BY JUSTIN HYDE • FREE PRESS WASHINGTON STAFF
• March 7, 2008
WATERTOWN, Mass. -- In a brick hall by the Charles River, where
blacksmiths made cannons for the Uni0n Army, a new breed of metalworker
forges what may be the best weapon automakers will have for surviving
the 21st Century.
At the labs of A123 Systems, technicians assemble an electric heart
for the Chevrolet Volt, a battery pack that will be shipped to General
Motors Corp. for testing as the company races to build an electric
vehicle by 2010. And for all the doubts about whether a tiny
7-year-old company can essentially rewire the domestic auto industry,
A123's executives express abundant confidence in their invention. "Today,
we are providing enough batteries to power the equivalent of 100,000
vehicles," said Ric Fulop, one of A123's founders and its chief
evangelist. "If you look at other technologies, they're still in the
lab. It's years before they get into mass production." The
hurdles to powering vehicles with electricity instead of oil have
become less daunting in the past year, but they're still towering. • Cost -- a battery pack for a single Chevy Volt would cost about $10,000 today. • Safety -- protecting passengers in crashes and controlling hot batteries. • Longevity -- guaranteeing 10 or 15 years of life from untested technology. While
GM's plan to build a car that travels 40 miles on a single electric
charge has galvanized the industry, most experts say the technology
isn't ready. No battery today "does it all," said Don Hillebrand,
director of the Center for Transportation Research at Argonne National
Laboratory. "But when you watch the history and the progress they're
making, they're improving rapidly. ... Soon, they'll have it."... More: http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/ [www.freep.com]
| 
