Maxwell Technologies, Tianjin Lishen Battery to Develop "Hybrid" Products" Combining Ultracacitors and Li-ion Batteries

Maxwell Technologies, Inc. (Nasdaq: MXWL) and Tianjin Lishen Battery Joint-Stock Co., Ltd. , (Lishen), China’s leading producer of rechargeable lithium-ion batteries, have announced an alliance to manufacture and market novel “hybrid” energy storage products combining the companies’ respective ultracapacitor and li-ion battery technologies.

David Schramm, Maxwell’s president and chief executive officer, said that the companies see a large market opportunity for products that leverage the complementary strengths of double layer capacitor and li-ion battery technologies.

“We believe that the products we envision will give end-users the best of both worlds in terms of the long cycle life, rapid charge/discharge characteristics and low temperature performance of ultracapacitors and the large energy storage capacity of lithium-ion batteries,” Schramm said. “We also plan to move some of our BOOSTCAP product assembly to Lishen in order to leverage our joint process engineering capabilities, and Lishen will conduct development and qualification testing on battery electrode material produced through Maxwell’s proprietary dry process, so we see this as a deep and strategically important alliance for both companies.”

The companies have identified a number of initial target applications for the new products, ranging from quick-charge cordless tools to electric vehicles, and anticipate production and delivery of initial product samples in early 2008.

This is not the first announcement of such a poroduct, but it brings together two very large companies who can pull off this feat.  It should be a great product.

Comments

[bigTom]

This would seem to be a step forward for portable electric storage systems. The ultracap can efficiently absord or put out significant short lived energy spikes, while the battery allows significant long-term storage capacity.

I would presume that the ratio of capacitor energy storage to battery energy storage would be fairly low 1 to ten or possibly 1 to 100. Quick charging the capacitor inorder to leisurely charge the battery would not be effective in this case. Ultra-Caps are really amazing in their capabilities, but I've never seen any information on cost. Presumably it is quite high per KJoule?

[Chan]

Ucap will cost $0.02/Fara in Maxwell. That is $54 to a 2600F with 2.7V Ucap, $20/Wh.
USABC want $0.15/Wh in PHEV battery, doest it?

[jcwinnie]

@Chan

How to say "yes" in Mandarin? "Aye-yup"?

[bigTom]

Chan:
So if I want to use uCaps to provide regenerative-braking/accelleration I get the following cost:
for 1000KG car to 30M/sec.
E=30*30/2 * 1000 (Joules)
at $180/Joule from your figure that means the Cap will cost be $2500.

If thats even remotely correct, it would explain why we haven't seen uCap based hybrids. Seems to me they have to drastically reduce the price to have any hope of being more than a niche player.

[Paul Holmes]

Isn't MIT going to be to market in 5 years with their carbon nanotube ultracapacitor? That can store about half the energy of lithium ion batteries. And who's to say half is optimal. It seems to me that there should be a trillion dollar U.S. manhattan project to develop cheap ultracapacitors to fundamentally change our transportation industry.

[Bill Bollinger]

Can anybody out there provide a "Retail" price list of Maxwell Technologies Ultra Cap's.
Guessing prices of products is no way to go.