better batteries, better cars

June 19, 2008

Engineering a breakthrough for energy-efficient transportation.

In a lab in Texas, a 57-year-old scientist named Pat Brant has done an amazing thing. Brant and a global team of colleagues developed a new technology that will help hybrid vehicles to run on lithium-ion batteries — the same type of batteries that power today’s cell phones and laptops.

Together with other battery advances, it’s a breakthrough that could help put more hybrid and electric vehicles on the road.

Brant is a father of four daughters and a lifelong runner. He is also chief polymer scientist at ExxonMobil Chemical Company, where he has worked for 26 years. “I think this is the most important project that I’ve worked on in my career,” he says.

Lithium-ion batteries are lightweight, and have high energy and power capacity. But they so far have not been used broadly in hybrid vehicles. One reason: when a lithium-ion battery’s scale is increased to the size necessary to power a vehicle, its plastic film separator (which protects against short-circuiting and overheating) must function under more demanding conditions.

Using hydrocarbon-based polymers, Brant and his global colleagues developed a new film separator that can withstand more demanding hybrid-vehicle battery conditions.

“It’s a true breakthrough that can help deploy more hybrid vehicles faster,” says Brant. Hybrid vehicles use less fuel, and emit fewer greenhouse gases, than traditional vehicles. If 10 percent of the cars in the United States were hybrid-electric vehicles, the resulting carbon-dioxide reductions would be equivalent to taking five million cars off the road.

In other words, innovations in technology add up to big gains over time.

In coming years, growing economies and better living standards worldwide will continue to require more energy. Breakthroughs such as these will be essential to meeting this demand while also protecting our environment.

At ExxonMobil, we have more than 14,000 scientists and engineers working to make that happen. Their research is industry-leading and wide-ranging, and includes technologies that will help save energy by using it more efficiently. Because meeting the world’s energy challenges means looking everywhere — even under the hood of a hybrid car.