The partnership between car brands and their timepiece counterparts extends longer than you and I can even imagine. We’ve seen these partnerships manifest themselves in one form or another, with some even taking the form of obscenely expensive, limited edition watches. If there ever was a new frontier for the partnership between these two industries, Swiss watchmaker Swatch may have opened that door. A report from watch-dedicated website TwentyTwoTen revealed that the company is looking into developing new batteries that will be used for electric vehicles.
The same report indicates that the project is actually being spearheaded by Belenos Clean Power, a company that was formed in 2008 by Swatch Group CEO Nick Hayek. Currently, Swatch is the majority owner of BCP with a 51 percent stake in the company.
A peek into the company’s website reveals that BCP’s mission is to “concentrate, convert, store and deliver solar and other renewable energies for clean mobility and other applications” while also being a “driving force accelerating the clean energy revolution.”
As far as the battery tech that’s being developed for potential use of electric cars, the TwentyTwoTen report says that BCP is working in partnership with the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology to develop batteries that make use of vanadium, a naturally occurring element that’s commonly used in producing specialty steel alloys. Apparently, the potential of vanadium-powered battery packs is so great that it can not only reduce the weight of the battery pack themselves, but also cut charging times.
That’s about the extent of the details that were revealed, but the expectation is that if the battery’s development goes smoothly, Hayek expects Swatch to be selling as much as $15 billion worth of batteries by 2020.
Continue after the jump to read the full story.
from Top Speed http://ift.tt/2iQA8px
No comments:
Post a Comment