Rapid Recharging Space Heats Up

November 19, 2008 by admin

The rapid recharging field has just heated up considerably. California’s Better Place is developing its own car-charging network, and is already working on projects in Israel, Denmark and Australia. Their vehicle partner is the Renault-Nissan Alliance, which also has a project in Japan, in the Kanagawa Prefecture on Honshu, Japan’s largest island, as well as deals in Portugal, France, and the state of Tennessee in the U.S. Now Ener1 is making waves in this sector with a freshly signed deal with Kyushu Electric Power (KEPCO) of Japan. Kyushu Electric is the fourth-largest publicly traded power and utility company in Japan.

Ener1 said drivers can plug in and recharge up to 80 percent of the vehicle’s battery capacity in under 20 minutes. Kyushu Electric serves more than 8 million customers on Kyushu, Japan’s southernmost island, which includes the cities of Nagasaki and Fukuoka.

Ener1’s deal with Kyushu Electric comes just a few weeks after the company made another move in Asia. In October, Ener1 took an 83-percent stake in South Korea’s Enertech International, a producer of lithium-ion battery cells. Ener1’s EnerDel unit has worked with Enertech before, supplying prototype and preproduction battery systems for Norway’s Think Global, which is working on an electric vehicle to be launched this year.

KEPCO has already developed advanced rapid charging stands and plans to customize that solution with the EnerDel High Energy Pack System. KEPCO says that its next-generation electric vehicle rapid charging station has exhibited one of the highest levels of performance for rapid charging in Japan.

via Alt dot Energy