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The Swiss Mitsubishi importer has demonstrated that a plug-in hybrid Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV can travel 830 km (518 miles) on a single tank of petrol.   Mitsubishi Motors claims the plug-in hybrid Outlander PHEV has a range of 824 kilometers (512 Miles) in the combined hybrid mode. The Swiss Mitsubishi importer wanted to know whether this is feasible in practice

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Leyden’s intellectual property in battery materials covering lithium titanate (LTO) and non-flammable electrolyte developments were acquired for an undisclosed amount but as a part of the deal, key technical staff of Leyden Energy have also agreed to join A123 Systems’ R&D organization.   Leyden has received development funding from United States Advanced Battery Consortium LLC (USABC), an organization whose members

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One of the largest manufacturers of industrial batteries in the world, Saft, recently announced that it would now be offering an extended warranty of up to 15 years for its Li-ion batteries.   The move makes Saft the first Li-ion battery manufacturer in the world to offer such a long warranty.   The confidence isn’t all that surprising considering that

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When Tesla Motors announced it would allow anyone to use its patents “in good faith,” one of the top questions was, “Will anyone bite?” Companies that have simply gone the “compliance car” route seem unlikely to jump at the opportunity (though, maybe this is the stimulation that would get some of them to move). Nissan and BMW have been the

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In what could be a game changer for the solar energy industry, a house in suburban Sydney, Australia has installed the world’s first building integrated solar system that generates electricity and heat. The rooftop array combines thin-film solar photovoltaic (PV) panels with a solar thermal duct system that warms and cools the air. The top layer produces electricity from the

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One of the fundamental challenges of battery technology is that lithium-ion batteries — by far the best general option for energy storage currently in wide commercial use — are intrinsically bulky and heavy. A new research team at the University of Central Florida believes they can challenge that problem by turning copper wires into supercapacitors, then embedding those wires into

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Car clubs in Scotland are getting some electric love from their government. The UK is putting £1,000,000 ($1.7 million US) of new funding toward electric vehicles, specifically encouraging the clean growth of car clubs Scotland. Those funds are expected to provide as many as 30 additional EVs for the clubs.   “Car clubs have the potential to deliver significant environmental

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A family of Field-Effect Rectifier diodes (FERDs) from STMicroelectronics offers a trade-off between low forward voltage drop (VF) and low leakage current (IR) that allows designers of equipment such as battery chargers and notebook adaptors to meet the most stringent energy-efficiency standard requirements without the expense of using synchronous rectification techniques.   Standards such as Energy Star 6.0 test the

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Researchers at the University of California, Riverside Bourns College of Engineering have developed a three-dimensional, silicon-decorated, cone-shaped carbon-nanotube cluster architecture for lithium ion battery anodes that could enable charging of portable electronics in 10 minutes, instead of hours. Lithium-ion batteries are the rechargeable battery of choice for portable electronic devices and electric vehicles. But, they present problems. Batteries in electric

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There’s one business Sony 6758.TO -0.67% has clung to despite pressure to do otherwise: its lithium-ion battery unit. Chief Executive Kazuo Hirai emphasized in early February that the company sees its battery business as essential to growth of smartphones and other mobile devices.  But now, it looks like the company has another incentive.   On Wednesday, Sony indicated it’s also

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