Archive for ‘battery’

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02/12/2019

Factbox – The world’s biggest electric vehicle battery makers

(Reuters) – Asian companies dominate the market for electric vehicle (EV) batteries and they are expanding their production capacity in Europe, China and the United States in a fight to win lucrative contracts from global automakers.

Some carmakers worry, however, there won’t be enough batteries for all the EVs they plan to launch in the coming years and a bitter row between South Korea’s SK Innovation and LG Chem risks exacerbating the potential shortfall.

Below are details of the world’s leading EV battery makers with details of their customers and expansion plans:

CATL

China’s Contemporary Amperex Technology (CATL), the world’s biggest EV battery maker, counts BMW (BMWG.DE), Volkswagen (VOWG_p.DE), Daimler (DAIGn.DE) – which makes Mercedes cars – Volvo, Toyota Motor Corp (7203.T) and Honda Motor Co (7267.T) among its customers.

The company emerged as a major force partly thanks to Beijing’s policy of only subsidising vehicles equipped with Chinese batteries in the world’s biggest EV market. Beijing is phasing out EV subsidies next year.

CATL, which operates factories in China, is building its first overseas plant in Germany and is considering a U.S. factory.

PANASONIC CORP (6752.T)

Japan’s Panasonic, a supplier of U.S. EV pioneer Tesla (TSLA.O), said it has installed equipment to ramp up production at Tesla’s Nevada plant to 35 GWh from its current production of around 30 GWh as of late October. Panasonic has said it is investing about $1.6 billion in the factory.

Panasonic also produces EV batteries in Japan, China and plans to shift some of its plants to a new joint venture with Toyota. Panasonic’s clients also include Honda and Ford Motor Company (F.N).

For a graphic of expansion plans: tmsnrt.rs/35tFmOL

BYD CO LTD (002594.SZ)

China’s BYD, which is backed by U.S. investor Warren Buffett, is also one of the world’s biggest EV battery makers. It mainly uses them in-house for its own cars and buses. BYD said last year it is was considering cell production in Europe.

LG CHEM LTD (051910.KS)

The South Korean firm was an early industry mover, winning a contract to supply General Motor’s (GM.N) Volt in 2008. It also supplies Ford, Renault (RENA.PA), Hyundai Motor (005380.KS), Tesla, Volkswagen and Volvo.

It is investing 3.3 trillion won ($2.8 billion) to build and expand production facilities near Tesla’s plant in Shanghai. It has a joint venture (JV) in China with Geely Automobile Holdings (0175.HK), which makes Volvos, and is in talks with other carmakers about JVs in major markets.

The firm is considering building a second U.S. factory in addition to its facility in Michigan and is expanding its plant in Poland.

SAMSUNG SDI CO LTD (006400.KS) Samsung SDI an affiliate of South Korean tech giant Samsung Electronics (005930.KS), has EV battery plants in South Korea, China and Hungary, which supply customers such as BMW (BMWG.DE), Volvo and Volkswagen. Samsung SDI is investing about 1.2 billion euros ($1.3 billion) to expand its factory in Hungary though the EU is investigating whether Budapest’s financial support complies with the bloc’s state aid rules.

Samsung started production last year on the Hungary plant, which will produce batteries for 50,000 EVs a year.

SK INNOVATION CO LTD (096770.KS) LG Chem’s cross-town rival SK Innovation supplies batteries to Volkswagen, Daimler and Kia Motors (000270.KS), as well as Jaguar Land Rover [TAMOJL.UL] and Ferrari (RACE.MI).

An oil refiner that came to the battery industry late, SKI is investing about $3.9 billion to build three plants in the United States, China and Hungary, with a goal of expanding its annual production capacity to 33 GWh by 2022.

SKI currently operates one battery factory in South Korea, with a capacity of 4.7 GWh annually.

It set up a joint venture with Beijing Automotive Industry Corporation (BAIC) of China in August 2018 and another Chinese partner. It is in talks with Volkswagen about another battery JV and is building a $1.7 billion factory in the U.S. state of Georgia, not far from Volkswagen’s Chattanooga plant.

Source: Reuters

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09/08/2019

This tiny ‘cockroach robot’ could be the future of search and rescue when disasters strike

  • Chinese and US researchers take inspiration from the hardy insect to design a robot that moves fast and is hard to squash
A prototype soft robot, which is about the size of a postage stamp, was developed by a group of researchers from China and the US. Its design was inspired by the capabilities of the hardy cockroach. Photo: Handout
A prototype soft robot, which is about the size of a postage stamp, was developed by a group of researchers from China and the US. Its design was inspired by the capabilities of the hardy cockroach. Photo: Handout
Cockroaches are near-indestructible little creatures. These hardy insects have existed since at least 320 million years ago, outliving dinosaurs. A cockroach can also carry loads of up to 900 times its body weight, shrink to a quarter of its height to fit into small crevices and live for a week without its head.
Inspired by the qualities of this humble bug, a group of researchers from China and the United States have created a prototype of a fast-moving and near-indestructible miniature robot, which could potentially replace sniffer dogs in detecting people trapped in a rubble after a major earthquake or similar disastrous event.
Researchers from China’s Tsinghua University and the University of California, Berkeley, published their study on so-called soft robots in the academic journal Science Robotics last week.
“Although the cockroach is an annoying pest, it has certain interesting features, including the ability to move fast in a narrow space and being hard to squash,” said Zhang Min, an assistant professor at Tsinghua University’s Graduate School in Shenzhen and one of the study’s authors, in an email interview. “These features inspired us to develop a fast-moving and robust soft robot.”

Their work on soft robots was conducted under the Tsinghua-Berkeley Shenzhen Institute partnership, an initiative to collaborate with global researchers on fields such as environmental science and new energy technology.

Scientists have long taken inspiration from insects, including cockroaches, for engineering robots. Researchers from UC Berkeley previously developed a palm-sized, roach-like robot – about 20 times the size of the bug – for rescue use in 2017.

By comparison, the new prototype achieved breakthroughs in terms of size and more importantly, the speed and robustness.

The latest robot, which is about the size of a postage stamp and weighs less than one-tenth of a gram, is composed of a flexible piezoelectric thin film and a polymer skeleton with two legs.

This screenshot from a video provides a closer look at the prototype soft robot developed by a group of researchers from China and the US. Its features were inspired by the sturdy qualities of the humble cockroach. Photo: YouTube
This screenshot from a video provides a closer look at the prototype soft robot developed by a group of researchers from China and the US. Its features were inspired by the sturdy qualities of the humble cockroach. Photo: YouTube

Despite its petite frame, this prototype showed the fastest speed among insect-scale robots in a similar weight range, as well as “ultra-robustness”, according to Lin Liwei, a professor of mechanical engineering at UC Berkeley who directed the research, in a separate email interview.

It can move as fast as a cockroach with speeds of up to 20 body lengths per second. It also continued to move after it was stepped on by an adult human weighting 60 kilograms, which is about 1 million times heavier than the robot, according to the study.

In 2017, researchers of the PolyPEDAL Lab at the University of California, Berkeley, designed a compressible robot, CRAM, that was about 20 times the size of a real cockroach. Photo: Handout
In 2017, researchers of the PolyPEDAL Lab at the University of California, Berkeley, designed a compressible robot, CRAM, that was about 20 times the size of a real cockroach. Photo: Handout

Those features sets up the robot for potential application in disaster relief, a field in which its size, agility and resilience would be invaluable to help detect survivors trapped beneath the rubble in catastrophes, such as major earthquakes.

Earthquakes have caused much devastation in China, a seismically active country with the world’s biggest population. For example, about 87,000 people died and more than 370,000 were injured when a magnitude-8 earthquake struck Wenchuan, a county in southwestern China’s Sichuan province, in 2008.

“The key innovation is the soft materials and structures used in the robot,” Lin said. “If the robot is too soft, it won’t be able to move fast. If the robot is too stiff, it can’t withstand the force of human weight.” The study detailed how the right combination of soft materials and structure enabled the robot to operate efficiently.

While the robot is currently attached to thin cables for power, the researchers are working to integrate a battery and control circuit to get rid of the existing wire in its design, helping expand its use in other applications.

“We want to make the robot carry small sensors, like a gas sensor, to provide it with more functions,” said Zhong Junwen, a researcher at UC Berkeley and one of the authors of the study, in a separate email interview. “With such a sensor, the robot can detect harmful gas leakage.”

Source: SCMP

Posted in battery, catastrophes, Chinese and US researchers, cockroach, cockroach robot, control circuit, design, Dinosaurs, disasters, earthquakes, energy technology, Environmental science, gas leakage, gas sensor, hard to squash, hardy insect, mechanical engineering, moves fast, piezoelectric thin film, polymer skeleton, PolyPEDAL Lab, postage stamp, power, Robot, Robotics, rubble, search and rescue, Shenzhen, sichuan province, small sensors, strike, thin cables, Tsinghua University, Tsinghua-Berkeley Shenzhen Institute, UC Berkeley, Uncategorized, University of California, Berkeley, Wenchuan | Leave a Comment »

17/01/2019

China’s first lunar leaf dies after Chang’e scientists forced to cut power to stop battery running low

  • Cotton seed that became first plant to come to life on the surface of the moon dies after being exposed to far side’s extreme temperatures
  • Lander did not carry any spare batteries, so power to biosphere had to be cut off
PUBLISHED : Thursday, 17 January, 2019, 7:09pm
UPDATED : Thursday, 17 January, 2019, 7:48pm

COMMENTS: 2 

China’s dream of a moon harvest has died young. Just two days after they announced that plant shoots had to come to life on the moon, the Chang’e team said a lack of battery capacity meant they had been forced to cut off the power supply that kept them alive.

The decision proved fatal for the cotton seeds that produced the “first leaf” on the moon after they were exposed to temperatures of 120 Celsius (250F) by day and minus 170 Celusis by night.

The extreme conditions on the far side of the moon also killed three other plant seeds, yeast and fruit fly eggs that had been carried inside the lunar lander’s biosphere.

On Tuesday the team behind the mission announced the success of the first ever biology experiment to be conducted on the moon with the release of pictures of a sprouting cotton seed inside the biosphere.

Chinese lunar lander’s cotton seeds spring to life on far side of the moon

The Chang’e probe, carrying the seeds and eggs in an airtight aluminium cylinder, touched down on the far side of the moon on January 3, but the team did not say when the seeds had started to germinate.

However, the researchers would have known that any success would prove fleeting.

The only battery available in the spacecraft, a solar cell, could not afford to keep the temperature inside the biosphere under control and the plants were doomed to die once the temperatures on the moon went beyond what life on Earth could endure.

“Because of the weight limit of the Chang’e launch, we were unable to bring a battery to the moon,” Liu Hanlong director of the experiment and vice-president of Chongqing University in southwest China, told Inkstone, a sister publication of the South China Morning Post.

https://widgets.scmp.com/video/video_iframe.php?id=8f7q2r&poster=https%3A//cdn2.i-scmp.com/sites/default/files/video/images/2019/01/16/scmpnext_thumbnail_poster.jpg

It was not clear why additional batteries were not carried on the lander if the survival of the plants on the moon depended on battery-powered temperature control.

“Without temperature control, the plants and animals would not survive,” said Liu.

The mini ecosystem contained in the cylinder also included rapeseed and potato seeds, which had also sprouted, and these are certain to have met the same fate as the cotton sprout once the power went out.

It was not clear how long any of the seeds had survived.

The Chinese public, however, seemed far from discouraged by the news judging by the reaction on social media.

Despite comments expressing surprise at the lack of sufficient battery power to carry on the experiment, most posts on the social media network Weibo were overwhelmingly positive.

Nasa wanted to use China’s spacecraft to plan a new American moon mission, top Chinese scientist says

“What a pity, but we should not give up. We should keep trying,” wrote one Weibo user. “Eventually we will grow a complete plant [on the moon] in the future,” read another post.

Chinese researchers shared their optimism, saying the data they had obtained from the sprouting, however short, would provide them with valuable information onto how to grow crops under low-gravity, high-radiation conditions – an insight which might one day prove invaluable in sustaining a manned base in space or even on the surface of the moon.

“We have given consideration to future survival in space. Learning about these plants’ growth in a low-gravity environment would allow us to lay the foundation for our future establishment of space base,” Liu told a press conference on Tuesday.

Source: SCMP

Posted in battery, Change, lunar leaf, scientist, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

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