BattChatt S1E4: Inside the Federal Battery Buildout with David Howell, VP of Strategic Marketing Innovations

So what made you start paying more attention to lithium?

Finishing up the PNGV, I think we finished that program up around 2001 with three vehicles that were demonstration vehicles that were released, one by GM, Ford, and then Chrysler at that time, now Stellantis.

The nickel metal hydride battery, a lot of work going on at DOE for that.

But literally, as you mentioned, GM was commercializing that technology for the EV1 and had commercialized it.

And the battery manufacturing was being done in Ohio.

So there wasn't really a lot of headroom for improvement on nickel metal hydride.

So the Department of Energy's work in that space was mostly done, but the, you know, the DOE had funded lithium batteries in the nineties, alongside of lithium nickel metal hydride.

And there was a significant headroom improvement for lithium ion.

That was obvious, a lot of work to do, but there was a lot of headroom for improvement.

And even after that, because lithium ion batteries sort of represents a family of chemistries, not a single chemistry.

nickel metal hydrolyte was pretty much a single chemistry.

And so, so that made it very attractive, uh, to pursue, uh, not only the potential, um, advances in battery technology, but, but also reducing the cost of potential to reduce the cost and have, um, um, you know, role, role to role production of, of batteries.

So, um, so basically the department of energies program

was, was, was, uh,

transition to focus on lithium ion.

And I was there, I actually came in at that time.

I was going to say, this was probably around the time that you made your transition from Oak Ridge National Lab to the Department of Energy to the Vehicle Technologies Office.

What was that battery program like when you arrived?

So the remote, okay.

So the battery program, like I said, was in transition just like I was.

Okay.

So, you know, we were finishing up nickel metal hydride work and, and then starting up.

lithium ion work.

So there were multiple pathways to pursue, you know, different combinations of cathodes, like I mentioned, some based on nickel, cobalt, manganese, iron, different flavors of electrolyte, okay, and electrolyte salts.

on different types of anodes as well.