented just 12 years ago.  These and other factors explain the high cost of the new batteries, which at pilot production levels are still several times more expensive than USABC’s commercialization cost target.  

The new batteries are the result of battery developers’ research contracts with the USABC, a partnership of Chrysler Corp., Ford Motor Co., General Motors Corp., the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), the Electric Power Research Institute and its utilities.  USABC is one of 12 research consortia under the auspices of the United States Council for Automotive Research (USCAR), formed by Chrysler, Ford and GM in 1992 to coordinate their pre-competitive research.

Nickel metal hydride batteries offer several technical advantages over the lead-acid batteries used in conventional vehicles and electric vehicles already on the market.  First, because they have double the energy of a lead-acid battery by weight, says Mark Verbrugge, GM’s representative on the team, in some applications, like General Motors’ EV1 electric vehicle, the effective over-the-road range is doubled by changing from lead-acid to nickel metal hydride batteries.  Second, they can accept over three times as many charges and discharges (known as a battery’s “cycle life”) as lead-acid batteries, increasing the projected miles of urban driving over the vehicle’s life.  The new batteries also outperform lead-acid in cold weather conditions.  This is important because batteries typically have less available energy in the cold, thereby shortening an electric vehicle’s range.