IBM’s Battery 500 Project

Dean Sigler Electric Powerplants, Sustainable Aviation 1 Comment

One of several presenters at this year’s sixth annual Electric Aircraft Symposium held by the CAFE Foundation at Santa Rosa, California on April 27 and 28 this year, Dr. Winfried W. Wilcke, senior, Manager of Nanoscale Science and Technology at IBM’s Almaden Research Center, initiated and heads up the Battery 500 project, a coalition to create a battery that will give electric cars a 500-mile range.  Partners include the United States Department of Energy National Laboratories, the Stanford Linear Accelerator National Laboratory, and Stanford University.  Asahi Kasei and Central Glass have recently joined the enterprise, chosen for their expertise in battery separator membranes and electrolytes respectively.  The Project’s goal is to eliminate range anxiety for EV owners and use the excess capacity of the electrical grid at night for charging. Dr. Wilcke explained that if all U. S. drivers had battery-powered electric cars, 73 percent of those EVs could be recharged at night with excess electricity from the grid.  Given …