Although EV is a greener alternative and a dream of many, but the biggest hitch is its cost. In most of the electric cars, the battery pack alone cost well over $10,000. So, bringing down this figure could make electric vehicles competitive with gasoline-fueled cars. Attempting to solve this problem, 24M, a new startup company that spun out of the advanced battery company A123 Systems will be develop a new kind of battery that holds the potential to cut battery costs by 85 percent.
Based on research conducted by Yet-Ming Chiang, a professor of materials science at MIT and founder of A123 Systems, the new battery pack combines the best attributes of conventional batteries, fuel cells, and flow batteries. There hasn’t been much said about the kind of material to be used, except for it will have a “semisolid” energy storage material. This new design could work with a range of battery chemistries.
For this project, 24M has raised $10 million in venture-capital funding, while about $6 million comes from the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E), which will fund collaboration between the company and MIT and Rutgers University. The company aims to get the first system rolling within a time frame of five years.