Cloteam LLC, a startup company led by the battery expert Christina Lampe-Önnerud, who also founded Boston-Power Inc, was recently awarded a $3.5 million loan from the US Department of Energy (DOE) to develop electric vehicle energy storage systems using different designs.
This is one of 22 projects in 15 states that received $36 million for development of advanced, long range EV battery systems at a lower cost. The program behind the awards is the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) program.
Cloteam is focused on developing battery packaging systems to package all kinds of batteries, rather than improving the batteries themselves. A battery is only as good as its battery management system!
If a battery management system is poorly designed, it can actually cause one or more little cells to fail, rendering the entire battery pack useless. I’m sure that some of the focus will be on inverter technology as well as motor technology — electric current from the batteries has to pass through both of these before they can propel vehicles, and they waste some of it, and hence, shorten range.
Founded in 2012, Cloteam will develop a system to join and package batteries using a wide range of battery chemistries. Unlike today’s battery pack design, Cloteam’s design enables strategical placement of battery packs to absorb and manage the impact energy from a collision. Cloteam’s batteries could provide greater energy density compared to today’s lithium-ion batteries, while reducing the costs associated with materials and processing, the DOE said. We’ll see….
Image Credit: Battery on wheels by pogonici via Shutterstock
Sign up for daily news updates from CleanTechnica on email. Or follow us on Google News!
Have a tip for CleanTechnica, want to advertise, or want to suggest a guest for our CleanTech Talk podcast? Contact us here.
Electrifying Industrial Heat for Steel, Cement, & More
I don't like paywalls. You don't like paywalls. Who likes paywalls? Here at CleanTechnica, we implemented a limited paywall for a while, but it always felt wrong — and it was always tough to decide what we should put behind there. In theory, your most exclusive and best content goes behind a paywall. But then fewer people read it! We just don't like paywalls, and so we've decided to ditch ours. Unfortunately, the media business is still a tough, cut-throat business with tiny margins. It's a never-ending Olympic challenge to stay above water or even perhaps — gasp — grow. So ...
