Pre-Owned Electric Car Batteries
Pre-Owned Electric Car Batteries
Nissan and Sumitomo established a joint venture to recycle lithium-ion electric car batteries, which could give Nissan an early lead in the fledgling electric car market by making its vehicles more affordable. The venture is based on a '4R' business model - Reuse, Resell, Refabricate and Recycle. Nissan aims to launch mass market electric vehicles by 2012. It already operates a joint venture with NEC - Automotive Energy Supply Corporation (AESC) - that makes high-performance lithium-ion batteries.
Reselling the batteries solves one of electric car manufacturers' biggest problems, which is affordability. Demand is expected to be particularly high for back-up power supplies, uninterruptable power supplies, load levelling for the electricity grid, and levelling of energy from both photovoltaic solar and wind power. In Japan, demand for such recycled batteries is expected to reach the equivalent of at least 50,000 electric cars a year by 2020.
Vehicle Wireless Charging
Vehicle Wireless Charging
Vehicle Wireless Charging
Vehicle Wireless Charging
The concept of beaming electricity wirelessly, eliminating the need for a wired power grid altogether, goes back to the days of Edison and Tesla. But wireless charging has been making headline news for the last few years. Eric Giler's demonstration at TED pushed wireless power into the mainstream market. The appeal is obvious, as charging an army of every day gadgets can be quite a daunting task. For a premium the technology is already commercially available to the masses - mainly at short distance and for reasonably trivial applications like charging phones, laptops, and other battery-powered equipment.
Nissan has developed a wireless charging concept to make charging electric cars easier and faster. Nissan started with a wireless charging bay, and has larger ambitions for its system, as it also hopes to one day let electric cars charge as they are driven over a series of plates installed into the surface of roads.
