Yes, we (Bill Dube' and I) have. Bill is out of the country for a few
weeks, so he can't speak for himself. But as the racers know, you can't
get _really_ high power betteries anymore (like the Boulder Cells). Bill
has been in contact with several Li-Ion battery manufactures, and even
though we have had CEOs in my basement saying "I WANT to give you
batteries, but we can't make them fast enough yet", we still can't get our
hands on them.
Bill was willing to spend serious $ to set up facilities, but after
talking mostly with the former big cheese electrochemist from Optima (who
is currently making Li-Ion batteries) decided that it wasn't practical.
Toxic chemicals that are very sensitive to moisture (need to handle in a
vaccum tight glove box filled with dry nitrogen, boiled off from a liquid
N2 dewer), the risk of attracting attention from the EPA and DEA (don't
know how to make crystal meth and X, but to the untrained eye, might look
similar to making Li-Ion in your garage :-). And on top of it all, it's
like making color film. Try a few dozen times and can probably make a
good battery or two. But to make one hundred batteries... And especially
with Li-Ion, they really need to be as identical as possible. They are a
lot more unforgiving than conventional batteries, and the consequences are
a lot more extreme. The electrolite is flamable. Next time I blow up a
Li-Ion cell, I'll try to have my camcorder running :-)
- Steven Ciciora
Otmar wrote: Has anyone besides me been thinking of the possibility of
starting a backyard battery building Co-Op? If no one sold anything
(personal use only) I imagine we could use all sorts of patented ideas and
get the technology in use, at least in our own cars.
Have fun!
-Otmar-
http://www.CafeElectric.com
