Noted in Passing: Toshiba SCiB Battery

Toshiba Corporation has announced the commercial launch of the SCiB the Super Charge ion Battery a breakthrough rechargeable battery primarily targeting the industrial systems market that can recharge to 90% of full capacity in less than five minutes. The battery offers excellent safety and a long-life cycle of over 10 years, even under conditions of constant rapid charging. Toshiba aims to make this high potential battery a mainstay of its industrial systems and automotive products businesses, with global sales of 100 billion yen targeted for fiscal year 2015. The first SCiB will be shipped from March 2008.

With the SCiB Toshiba has progressed beyond the breakthrough in fast recharging lithium-ion technology that it announced in March 2005. In order to realize the outstanding characteristics of the SCiB, Toshiba adopted a new negative electrode material, new separators, a new electrolyte, and new manufacturing technology. The result is a highly reliable rechargeable battery with well-balanced performance, offering excellent safety, a long-life cycle and a rapid charge-discharge capability.

Comments

[DaveMart]

Anyone got any idea of why the energy density should be so low (from the pdf file on the site)and how this compares to the energy density of the 123 battery and Valence?

[Christopher]

No, but if this is correct and it is affordable, it seems this battery will make its way into all hybrid and plug-in hybrid vehicles in the near future, overcoming the issue of lifetime. (5000 cycles / 1 cycle per day = ~14 year lifetime, and 1 cycle per day may not be needed)

[DaveMart]

As regards the 'one cycle per day', it seems to me that that will not be needed for most low-mileage drivers.
Since battery packs for cars are modular, it is really not that big a trick to rotate which batteries are used and which rested, I would have thought, so that you might get 20,000 cycles for the whole unit instead of 10,000.
Having just typed that, I am now wondering whether voltage considerations and so on might make this impractical - can anyone with electrical knowledge comment on this?

[ElectRich]

Interesting, the push for high capacity fast charge cells is on. In a recent announcement Altairnano sold a 2MW battery pack to AES for $2 million, Thats $1 per watt! Altair predicted by 2008 they would get it down to $.30 a watt. Altair just made a stock deal 12/3/2007 for $40 million to scale up production. I still think the Nanosafe it is the best battery to date. Toshiba's claims sound a lot like the Nanosafe. Wonder if Altair is supplying the nano-structured lithium titanate anode material.

[DaveMart]

Just found the answer to one of my own questions - apparently the polymer batteries all have lower energy density than 'traditional' lithium ion batteries, so things like the 123 battery have broadly comparable density to this Toshiba.
Still dunno if you could minimise recharges by only using part of the battery at a time though - speak up, you knowledgeable ones!

[Robert McLeod]

Davemart:

Generally no. The crystal structure of all batteries change from 'charged' to 'discharged'. This creates stress, which results in the generation of defects over time.

The deeper you discharge a battery the more stress you put on the cathode material. It's better to lightly discharge the lot of them than deeply discharge one at a time.

[DaveMart]

Robert, thanks for the reply.
Just to be contrary after you have been kind enough to do so, it is my understanding that the latest polymer batteries are very resistant to deep discharge and have minimal distortion, that being one of their principle advantages.
Dunno if they are good enough to counter the effect you speak of though.
Are there also voltage considerations in addition to this?
In case my ignorance is letting me down in phrasing the question, what I mean is would, say, half the battery provide enough oomph to push the car along?
If it would not, then the question I raised is moot anyway.