EV

With electric vehicle demand continuing to grow in Australia, Japanese auto manufacturer Toyota has revealed it will team with mining giant BHP to trial the “first ever” battery-powered HiLux dual-cab ute.

The International Energy Agency’s latest report, which maps out the future evolution of clean energy manufacturing, says the combined global market for PV, wind turbines, electric cars, batteries, electrolysers, and heat pumps will rise from $1 trillion in 2023 to more than $3 trillion by 2035.

Elumina has officially opened a manufacturing and development centre in Queensland’s southeast that it says will be the first in Australia capable of producing both community-scale lithium batteries and electric vehicle chargers.

Queensland-based energy tech company AnteoTech has secured almost $4 million in funding from the Australian Renewable Energy Agency to help fast-track the development of its silicon-dominant lithium-ion battery anode technology.

Australian battery tech company Li-S Energy has announced a major improvement in the performance of its lithium-sulphur battery technology with its latest iteration achieving an energy density close to 500 Wh per kilogram.

Western Australian transport and logistics giant Centurion is building a fully integrated off-grid energy system including rooftop solar and on-site battery energy storage to help accelerate its shift to electric vehicles.

While Australia continues to be a revelatory solar market internationally, it lost its place in the top 10 solar installers globally in 2023, the IEA PVPS team reports. According to Renate Egan, Executive Director for the Australian Centre for Advanced Photovoltaics, it is the first time in 30 years Australia has dropped off that list. “What’s sad is that the rest of the world is now taking off and investing in solar and we’re falling behind,” she said at Melbourne’s All Energy on Thursday.

Altech Batteries says it has boosted the energy capacity of lithium-ion batteries by an average of 55% after combining graphite with alumina-coated silicon anodes.

Indonesia has struck a deal with Chinese battery industry heavyweight CATL to build a giga-scale battery cell manufacturing plant in the southeast Asian nation as it works to establish a battery and electric vehicle ecosystem.

South Korean Advanced Institute of Science and Technology has developed technology for the precise diagnosis of electric vehicle batteries using small currents that can improve the stability and performance of high-capacity batteries.