2010年10月20日星期三

Why batteries lose their ability to hold a charge as they age

Scientists have discovered that batteries lose their potential to hold a command as they age due to the fact the finely structured nanomaterials present from the battery get coarsened in size.

Researchers at the Ohio State University had been trying to study why batteries lose their ability to hold a command as they age-specifically lithium-ion batteries, which have generated a lot of buzz for their potential to power the electrical cars in the future.

Yann Guezennec and Giorgio Rizzoni of OSU developed new experimental facilities and procedures to demand and discharge commercially-available Li-ion batteries thousands of times over several months in a number of conditions designed to mimic how these batteries are in fact utilised by hybrid and all-electric vehicles.

To understand the results of this testing, Bharat Bhushan, Suresh Babu, and Lei Raymond Cao studied the materials inside of your batteries to support determine how this aging manifests itself from the structure of the electrode materials.

When the batteries died, the scientists dissected them and employed a method known as infrared thermal imaging to search for problem regions in every electrode, a 1.5-meter-long strip of metal tape coated with oxide and rolled up like a jelly roll.

They then took a closer take a look at these difficulty areas making use of various methods with diverse length scale resolutions and discovered that the finely-structured nanomaterials on these electrodes that enable the battery rapidly charge and discharge had coarsened in size.

Additional studies from the aged batteries, employing neutron depth profiling, revealed that a fraction with the lithium that's responsible, in ion form, for shuttling electrical command between electrodes throughout charging and discharging, was no longer available for cost transfer, but was irreversibly lost from the cathode to the anode.

"We can clearly see that an aged sample versus and unaged sample has a lot lower lithium concentration inside the cathode," said Rizzoni in the Center for Automotive Research at OSU.he researchers suspect that the coarsening of the cathode may perhaps be behind this loss of lithium.

2010年10月9日星期六

How Do You Test a Battery?

I’ll say one thing for the Fandroid army: when they don’t like something, they let you know.

This week, I tried out Flash on an Android cellphone. I noted that I didn’t actually run battery checks, but that Adobe says you may expect three or three.5 hours of battery living if all you do is watch Flash movies.

Android fans didn’t care much for that. “I’m really disappointed how sloppy this article is,” wrote one particular. “You say that battery living could be an problem, but you are too lazy to analyze it.”

An additional: “You totally made a side situation of the most crucial aspect to mobile users: battery lifestyle.”

And: “Thanks for not doing the battery analyze. That could have been the only interesting part of this piece.”

Then: “You didn’t conduct battery exams?!!! That’s only One From the BIGGEST ARGUMENTS AGAINST FLASH ON A MOBILE OS. Jeez, get a NYT intern to check the battery.”

And of course: “How could you then blithely just skip a battery consumption take a look at?”

Hmm. It nearly appears like you guys think I ought to have run some battery tests.

To you, my failure to examination Flash’s battery hit is “lazy.”

To me, it’s just a little more complicated. My problem was, “How do you fairly test the battery?”

1 way to do the take a look at: spend a entire day visiting Flash Web web-sites and playing Flash movies. On a second day, go to exclusively non-Flash websites. Evaluate the battery lifestyle.

But come on: how several men and women really use their phones that way? Who would use the cellphone for nothing but watching Flash videos, all day long? Isn’t it a lot more likely that the typical person will, in the course of a standard day, make some cell phone calls, do some e-mail, play a game or two, surf a bunch of non-Flash websites, and maybe visit a few Flash websites? In that real-world situation, how measurable would Flash’s hit on your battery living be?

Furthermore, practically nobody uses the battery continuously, draining it until it’s dead. Most people today use their phones sporadically for the duration of the day—a pattern which will offer totally diverse battery-life results. How do factor that in?

Some of you suggested making use of web sites like YouTube, where films are available in both Flash and HTML5 (the kind that the iPhone can view)!!! Take a look at the battery by playing Flash movies on an Android cellphone, and compare with watching the same video clips in HTML5 format on an iPhone.

Well, surely you see the dilemma with that protocol. You are not testing the impact of Flash. You’re testing two fully distinct phones. They have various processors, storage, batteries and other components. It’s not a meaningful analyze at all.

So here’s my challenge to you: Design a testing protocol for Flash’s impact on an Android phone’s battery living, and I’ll do it.

2010年10月7日星期四

Ford pulls ahead of its rivals

FORTUNE -- General Motors and Chrysler are beginning to produce some headway following acquiring a financial and operational overhaul compliments of your U.S. bankruptcy court. But Frd, operating totally free of interference by the court or the federal government is moving even faster and is starting to place real distance involving itself and its two domestic rivals.

Ford's U.S. sales in September rose 40% over a year in the past, and it has gained retail market place share in 23 of the last 24 months. By comparison, GM's sales rose 11% last month.

Meanwhile, Ford (F, Fortune 500) stock, which dipped below $3 per share two years back, has risen to close to $13. Earlier this week, Morgan Stanley initiated Frd coverage with a target value of $20.

Wrote analyst Adam Jones: "Our forecasts give Frd credit for a transformational turnaround yielding performance far exceeding its own historical averages and places the corporation among a select group of worldwide automotive firms. "

The momentum is likely to continue. Soon after a slow start, Ford is start to take the wraps off a program to electrify its automobile fleet. By 2015, it expects that 2% to 5% of its worldwide car fleet will likely be standard gas-electric hybrids, plug-in hybrids, and all-electric battery-powered autos. In the 12 months 2020, Frd expects the share to jump to between 10% and 25%.

Ford outlined its alternative fuel method nearly two many years back and is now in a position to show some tangible outcomes. It brought many its battery vehicles to New York for check drives this week.

Initial to the marketplace, it can be launching a small battery driven van, the Transit Connect in 2010. Such cars are considered an ideal battery application since they tend to operate in fleets, simplifying demands for charging infrastructure, and they follow predetermined routes, reducing the incidence of vary anxiety.

Next 12 months comes the auto that probably will be the centerpiece of Ford's EV efforts, at least in the short term: the battery-powered Focus. Frd is promising a variety of 100 miles per charge, which will make it directly competitive with the Nissan Leaf. Ford plans to sell 15,000 to 20,000 Focuses a yr.

A test mule provided for journalists neither contained the elaborate instruments that battery cars seem to demand, nor tested the promised range. But it started efficiently, ran quietly, accelerated smoothly and successfully dodged as a result of New York City visitors in a lap around Ford's West Side dealership.

The Concentrate exemplifies Ford's common-sense, spread-the-overhead approach to battery-powered vehicles. Rather than go via the expense of developing dedicated electric automobile models like the Leaf, it's adding electric powertrains to its conventional models to be able to maximize economies of scale. That risks dampening consumer appeal, nonetheless it really should pay off in sharply lower costs.

Frd is also discovering surprising efficiencies on the technology. Its plug-in hybrid due in 2011 will get 30 miles to a charge. That implies quite a few owners will probably be able to travel back and forth to work on electrical power alone and still have the secure back up of an efficient gasoline engine.

For its next-generation hybrids, Frd is making a risky move. The hybrid Lincoln MKZ coming in 2011 might be sold at the same cost because the typical gasoline-powered 1. Since hybrids usually command a $3,000 premium that suggests that Ford has 1) made a breakthrough on cost, or 2) is willing to eat the additional expense in return for much more industry share.

Ford's determination to do the intelligent factor rather than the well-liked issue, an ethos driven by CEO Alan Mulally, is starting to permeate the entire organization. A Morgan Stanley report shows a business that has been stripped down and speeded up:

As recently as 2006, Ford was producing 97 diverse nameplates on 27 separate platforms. Immediately after Mercury is put to sleep, it will have just 32 nameplates riding on 15 platforms.

That kind of simplicity pays off in efficiency. Morgan Stanley estimates that the carmaker will generate $682,000 in revenue from each worker, vs. $542,000 in 2006. Writes analyst Adam Jones: "The Ford of 2010 is hardly recognizable vs. the Ford of just a couple of decades ago."

Great issue, since America's automobiles may be hardly recognizable in a handful of years, either. Final week, the Obama administration proposed increasing fuel efficiency requirements by 3% to 6% annually from 2017 to 2025.

That signifies that in 15 a long time, the government will insist that automobiles get amongst 47 miles per gallon to 62 miles per gallon. The traditional American V-8 engine will be dead as a dodo by then, and also the V-6 may perhaps be too.

Ford has read the tea leaves and is attempting to get ready. Its technique of leveraging its international platforms by electrifying existing model lines looks intelligent as the use of gasoline-powered automobiles declines.

Battery-powered autos the size of your compact Concentrate may perhaps turn out to be the new regular -- and Frd will have the production volume to generate them affordable

2010年10月5日星期二

How to Decide Which Android Smartphone to BuyHow to Decide Which Android Smartphone to Buy

Which Android phones do your network provide? Which one particular has the biggest screen as well as the longest battery life? Google will tell you.

You know you like Android, but you have no idea what phones are out there. You've got friends with Nexus Ones, HTC Legends, and Motorola DROIDs and they every insist you couldn't go wrong in case you just picked up the same phone as they have. But you require something to suit your needs, not theirs. So how do you determine? You log onto Google's handy-dandy comparison database, that's how.

Google has simplified Android shopping with the addition of a database that features a comprehensive list of all of the Android devices readily available today. It is possible to sort by country, operator, or manufacturer and compare up to three devices at a time.

Those inside the marketplace for a new phone will no doubt come across this valuable, however, it will also be useful for those looking to see how their mobile phone matches up with newer models on the marketplace. Smartphone specifications are constantly changing, and although a 1GHz CPU may possibly be the norm these days, that could change entirely within the space of a couple of months. If you are brave sufficient to see how your mobile phone measures as much as the new kid on the block, check it out by visiting www.google.com/phone.

Also, for individuals interested, Google.com/phone utilised to be Google's on-line phone store, which it used to sell the Nexus A single and a selection of accessories for the cell phone. The search giant's choice to replace the shop with this 'Google Phone Gallery' could represent a permanent step away from selling phones.