Nissan doubling battery capacity by 2015
Nissan has announced that Nissan and Renault electric cars will have double today’s battery capacity by 2015. That means that the range for cars like the Leaf should double by that time as well.
The big change that will bring about this leap in battery capacity is a transition to an NMC (lithium nickel manganese cobalt oxide cathode) battery. The company is in the late stages of development on the new battery and its introduction should be quick since the manufacturing process is very close to that of their current battery.
Cobalt is expensive, but its only used sparingly and Nissan claims the cost of their batteries won’t be doubling with the capacity. Many electronics companies (Panasonic, Sanyo, Hitachi, Samsung, etc.) are experimenting with NMC batteries as well, so it looks like electric cars won’t be the only thing that will see a jump in run time in five years.
via Autoblog Green
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