Last November, President Barack Obama of the United States and President Hu Jintao of China announced the formation of a U.S.-China Electric Vehicles Initiative to explore ways of collaborating on advanced battery research for hybrid and electric vehicles. The first meeting of the initiative took place this week at Argonne National Laboratory outside Chicago. I was pleased and honored to attend that meeting at the invitation of the U.S. Department of Energy on behalf of NAATBatt.

The three-day meeting featured an initial plenary assembly followed by three separate roundtable sessions on battery technology roadmapping, battery test procedures, and vehicle demonstrations and infrastructure. The battery roadmapping session, led by Dave Howell of the DOE and Wu Feng of the Beijing Institute of Technology, explored the possibility of promoting shared research in pre-competitive, early-stage battery technologies, such as lithium-air, lithium metal and certain aspects of advanced lithium-ion technology.

The battery test procedures session, led by Jeff Chamberlain of Argonne and Qiu Xinping of Tsinghau University, explored the somewhat different approaches being taken by the U.S. and China to battery testing and considered ways that procedures might be harmonized and results jointly published.

The vehicle demonstrations and infrastructure session, led by Keith Hardy of Argonne, Steve Goguen of the DOE, and Wang Hewu of Tsinghua University, focused on encouraging greater cooperation between standards setting bodies in the U.S. and China, specifically between the SAE and CATARC, and on the compatibility of U.S. and Chinese supporting infrastructure for PEV’s. Demonstration session participants agreed to cooperate and coordinate PEV demonstration projects in Los Angeles and Shanghai. [click to continue…]

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