By David Wichner
ARIZONA DAILY STAR 4/30/2010
Tucson-based Sion Power Corp. has been awarded a $5 million federal grant to further develop its lithium-sulfur battery technology for use in electric cars.
The award, part of $106 million in grants nationwide announced Thursday by the U.S. Department of Energy, will fund efforts to develop an ultra-high-energy battery that can power electric vehicles for more than 300 miles between charges.
The grant is part of the DOE’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy program, funded with federal stimulus money under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.
It follows an $800,000 grant the DOE awarded to Sion in June for battery research.
Sion’s approach uses new manufacturing processes and barrier layers within the batteries to improve cycle life — the number of times a battery can be recharged — as well as safety.
Sion CEO Dennis Mangino said the threeyear grant, which will be matched by the company, will help Sion develop prototype car batteries by 2014.
The company, which employs about 60 people, already makes small lithium-sulfur batteries.
Mangino said the key to the company’s success in developing batteries to power electric cars is extending their cycle life.
The company expects to be able to achieve a cycle life of 500 charge cycles, he said. That compares with a goal of 1,000 cycles sought by the U.S. Advanced Battery Consortium, a research group formed by Chrysler, Ford and General Motors.
But Sion’s batteries promise twice the power capacity of other technologies, offsetting the lower cycle life, Mangino said.
“There’s not going to be any other technology that can deliver the capacity our technology can deliver,” he said.
Last year, Sion signed a joint development agreement with the German chemical giant BASF SE to accelerate battery development.
BASF is a partner with Sion on the DOE grant announced Thursday, along with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, Calif., and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Wash.
Sion makes small lithium-sulfur batteries for unmanned aerial vehicles and other applications. The company set a flight record in 2008 when a UAV powered by solar energy in daytime and by battery at night stayed aloft for 83 hours.
Contact Assistant Business Editor David Wichner at dwichner@azstarnet.com or 573-4181.
“There’s not going to be any other technology that can deliver the capacity our technology can deliver.”
Dennis Mangino
Sion CEO
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