The US Department of Energy (DOE) is awarding $209 million in funding to 26 new national laboratory projects focusing on electric vehicles, advanced batteries and connected vehicles. The US currently relies heavily on importing advanced battery components from abroad, which exposes the nation to supply chain vulnerabilities that threaten to disrupt the availability and cost of these technologies. The 26 national laboratory projects will address four critical goals: Significantly reducing the cost and size of next generation battery technology; Advancing extreme fast charging to allow for batteries to be fully charged in less than 15-minutes; Mitigating potential grid impacts of tens of millions of vehicles being charged across the nation; and Streamlining cooperative vehicle-to-vehicle communications and controls that reduce energy use and emissions. Lead national laboratories and their projects are: Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) Battery 500 Phase 2, with BNL, INL, SLAC, General Motors and 8 universities as […]