Simon is not the kind of guy that puts all his eggs in one basket. Credit to @natanui for this post from the PLS thread.
Increasing the capacity of Li ion batteries by 50% combined with a cheaper manufacturing process makes cars with an 800 Km range well within reach, and would also make home storage much more cost effective...
Nano-Nouvelle 'milestone' could add 50pc to battery life by Ben Potter
A battery technology firm backed by entrepreneur Simon Hackett has developed a better way to make electrodes for lithium ion batteries and is seeking $6 million to build a pilot plant and scale up the process. Nano-Nouvelle, based near Maroochydore on Queensland's Sunshine Coast, has successfully trialled a nanotechnology process that coats a highly porous polymer sheet with a thin layer of copper to make battery current collectors - part of the anode - up to 70 per cent lighter than solid copper collectors.
Nanotechnology is science, engineering and technology conducted at a tiny scale – down to the level of atoms and molecules – that enables products and processes to be engineered with much greater precision.
To date, working at this level has been a slow process. But Nano-Nouvelle managed to continuously coat polymer sheeting 100 times faster than existing nanotechnology methods in a trial with British manufacturer Cemco last month.
Nano-Nouvelle's technology could add 50 per cent to the capacity of lithium ion batteries just as they move into more demanding and critical uses in vehicles, drones, electricity grids and household storage systems.
"It's really a big milestone. We have been working for a long time to make sure it would be manufactured at mass production scale but it's a really big thing to be able to do it roll-to-roll," said Stephanie Moroz, Nano-Nouvelle's chief executive.
"Our process is very quick [and that has] huge cost savings."
The technology could also give electric vehicles the driving range of petrol-driven cars and allow drones to fly for 50 per cent longer, she said.
Mr Hackett is Nano-Nouvelle's second largest shareholder after the South Australian government's life sciences venture capital firm SALSA and also the largest shareholder and chairman and chief executive of Redflow, which is attempting to commercialise zinc bromide flow batteries.
Ms Moroz is hoping to secure a strategic investor – either a supplier or a customer –in the capital raising, which should be completed by the end of March. The money will be used to build a pilot plant by the end of next year. Nana-Nouvelle has sent itsbatteries to global battery manufacturers for testing and feedback, and hopes to enter commercial production in 2018 with a contract manufacturer.
"Demonstrating that our nanostructure can be produced on a commercially viable production line gives us a route to full-scale production that other forms of nanotechnology can only dream of," she said.
Adelaide start-up adviser Geoff Thomas and his firm Axant are handling the raising.
Lithium ion batteries had sales of $US16 billion ($24 billion) in 2015, nearly double the market 5 years earlier, and sales are projected to reach $US35 billion by 2025.
Until recently, most of the growth has been in mobile phones and other electronic devices, but battery makers are now gearing up to supply the potentially larger needs of electric cars and energy storage for households, grids and firms.
Nano-Nouvelle is one of several Australian firms helping to advance batteries.
Redflow has built flow zinc bromide flow batteries at household scale in a world first and Gelion - a spin-off from the University of Sydney - has applied a layer of nano gel to the electrodes of a zinc bromide battery to boost its performance."
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