Latest news with #batteryTechnology
Yahoo
30-06-2025
- Automotive
- Yahoo
What a Bag of Chips Taught Me About Optima's Battery Tech at Pikes Peak
Car racing has long been hailed as the ultimate test bed for burgeoning automotive technologies, with everything from aerodynamics to paddle shifters making their way from high-tech racing machines to consumer cars. But with so much of that already done, it's hard to imagine what, exactly, is left to learn. To find out, Optima Batteries invited me to the 2025 Pikes Peak International Hill Climb. There, a fleet of BBI Autosport Porsche race cars would be outfitted with the company's OrangeTop QH6 lithium battery, and I was determined to discover exactly how relevant the iconic 12.42-mile run up America's Mountain can be in modern battery development. Interestingly enough, it didn't take some complex concept or high-tech machine to teach me why Pikes Peak presents an enormous challenge to a vital component like a car battery. In fact, all it took was a silly bag of potato chips. But first things first: Why is racing relevant to a company like Optima Batteries? Tom Downie, vice president of communications at Clarios (which owns Optima Batteries), explained just that. Motorsport 'gives us a chance to push some of our products more than the average consumer might, and all of that [research and development] goes into our regular products.' This approach may include not only appealing to performance-oriented aftermarket customers who want to upgrade their stock equipment, but also monitoring how OEMs are developing certain elements of their machines through racing and pitching Optima products to them if their technology falls short. From a sales angle, that makes sense. But to understand what, exactly, can be learned at an event like the PPIHC—or, as Daryl Brockman, director of global sales, marketing, and product planning at Optima added—the King of the Hammers and the Baja 1000—you must look at this race's extremely unique environment. Sure, you want your race cars to be durable, but Brockman explained that the PPIHC raises a frankly fascinating challenge, one that I experienced myself with the aforementioned salty snack. I bought a bag of chips down in Colorado Springs, which sits at an altitude of just over 6,000 feet. It sat, unopened, in the front seat with me as I crossed the race's starting line at 9,390 feet, and made the slow ascent up Pikes Peak to the summit, which stands at 14,115 feet of elevation. A sealed container like that bag of chips will undergo a wild change: It swells and expands. That's because the air pressure inside the bag remains the same as it was when it was sealed closer to sea level, while the air pressure outside the bag decreases. The internal air wants to push outside of the bag, which causes some extreme surface tension. Scientists call this Boyle's Law. Just like the chip bag, batteries are also fully sealed containers, and the altitude change during the race is going to impact the battery the same way it impacts your chip bag: Namely, as you ascend higher up a mountain, the external air pressure is going to drop, but the internal air pressure in your battery will remain the same. Pressure changes can impact the structural integrity of a sealed lithium battery pack, which can cause your battery to leak or even explode, while decreases in cooling efficiency mean your battery can overheat. It should go without saying that all of these impacts are bad, but they become particularly concerning when those batteries are mated to purpose-built cars that are trying to race up a huge mountain in 10 minutes or less. 'Our batteries actually have a breather valve that allows the pressure inside the battery to equalize compared to the atmospheric air pressure,' Brockman told me. 'It's one of the small details that our batteries have that some of our other competitors may not have considered.' And it's a detail that can't be replicated through lab conditions—not really. Brockman pointed out that the OrangeTop QH6 spent a year and a half in the lab, during which time the Optima development crew worked out any initial kinks. The next step is actually crafting pre-production prototypes that Optima has distributed to race teams and other enthusiasts who will really put those batteries to the test. 'A lab test is a controlled environment, so the assumptions don't always match reality,' Brockman explained. 'You'll have assumptions on how much power it takes to start the vehicle, which can vary wildly from one vehicle to another; the amount of cranking time; the differences in how a vehicle starts when the engine's cold versus when it's hot. Sometimes you'll find things outside of your initial assumptions, and those are the things we learned along the way to make sure that we have a product that will always perform.' A breather valve is a fairly simple feature; under sea-level atmospheric conditions, this valve remains a sealed component of the battery. But as you climb further up a mountain and the pressure inside the battery builds, it compresses the valve and allows that air pressure to escape. When the air pressure inside and outside of the battery is equalized, the valve shuts. If my chip bag had a similar feature, it wouldn't look like it was bursting at the seams up at the summit of Pikes Peak. The valve may be small, but the OrangeTop QH6 is also outfitted with a load of sensors that monitor battery health, all of which can be transmitted to an app on your phone via Bluetooth. Without the breather valve, Optima could see exactly how sudden changes in elevation and atmospheric pressure compromised battery integrity and lifespan. Add in the breather valve, and the data showed a dramatically different story, though the Optima crew was reluctant to hand off any proprietary details. So, while the 2025 running of the PPIHC was the first time Optima had officially debuted its OrangeTop QH6 battery in a race car as a final product, it wasn't the first time a car had carried some version of that battery up a mountain; its adventure-focused product testers had been enthusiastically scaling summits for about a year before the company knew it had a battery that could withstand the pressures of competition. The difference is that now, Optima has completed the testing of its prototypes and feels confident enough to offer it to consumers. Got a tip? Email us at tips@
The Drive
30-06-2025
- Automotive
- The Drive
What a Bag of Chips Taught Me About Optima's Battery Tech at Pikes Peak
The latest car news, reviews, and features. Car racing has long been hailed as the ultimate test bed for burgeoning automotive technologies, with everything from aerodynamics to paddle shifters making their way from high-tech racing machines to consumer cars. But with so much of that already done, it's hard to imagine what, exactly, is left to learn. To find out, Optima Batteries invited me to the 2025 Pikes Peak International Hill Climb. There, a fleet of BBI Autosport Porsche race cars would be outfitted with the company's OrangeTop QH6 lithium battery, and I was determined to discover exactly how relevant the iconic 12.42-mile run up America's Mountain can be in modern battery development. Interestingly enough, it didn't take some complex concept or high-tech machine to teach me why Pikes Peak presents an enormous challenge to a vital component like a car battery. In fact, all it took was a silly bag of potato chips. Elizabeth Blackstock But first things first: Why is racing relevant to a company like Optima Batteries? Tom Downie, vice president of communications at Clarios (which owns Optima Batteries), explained just that. Motorsport 'gives us a chance to push some of our products more than the average consumer might, and all of that [research and development] goes into our regular products.' This approach may include not only appealing to performance-oriented aftermarket customers who want to upgrade their stock equipment, but also monitoring how OEMs are developing certain elements of their machines through racing and pitching Optima products to them if their technology falls short. Elizabeth Blackstock, Optima From a sales angle, that makes sense. But to understand what, exactly, can be learned at an event like the PPIHC—or, as Daryl Brockman, director of global sales, marketing, and product planning at Optima added—the King of the Hammers and the Baja 1000—you must look at this race's extremely unique environment. Sure, you want your race cars to be durable, but Brockman explained that the PPIHC raises a frankly fascinating challenge, one that I experienced myself with the aforementioned salty snack. I bought a bag of chips down in Colorado Springs, which sits at an altitude of just over 6,000 feet. It sat, unopened, in the front seat with me as I crossed the race's starting line at 9,390 feet, and made the slow ascent up Pikes Peak to the summit, which stands at 14,115 feet of elevation. A sealed container like that bag of chips will undergo a wild change: It swells and expands. That's because the air pressure inside the bag remains the same as it was when it was sealed closer to sea level, while the air pressure outside the bag decreases. The internal air wants to push outside of the bag, which causes some extreme surface tension. Scientists call this Boyle's Law. Optima Just like the chip bag, batteries are also fully sealed containers, and the altitude change during the race is going to impact the battery the same way it impacts your chip bag: Namely, as you ascend higher up a mountain, the external air pressure is going to drop, but the internal air pressure in your battery will remain the same. Pressure changes can impact the structural integrity of a sealed lithium battery pack, which can cause your battery to leak or even explode, while decreases in cooling efficiency mean your battery can overheat. It should go without saying that all of these impacts are bad, but they become particularly concerning when those batteries are mated to purpose-built cars that are trying to race up a huge mountain in 10 minutes or less. 'Our batteries actually have a breather valve that allows the pressure inside the battery to equalize compared to the atmospheric air pressure,' Brockman told me. 'It's one of the small details that our batteries have that some of our other competitors may not have considered.' Elizabeth Blackstock And it's a detail that can't be replicated through lab conditions—not really. Brockman pointed out that the OrangeTop QH6 spent a year and a half in the lab, during which time the Optima development crew worked out any initial kinks. The next step is actually crafting pre-production prototypes that Optima has distributed to race teams and other enthusiasts who will really put those batteries to the test. 'A lab test is a controlled environment, so the assumptions don't always match reality,' Brockman explained. 'You'll have assumptions on how much power it takes to start the vehicle, which can vary wildly from one vehicle to another; the amount of cranking time; the differences in how a vehicle starts when the engine's cold versus when it's hot. Sometimes you'll find things outside of your initial assumptions, and those are the things we learned along the way to make sure that we have a product that will always perform.' Elizabeth Blackstock, Optima A breather valve is a fairly simple feature; under sea-level atmospheric conditions, this valve remains a sealed component of the battery. But as you climb further up a mountain and the pressure inside the battery builds, it compresses the valve and allows that air pressure to escape. When the air pressure inside and outside of the battery is equalized, the valve shuts. If my chip bag had a similar feature, it wouldn't look like it was bursting at the seams up at the summit of Pikes Peak. The valve may be small, but the OrangeTop QH6 is also outfitted with a load of sensors that monitor battery health, all of which can be transmitted to an app on your phone via Bluetooth. Without the breather valve, Optima could see exactly how sudden changes in elevation and atmospheric pressure compromised battery integrity and lifespan. Add in the breather valve, and the data showed a dramatically different story, though the Optima crew was reluctant to hand off any proprietary details. So, while the 2025 running of the PPIHC was the first time Optima had officially debuted its OrangeTop QH6 battery in a race car as a final product, it wasn't the first time a car had carried some version of that battery up a mountain; its adventure-focused product testers had been enthusiastically scaling summits for about a year before the company knew it had a battery that could withstand the pressures of competition. The difference is that now, Optima has completed the testing of its prototypes and feels confident enough to offer it to consumers. Got a tip? Email us at tips@
Yahoo
15-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
World's first all open-door large-scale fire test of 5MWh battery system completed
A Chinese energy storage technology firm has completed the world's first all-open-door large-scale fire test of its ∞Block 5MWh battery energy storage system (BESS). The test conducted on Hithium energy storage device offers a high-stakes technical model to inform future product safety standards and set a validation benchmark in this revealed that as thermal runaway and other safety incidents in BESS draw increasing concern, more rigorous and standardized safety testing is urgently needed. The open-door fire test was developed to meet this requirement—featuring four ultimate test challenges that are all open-door combustion, dual 15cm extreme spacing, fire suppression system deactivated, and 100% State of Charge (SOC).The test strictly adhered to UL 9540A, NFPA 855 safety standards and was conducted by UL Solutions, a globally recognized safety certification authority, and witnessed by certified U.S. fire protection engineers and customers. The system structure remained intact, with no fire propagation to any of the three adjacent containers despite undergoing 15 hours of full combustion. This result validates Hithium's multi-layered passive safety architecture and thermal isolation capabilities, even under the most extreme conditions, according to a press revealed that during all open-door combustion, the container doors remained fully open throughout the test, creating an unrestrained combustion environment with intensified oxygen flow—far more severe than traditional closed-door the dual 15cm extreme spacing test, the BESS were placed side by side and back to back with just 15cm spacing. Despite flames over 1300°C, no thermal propagation occurred, proving effective close-range isolation. In one of the tests, all fire suppression systems were deactivated. The system relied solely on passive fire protection to withstand prolonged intense fire, demonstrating autonomous fire resistance and BESS was tested at full capacity to maximize thermal energy release, validating the system's reliability and stability under the harshest conditions. Hithium stressed that the latest achievement highlights HiTHIUM's commitment to innovation and quality, providing valuable insights for future safety standards in the industry. "Moving forward, Hithium will continue to advance safety performance through technology leadership and global collaboration, driving the industry toward a safer and more reliable future," said the company in a statement. Industry experts hailed the trial as a 'qualitative leap' in energy storage fire safety testing, significantly increasing difficulty across fire dynamics, spatial constraints, charge state, and response conditions. The results not only enhance the credibility of safety claims but offer a replicable framework for establishing more practical, real-world safety benchmarks, reported PV Magazine. Hithium ranked 4th globally in energy storage battery shipments in 2024, delivering 35.1 GWh, according to Infolink's latest market data.
Associated Press
16-05-2025
- Business
- Associated Press
Battery Revolution: Emerging Technologies to Capture 25% Market Share by 2035
DUBLIN--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 16, 2025-- The 'Global Advanced Li-ion and Beyond Lithium Batteries Market 2025-2035" report has been added to offering. The battery technology landscape is undergoing a profound transformation as the industry shifts from conventional lithium-ion solutions toward advanced chemistries and beyond-lithium alternatives. While lithium-ion (Li-ion) technology currently dominates the global battery market with over 99% market share, emerging technologies are poised to capture approximately >25% of the market by 2035. This report provides an in-depth analysis of both advanced Li-ion batteries and beyond-lithium technologies that will revolutionize energy storage across multiple applications from 2025 to 2035. Report contents include: Competitive Landscape. The report profiles over 350 companies across the battery value chain, from established manufacturers to innovative start-ups, with detailed analysis of their technology positioning, production capabilities, and strategic partnerships. A selection of companies mentioned in this report includes: For more information about this report visit About is the world's leading source for international market research reports and market data. We provide you with the latest data on international and regional markets, key industries, the top companies, new products and the latest trends. View source version on CONTACT: Laura Wood, Senior Press Manager [email protected] For E.S.T Office Hours Call 1-917-300-0470 For U.S./ CAN Toll Free Call 1-800-526-8630 For GMT Office Hours Call +353-1-416-8900 KEYWORD: INDUSTRY KEYWORD: TECHNOLOGY BATTERIES SOURCE: Research and Markets Copyright Business Wire 2025. PUB: 05/16/2025 08:51 AM/DISC: 05/16/2025 08:51 AM
