The Brite–EuRam lead-acid electric-vehicle battery project—progress report

As part of its first programme, the Advanced Lead-Acid Battery Consortium has a US$4.4 million project assisted by European Community funding. This was initiated by the European members of the Consortium under the Brite–EuRam programme. At the Sixth Asian Battery Conference, an interim report was given on progress on eight of the ten tasks and, now that the project is in its final year, most of these have been completed. The principal objective of the project was to incorporate the findings of this work into demonstration batteries. These would then be tested under the Eucar ECE-15 test regime and this part of the project is now well under way. This paper discusses the results of the research leading up to the design of the battery variants built for evaluation. It also attempts to identify the lessons which have been learnt from this complex programme involving 14 research partners as well as five additional financial sponsors.