Batteries capable of powering the electric vehicles of tomorrow may be available sooner than we think, thanks to more than $5.7 million in seed funding provided through the Department of Energy’s Battery500 consortium. Yan Yao, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at the Cullen College, is among 15 principal investigators funded through the consortium, which is led by DOE’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and includes multiple partner universities and national labs.
The seedling projects were announced July 12 as part of a larger unveiling of a total of $19.4 million in new DOE funding for vehicle technologies research. The latest phase of funding focuses on high risk, high reward, proof-of-concept research that could potentially identify major energy storage solutions.