subject: Toyota And Daimler Embrace Tesla's Laptop Battery Packs [print this page] Only a couple of years ago, major automakers scoffed at Tesla Motors. Make a powerplant by binding together thousands of Dell inspiron b120 Battery? Ridiculous, if not an invitation to thermal meltdown.
Now, the big guys are embracing Tesla's solution. Toyota and Smart car parent Daimler are turning to bundles of laptop batteries as a quick, cheap way to power electric cars, Bloomberg News reports.
No surprise why. Despite dire predictions, Tesla now has had hundreds of its electric roadsters on the road for more than year running just fine. So far, no mass reports of hot spots in battery packs -- 6,831 individual cells bound together -- that could lead to fires or other problems.
In fact, the solution costs less than the sophisticated lithium-ion battery packs developed by Nissan for the electric Leaf or General Motors for its extended-range electric Volt.
The car industry has been great for the Dell latitude c400 Battery industry. It will more than triple sales to $60 billion in a decade, according to Sanyo Electric, the world's biggest maker. The economies of scale may drop prices.
Tesla's power packs will be used in Daimler's electric Smarts and Mercedes-Benz A-class cars in Europe. Toyota will use Tesla's packs in an electric RAV4 in 2012.
BMW also went the laptop route to quickly develop the test fleet of 450 Mini-E's it now has leased. But it plans to use a more stable Dell latitude d400 Battery for the drive system it is developing for producti0on models.
