The powerhouse
Subtitle: inside the invention of a battery to save the world
By: Steve LeVine
Publisher: Viking
Published: 2015
Language: eng
Number of pages: 308
ISBN-13: 9780670025848
Subjects: Lithium ion batteries; Batteries; Lithium industry; Inventions; Electronic industries; Argonne National Laboratory; Electric automobiles
Description: "A worldwide race is on to perfect the next engine of economic growth, the advanced lithium-ion battery. It will power the electric car, relieve global warming, and catapult the winner into a new era of economic and political mastery. Can the United States win? Steve LeVine was granted unprecedented access to a secret federal laboratory outside Chicago, where a group of geniuses is trying to solve this next monumental task of physics. But these scientists--almost all foreign born--are not alone. With so much at stake, researchers in Japan, South Korea, and China are in the same pursuit. The drama intensifies when a Silicon Valley start-up licenses the federal laboratory's signature invention with the aim of a blockbuster sale to the world's biggest carmakers. The Powerhouse is a real-time, two-year thrilling account of big invention, big commercialization, and big deception. It exposes the layers of competition and ambition, aspiration and disappointment behind this great turning point in the history of technology"-- Provided by publisher.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (pages 297-299) and index.
Table of contents: title: The stakes. Jeff Chamberlain's war ; Why Argonne let Wan in ; A good place to do science ; "Discouraged weariness in the eyes" ; Professor Goodenough ; The double marathoner ; Batteries are a treacherous world ; Creating NMC ; The man from Casablanca ; Theft in the lab ; The new boss ; A little talk with the South Koreans ; What Andy Grove said ; How to navigate great minds; title: Foreigners in the lab. The Start-up ; Out of India (and China and Africa) ; Why we stay in Chicago ; IPO! ; The car man ; Bell men ; The no start-up mystery ; "The Damn Hub" ; Team Argonne ; Fire ; A chance to win the lottery ; "There is a problem with your material" ; An engineering solution ; Going deep on the fade; title: Reckoning. Orlando ; The old technology guys ; Only the Irrational or the naïve will win the day ; A three-hundred-mile battery ; ARPA-E ; The old and the young ; Red team ; War room ; Getting to a deal ; "So what Is wrong with me?" ; "Throw out the old paradigm" ; The waiting ; Deal ; The news from Envia ; The big man at Argonne ; Second quarter review ; Black box ; Back to the race.