New life for the old lead acid battery?

[mechman600]

Could Hybrids Use Lead-Acid Batteries? Startup Says Yes

[serialk11r]

Would be glad to pick one of these up when the battery in my car goes to battery heaven.

[Daox]

Interesting article. However, I don't see this happening. Even if they have designed a lead acid battery that can handle higher C rates without horrible peukert effects, and they can get around the weight issue by eliminating cooling and bms systems (which I have doubts about, its still going to need both in a demanding application, lead acid have traditionally never really been stressed nearly as much as they are saying), they still have horrible cycle life compared to nimh and lithium... Lead batteries also suffer from sulfation problems anytime they aren't near fully charged. In a hybrid you don't want to run around with a full battery pack so you have room for regenerative braking. The article doesn't address either of these two issues.

[rmay635703]

I would recommend you take a look or try to get a Greensaver lead silicon battery like my fathers mini van has.

He has approaching 10k on this 48v battery pack and his summer range is still around 40 miles give or take (we have gone 46miles a couple times)

His pack has had many deep discharges (80%-90% ish) and it still functions despite extreme abuse although its winter performance has dropped each year which is odd.

These greensaver batteries do not sulphate as far as I can tell but they are difficult to charge and experience damage each time they are charged fully, (sealed battery shouldn't gas) very strange battery and it loves to go out of balance.

I have a feeling if you put the technology that we use with lithium into lead plus add a CNT matrix you would have a much more durable battery that does not sulphate appreciably. The lead silicon greensavers do not appear to sulphate so we already have that covered, CNT would cover the peukert issues.

Sadly a lead battery that costs as much as a lithium battery, still weighs a bit more and is more difficult to charge would likely be a very hard sell but I bought one anyway, so maybe there would be a market for an advanced lead battery.

I always figured it was a bad thing that firefly never made it to market and the koreign micro bubble tech gave up on the CNT lead side.

Cheers
Ryan