By Paul Buckley

Daizi Zheng, a graduate of Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design in London, claimed the prototype could run up to four times longer than a traditional lithium ion battery and had the potential to be fully biodegradable.

The greenphone's bio battery generates electricity using enzymes to catalyse sugar in the drink. As the battery dies out, only water and oxygen are left behind.

Zheng put forward the concept to Finnish mobile phone manufacturer Nokia, who tactfully said they would not be developing the greenphone prototype further in the near future.

Zheng was reported as saying that bio batteries are being developed by large electronics companies and may be on the market in the next five years.

To be honest I am rather doubtful that we will be seeing many bio batteries in five years and if we do I doubt they will mix very well with consumers who are the move - which is pretty much the target audience for mobile phones. All that potential shaking in warm environments and who knows what will happen. It is likely to be messy but at least it should be biodegradable. In fact you only have to open a warm can of Coke after it has been shaken and hey presto.

So as a practical idea the 'greenphone' concept has a way to go to become a reality and it shows that runtime is not always the best criteria for judging a power source design.

At least Zheng knows she had dreamt up a 'media-friendly' idea which would attract marketing-focused mobile phone companies. With this in mind perhaps Nokia was not the most obvious mobile phone company to approach with a sugar powered energy source.

By Paul Buckley

A new study by The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) concludes that the long-term cost target used by many carmakers in planning their future fleets of electric cars - $250 per kWh - is unlikely to be achieved unless there is a major breakthrough in battery chemistry that substantially increases the energy a battery can store without significantly increasing the cost of either battery materials or the manufacturing process.

Xavier Mosquet, Detroit-based leader of BCG's global automotive practice and a coauthor of the study, explained: "Given current technology options, we see substantial challenges to achieving this goal by 2020. For years, people have been saying that one of the keys to reducing our dependency on fossil fuels is the electrification of the vehicle fleet. The reality is, electric-car batteries are both too expensive and too technologically limited for this to happen in the foreseeable future."

Most electric cars in the new decade will use lithium-ion batteries, which are lighter and more powerful than the nickel-metal hydride (NiMH) batteries used today in hybrids like the Toyota Prius. Citing the current cost of similar lithium-ion batteries used in consumer electronics (about $250 to $400 per kWh), many original-equipment manufacturers (OEMs) hope that the cost of an automotive lithium-ion battery pack will fall from its current price of between $1,000 and $1,200 per kWh to between $250 and $500 per kWh at scaled production.

BCG, however, points out consumer batteries are simpler than car batteries and must meet significantly less demanding requirements, especially regarding safety and life span. As a result battery costs are likely be higher than what carmakers predict.

The cost challenge may well hold back the market but the report still projects steady growth for electric cars and batteries.

BCG estimates that 26 percent of the new cars sold in 2020 in the major developed markets (China, Japan, the United States, and Western Europe) , which equates to approximately 14 million cars, will have electric or hybrid power trains. By 2020 the market for electric-car batteries in those regions should reach $25 billion.

"This burgeoning market will be about triple the size of today's entire lithium-ion-battery market for consumer applications such as laptop computers and cell phones," said Mosquet.

To show how battery costs will decline, BCG uses the example of a typical supplier of lithium-nickel-cobalt-aluminum (NCA) batteries - one of the most prominent technologies for automotive applications. BCG's analysis suggests that by 2020, the price that OEMs pay for NCA batteries will decrease by 60 to 65 percent, from current levels of $990-$1,220 per kWh to $360-$440 per kWh. So the cost for a 15-kWh NCA range-extender pack would fall from around $16,000 to about $6,000. The price to consumers will similarly fall, from $1,400-$1,800 per kWh to $570-$700 per kWh - or $8,000-$10,000 for the same pack.

"Even in 2020, consumers will find this price of $8,000 to $10,000 to be a significant part of the vehicle's overall cost. They will carefully evaluate the cost savings of driving an electric car versus an ICE-based car against the higher up-front cost," explained Massimo Russo, a Boston-based partner and coauthor of the report. "It will be a complex purchase decision involving an evaluation of operating costs, carbon benefits, and potential range limitations, as well as product features."

Beyond costs, other key challenges facing the electric-car battery market are energy storage capacity, charging time, and infrastructure needs. BCG believes that pending a major breakthrough, batteries will continue to limit the driving range of fully electric vehicles to some 250-300 kilometers between charges. As a result, fully electric vehicles that are as convenient as ICE-based cars - meaning that they can travel 500 kilometers on a single charge and can recharge in a matter of minutes - are unlikely to be available for the mass market by 2020.

Of the roughly 14 million electric cars forecast to be sold in 2020 in China, Japan, the United States, and Western Europe, BCG projects that some 1.5 million will be fully electric, 1.5 million will be range extenders, and 11 million will be a mix of hybrids.

By Paul Buckley

Whether you believe in Global Warming or not there is no doubt that it is the engine driving the growing demand for energy efficiency and towards the back end of the past decade large sums were being pumped into the power management sector to try and stimulate the switch over to more energy efficient alternatives across a wide spectrum of commercial and industrial activities.

The recent recession has nipped in the bud some of these investment initiatives but, with the added impetus from governments worldwide, the funds are starting to seep down to where they are needed.

However, as we tiptoe into 2010 there still seems a fair degree of scepticism as to how successful some of these power management sectors will ultimately turn out to be.

The solar cell market was hyped up towards the end of the past decade and as we enter a new one some of the claims for progress do tend to look merely like claims with not a great deal of substance behind them. In the next year or two the solar cell industry looks set to see a lot of volatility as too many suppliers chase too little money. There are bound to be a number of casualties as a result. The real danger is that the money men start to realise that solar technology may take a lot longer than they anticipated before they start seeing any payback on their investments. The solar companies that can ride through the next few years intact should be sitting pretty by the end of the decade but it could be a turbulent ride.

The transport sector is another one where recently large sums of money have been injected by various governments to try and boost the development of electric and hybrid vehicles. This has obvious implications for the power management design engineers. Aside from the numerous technical challenges involved the key battle is likely to be convincing road users that battery powered vehicles can be viable alternatives to the traditional petrol or diesel based modes of transport.

Price performance and reliability are the key issues here. Both remain to be proven for electric vehicles in mass transit scenarios. Once again patience may be necessary. By the end of the decade we might all be driving around in electric cars but as I write this blog I am still far from convinced that enough infrastructure will have been implemented by then to see the end of the internal combustion engine.

One of the big money spinners for the power management component suppliers looks like being the advent of the 'Smart Grid'. Governments across Europe and the rest of the world seem to have embraced the concept of 'smart metering' which does appear to make sense for all parties involved. Certainly the volumes of power management ICs and related electronic devices these smart meters will consume will bolster many a balance sheet in the power management sector. However, just because governments think smart meters are a good thing does not mean that the humble consumer will agree.

In theory smart meters should help us all reduce our power consumption but in reality it looks like many consumers are suspicious that the meters are rigged to overstate the amount of energy we consume. Everyone loves a conspiracy theory and smart meters could provide a lot for the theorists to get their teeth into in the next ten years. Smart meters look likely to attract the fraternity that gathered in numbers to protest around the introduction of long-life lightbulbs.

By Paul Buckley

The theme of the dialogue was which European country was leading the way in innovative design these days. The executive meets and talks to OEM designers on a daily basis and is probably as well placed as anyone to make an assessment. His comments suggest that more than one revolution has occurred in the past 20 years in Germany. He said: "We are finding that the innovations are now coming more from Germany and Scandinavia. The Germans seem to have become more innovative than they were. They have been well known for their systematic approach to design projects but now they seem to be adding more innovation into the mix".

The executive was a Scotsman, which is a nation well known for its pedigree in engineering innovation, but he was less than encouraged with what he was seeing coming out of the UK these days. He commented: "We don't find the UK is as innovative as it used to be. The UK used to be an 'ideas engine'. I would say the UK innovation influence has been steadily worse since 2000."

He reckoned that in the past the UK always used to have a steady flow of creative ideas and tended to be at the forefront of what was being developed but he said that no longer seems to be the case.

"Young people in the UK are not coming up with ideas as they were in the past. Now it is unusual to find engineers in their 20s any longer. We see plenty in their 30s and 40s but not too many youngsters."