Bottled Lightning

by Seth Fletcher

  The most common argument one hears against cars like the Volt in the United States today is that gasoline still isn’t expensive enough to justify the additional cost of a car that runs on a pricey lithium-ion battery. But that argument has a built-in expiration date. Battery cost has already begun to plummet: see, for example, the $32,780 sticker price of the Nissan Leaf, a car with a relatively large lithium-ion battery. Gas prices were relatively low at the time the Volt and the Leaf arrived in the world, but those prices will not last forever. The supply of oil is finite, and many well-informed observers believe that someday soon, it will be much too scarce a commodity to continue powering our lives in the way it does today.

  What remains to be seen, of course, is who will profit most from this shift in the automotive industry. Young American companies like A123 and EnerDel face profoundly tough competition from giants like Panasonic—which is now working closely on automotive applications with Toyota and Tesla Motors, and which, according to Tesla’s founder, Martin Eberhard, is sitting on the next big battery breakthrough, the silicon anodes that as soon as 2013 will increase the energy density of lithium-ion batteries by as much as 30 percent.

  The biggest threat to the hatchling American battery industry, however, could be politics. The day after the 2010 midterm elections, in which the Republicans swept the House of Representatives on an anti-Obama wave, could not have been pleasant for anyone with a stake in the emerging American advanced-battery industry. Soon after the election, Representative Fred Upton, a Michigan Republican, wrote to Steven Chu complaining about the portion of the stimulus funding awarded by the Department of Energy.

  The industry advocate James Greenberger believes that this latest political shift will change the way the battery industry sells itself—expect to hear less about cutting carbon dioxide emissions and more about establishing energy security by developing alternatives to foreign oil—but that it shouldn’t, in itself, deal the industry a deathblow. After all, the industry’s greatest incubator, the stimulus funding, was a onetime deal. “The $2.4 billion of DOE grants to support advanced battery manufacturing and the electric drive supply chain was not funded by something called the Battery Package,” Greenberger wrote on his blog. “It was funded by the Stimulus Package. That is an important distinction. Once the Stimulus Package funds were expended and the economy began to recover, there was never any realistic expectation that anything close to that level of funding for battery manufacturing was going to continue. Industry was going to have to become self-reliant and the business of advanced batteries self-sustaining.”

  But it is clear that the brief window in which any kind of comprehensive climate-change legislation was possible—any kind of wide-ranging effort to penalize carbon emissions and therefore boost clean alternatives, including electric cars—has been closed, and it will remain closed for years to come. The EPA is still charged with regulating greenhouse gases, but Republicans in the House of Representatives will try to stop the agency from doing so. The best tool the government has for urging on advances in clean-car technology is probably Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards, and in fact, in October 2010, the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Highway and Transportation Safety Administration signaled that CAFE standards could rise from the 35.5 mpg average set for 2016 to as high as 62 mpg by 2025. Still, for the next two years, Washington will probably become a more hostile place for clean-energy interests.

  In a speech at the National Press Club in late November 2010, Steven Chu went on the offense against any possible anti-energy-research agenda coming with the next Congress. He explained that the budget for energy research has steadily declined since the 1970s—that today, only 0.14 percent of the federal budget is allocated for energy research and development. The stimulus should be a “down payment” on a long-term program of energy R&D. “The question is, post-stimulus, are we going to return to this downward trend or are we going to do something about it?”

  A presentation Chu distributed to the audience explained that some level of government direction of the private sector is necessary because the benefits of clean-energy technology—clean air, better national security, less risk of dangerous climate change, stability of energy prices—are “neither recognized nor rewarded by the free market.” High-risk, high-reward energy research of the kind that could deliver major breakthroughs is too risky for most private corporations. “And quite frankly,” Chu said, “a lot of the new technologies could displace an embedded way of doing business, and could be met with resistance; therefore the government has to say, ‘This is the path we should be going in for our long-term future prosperity.’”

  Chu’s speech was titled “The Energy Race: Our New Sputnik Moment.” He admitted that the Sputnik analogy was trite, but said that in this case it should perhaps be taken seriously. The reason: the United States is demonstrably on the verge of losing its position as the world leader in science and technology. The nation most eager to claim that leadership is, of course, China. “The U.S. has been for well over a century the greatest innovation machine in the world,” he said. “While it did not invent the automobile, it took the invention and processed it into something that was not seen in the world before … I say today this leadership is at risk.”

  But Chu admits that the analogy with the Sputnik era extends only so far. The world needs “a new industrial revolution,” he believes. If another country leads that industrial revolution, then, all things being equal, the result will still be good for the planet—Americans will just be buying solar panels and carbon-capture technology and advanced batteries from overseas. And if the budding American energy-storage industry fails, it’s not going to be an existential threat to the United States. It would, however, be a tremendous lost opportunity, a failure to participate in what promises to be one of the greatest industries of the coming century.

  APPENDIX

  Global Lithium Reserves and Identified Resources

  Based on the latest U.S. Geological Survey estimates as of January 2011. Reserves are mineral sources that can today be economically and legally extracted; identified resources are known mineral deposits. All figures are in metric tons.

  RESERVES

  Chile 7,500,000

  China 3,500,000

  Argentina 850,000

  Australia 580,000

  Brazil 64,000

  United States 38,000

  Zimbabwe 23,000

  Portugal 10, 000

  Total 12,565,000

  IDENTIFIED RESOURCES

  Bolivia 9,000,000

  Chile 7,500,000

  China 5,400,000

  United States 4,000,000

  Argentina 2,600,000

  Brazil 1,000,000

  Congo 1,000,000

  Serbia 1,000,000

  Australia 630,000

  Canada 360,000

  Total 32,490,000

  NOTES

  1: The Electricians

  Thales of Miletus … Benjamin Franklin: Jonnes, Empires of Light, pp. 17–49.

  The battery was the accidental fruit: The main source for Volta’s story is Pancaldi, Volta, pp. 178–207.

  paper by the English chemist William Nicholson: “It has appeared to me … that a machine might be constructed also capable of giving numberless shocks at pleasure, and of retaining its power for months, years, or to an extent of time of which the limits can be determined only by experiment.” Ibid., p. 199.

  “electricity excited by the mere mutual contact”: Jonnes, Empires of Light, p. 32.

  “loud detonations”: Pancaldi, Volta, p. 215.

  Volta called his invention: In 1803, Humphry Davy pretty much settled the matter when he used the term “galvanic battery” in a paper. Today the English still call it the pile, but to most of the rest of us, the electrochemical cell has been called the “battery” ever since.

  “the last great discovery”: Quoted in Pancaldi, Volta, p. 211.

  “magnificent instrument of philosophic resear
ch”: Quoted ibid., p. 273.

  called Volta “immortal”: Quoted ibid., p. 259.

  “opened to man a new and incomparable source of energy”: Quoted ibid., p. 273.

  Volta earned such effusive praise: In Italy, Volta became a national hero. On the hundredth anniversary of the battery, an Italian trade group hired Giacomo Puccini to write commemorative music, and the result was a piano piece Puccini called “The Electric Shock.” Then in 1927, on the centennial of Volta’s death, Italy’s Fascist government threw a massive celebration in Como, Volta’s birthplace. Mussolini was “honorary president” of the proceedings. From fourteen countries, sixty-one physicists gathered in Como, among them the giants: Niels Bohr, Max Planck, Ernest Rutherford, Werner Heisenberg, Enrico Fermi. On postage stamps issued for the centennial, “Alessandro Volta was portrayed in the pose of an ancient Roman. Volta’s electric battery was made to look like the bundle of elm branches containing an axe that was the symbol of the fascist regime” (ibid., p. 264).

  Hans Christian Oersted: Pancaldi, Volta, pp. 233–34.

  As the battery steadily improved: Throughout the nineteenth century, successive generations of more powerful primary, or nonrechargeable, batteries arrived. In 1836, John Frederic Daniell, an English chemist, invented the first major improvement on Volta’s pile, a cell that used a zinc electrode and a copper electrode, each dipped in separate containers that were filled with sulfate solutions, and then connected to one another with a salt bridge. In 1844, another Englishman, William Robert Grove, concocted a cell that used zinc and platinum electrodes to reach 1.9 volts. In 1866, Georges Leclanché delivered a zinc-carbon primary (nonrechargeable) battery whose design would in time lead to the first “dry” cell, which used a paste rather than the traditional liquid solution for an electrolyte. See Schallenberg, Bottled Energy, and Schlesinger, The Battery, for a more detailed account.

  And so in 1898, he began studying: The section on Edison’s struggle with the battery draws on three main sources: Josephson, Edison; Schallenberg, Bottled Energy; and Schiffer et al., Taking Charge. As Josephson wrote, “From 1900 on, he had eyes for nothing but the ‘miniature reservoir of electric force’ that he must create” (Edison, p. 407).

  “I don’t think Nature”: Josephson, Edison, p. 407.

  “The number of experiments”: Ibid., p. 409.

  In reality, he was not working blindly: Schallenberg, Bottled Energy, pp. 353ff.

  “the final perfection of the storage battery”: Thomas A. Edison, “The Storage Battery and the Motor Car,” North American Review 175 (1902): 1–4.

  “a featherweight and inexhaustible”: Ritchie E. Betts, “Faster than the Locomotive,” Outing: An Illustrated Magazine of Sport, Travel, Adventure & Country Life 339 (1901-1902).

  “revolutionized the world of power”: Josephson, Edison, p. 415.

  “At last the battery is finished”: Quoted ibid., p. 421.

  Today we know: Armstrong, R. A., G.W.D. Briggs, and M. A. Moore. “The Effect of Lithium in Preventing Iron Poisoning in the Nickel Hydroxide Electrode,” Electrochimica Acta 31, no. 1 (1986): 25–27.

  In 1800, a Brazilian chemist: José Bonifácio de Andrada e Silva documented his discovery in Allgemeines Journal der Chemie in 1880. See Mindat.org’s page on Utö for detail on the site: www.mindat.org/loc_3194.html.

  Johan August Arfwedson: Encyclopædia Britannica Online: “lithium (Li),” www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/343644/lithium.

  Lithium therapy became popular … “It takes the ouch out of grouch”: El-Mallakh and Jefferson, “Prethymoleptic Use of Lithium;” El-Mallakh and Roberts, “Lithiated Lemon-Lime Sodas.”

  began giving heart-disease patients lithium chloride: El-Mallakh and Jefferson, “Prethymoleptic Use of Lithium,” p. 129.

  the Australian psychiatrist John Cade: Cade, “Lithium Salts in the Treatment of Psychotic Excitement,” pp. 349–52.

  lithium affects neurotransmitters: B. Corbella and E. Vieta, “Molecular Targets of Lithium Action,” Acta Neuropsychiatrica 15 (2003): 316–40.

  stimulate brain-cell growth: Moore et al. “Lithium-Induced Increase in Human Brain Grey Matter.”

  compared suicide rates and lithium levels: Ohgami et al., “Lithium Levels in Drinking Water and Risk of Suicide.”

  a Canadian psychiatrist suggested: Young, “Invited Commentary.”

  Even when it is generated by: Numerous studies have compared “well-to-wheel” emissions for electric cars, plug-in hybrids, and internal combustion engines. For an overview, see Sherry Boschert, “Well-to-Wheels Emissions Data for Plug-In Hybrids and Electric Vehicles: An Overview,” www.sherryboschert.com/Downloads/Emissions%5B9%5D.pdf.

  2: False Start

  The clouds of smog: Details on the smog crisis are drawn from “Menace in the Skies,” Time, January 27, 1967. For a comprehensive history of LA’s smog problems, see Jacobs and Kelly, Smogtown.

  backlash against the internal combustion engine: Doyle, Taken for a Ride, pp. 55ff.

  outright banning of the internal combustion engine: Ibid., p. 55. California state senator Nicholas C. Petris proposed one such bill in 1969.

  By then, the geopolitics: In researching the oil situation in the 1960s and 1970s, I’ve drawn on Daniel Yergin’s The Prize, the definitive history of oil, which delivers a comprehensive account of those tumultuous decades. For a concise history of oil and an immediate, journalistic account of the first oil crisis, see also Sampson, The Seven Sisters.

  “It was a decisive change”: Yergin, The Prize, p. 573.

  In 1967, Neil Weber and Joseph T. Kummer: Weber and Kummer, Proceedings of the Annual Power Sources Conference 21 (1967): 37.

  intercalation compounds: Huggins, Advanced Batteries, p. 61.

  A yellowed black-and-white photo: van Gool, Fast Ion Transport in Solids.

  tantalum disulfide: Interview with Michael Stanley Whittingham, SUNY Binghamton, October 30, 2000, http://authors.library.caltech.edu/5456/1/hrst.mit.edu/hrs/materials/public/Whittingham_interview.htm.

  an excellent conductor of electricity: This was a major advantage. Almost all other electrode materials have to be mixed with a healthy dose of carbon black to make them conduct electricity; when as much as 20 percent of the electrode is taken up by carbon, that’s 20 percent less active electrode material you can fit in, 20 percent less real estate for lithium ions—the real charge-carrying workhorses of the battery. Titanium disulfide was such a good conductor that they could skip the carbon black entirely.

  landmark paper on the LiTiS2 battery: Whittingham, “Electrical Energy Storage and Intercalation Chemistry.”

  “one of today’s hottest items”: “The Best Growth Business,” Forbes, May 15, 1975.

  “despite present—and formidable—problems”: “Car of the Future,” Forbes, October 15, 1976.

  “After a hiatus of almost 50 years”: “New Batteries Are in the Running,” Chemical Week, December 1, 1976.

  “Given two major trends”: James Flanigan, “Does Exxon Have a Future?” Forbes, August 15, 1977.

  a Vienna hotel room: Yergin, The Prize, p. 583.

  In a presentation: “Down to Earth Talk on Far Out Ideas,” Chemical Week, February 22, 1978, p. 42.

  the company spent $1.2 billion: Richard I. Kirkland, Jr., and Susan Kuhn, “Exxon Rededicates Itself to Oil,” Fortune, July 23, 1984.

  “What Exxon is saying”: “Exxon Puts a Tiger in Your Electric Motor,” Economist, May 26, 1979, p. 111.

  “We’re not finding as much oil”: “Interview with Clifton Garvin: ‘The Quicker We Get at Synthetic Fuels, the Better We’re Going to Be,’” BusinessWeek, July 16, 1979, p. 80.

  “That may be just as well”: “Here Come the Electrics,” Fortune, October 22, 1979, p. 24.

  Nothing, that is, except oil: Hamlen believes that the death knell for the Battery Division was sounded when a potentially huge deal fell through. The group was finding steadily larger applications for their batteries, in particular a solar rechargeable desk clo
ck that caught the eye of Charles Tandy, founder of the eponymous, now-forgotten computer company. Tandy had just bought RadioShack; Hamlen had good reason to believe he wanted to buy fifty thousand lithium-battery-powered clocks. Then, on November 29, 1978, Tandy died at age sixty of a heart attack. The sale was finished.