G. David Felt - Staff Writer Alternative Energy - www.cheersandgears.com

SCiB, 200 miles, 6 minutes, Coming 2019 

Toshiba announced today their newest battery cell, a lithium titanium oxide (LTO) battery. Capable of rapid charging with long life, low-temperature performance with high input/output power and large effective capacity. There is a wide range of solutions being put forth from the European 350 kWh charging system to Porsche's 800 kWh charging system and yet the one biggest desire of the switch to EV auto's has been how long it takes to charge.

The key Toshiba says is in their new anode material. To quote: "We have developed a proprietary method for synthesizing and disarranging crystals of titanium niobium oxide and storing lithium ions more efficiently in the crystal structure." It's also more durable in "ultra-rapid" charging, and charging in cold weather, improving the battery's longevity. In testing, SCiB maintains more than 90 percent of its capacity after 15,000 charge/discharge cycles. 

Toshiba has stated this battery will be on the market in EV Auto's starting in 2019. They believe that the ability to charge 320 kilometers (199 miles) in 6 minutes will drive the change over to EV auto's. This give larger auto's with a bigger battery pack a normal 12 min charge time for approximately 400 miles of range.

Spec SCiB battery Details:

• LTO - Lithium Titanium Oxide
• Over 15,000 cycles maintaining more than 90% battery capacity
• Low temperature with 100% battery charge to a low of -30°C
• Rapid Charging - 320 kilometers in 6 minutes
• High input/output current loads
• Wide effective state of charge (SOC) - Providing industry leading large available capacity in a reduced form factor.

What does this mean to the auto industry? Denser batteries in a smaller form factor recharging faster, providing longer road trips.

Announced auto companies to use the SCiB batteries in upcoming EV auto / bus applications:

Passenger Auto's

• Suzuki Motor Corporation
• Mitsubishi Motors Corporation

Commercial Vehicles

• Solaris Bus and Coach S.A
• Van Hool Hybrid Bus Company
• Proterra EV Bus Company
• Kawasaki Tsurumi Rinko Bus Co. Ltd.
• Northern Iwate Transportation Inc.
• Waseda University Medium Size bus program
• Putra Nedo EV Bus Program
• Uzushio Electric Co. Ltd. E-Trikes

Toshiba SCiB web site

Toshiba SCiB Technical Details

Toshiba SCiB battery uses

Toshiba green focus to offer more for less with minimal impact to the planet.

So with Fast Charging of batteries being achieved and the breakthroughs in increased density of power by Samsung so that a current Li battery has 45% more power, this tends to tell me that we are looking at a decent decrease in weight possibly.

This is what I found on the size of the Chevy BOLT Battery:

Weight for the battery assembly in total is 960 pounds (435 kg). It utilizes 288 lithium-ion cells separated into five sections, 10 modules and 96 cell group – three cells per group.

So if LG uses some kind of fast charge tech like Toshiba and can get a 45% power density increase, they could either keep the size the same and increase mileage by almost 50% so about a 350 mile battery pack or reduce the weight by about 400 pounds and still get a gain in mileage due to the weight reduction.

Interesting times we live in from an auto stand point!