Toshiba to Launch Innovative Rechargeable Battery Business

December 2007

TOKYO--Toshiba Corporation today announced the commercial launch of the SCiB the Super Charge ion Battery a breakthrough rechargeable battery primarily targeting the industrial systems market that can recharge to 90% of full capacity in less than five minutes. The battery offers excellent safety and a long-life cycle of over 10 years, even under conditions of constant rapid charging. Toshiba aims to make this high potential battery a mainstay of its industrial systems and automotive products businesses, with global sales of 100 billion yen targeted for fiscal year 2015. The first SCiB will be shipped from March 2008.

With the SCiB Toshiba has progressed beyond the breakthrough in fast recharging lithium-ion technology that it announced in March 2005. In order to realize the outstanding characteristics of the SCiB, Toshiba adopted a new negative electrode material, new separators, a new electrolyte, and new manufacturing technology. The result is a highly reliable rechargeable battery with well-balanced performance, offering excellent safety, a long-life cycle and a rapid charge-discharge capability.

"This is a truly innovative battery," said Mr. Toshiharu Watanabe, Corporate Vice President of Toshiba Corporation and Chief Executive Officer of Toshiba's Industrial Systems Company. "The excellent performance of the SCiB will assure its successful application in industrial systems and in the electronic vehicles markets as a new energy solution. In terms of environmental impacts, the SCiB offers a long life that will reduce waste."

The SCiB is housed in the SCiB Standard Module ten 4.2 ampere-hour (Ah) SCiB cells aligned in series connection which maximizes the battery characteristics with a battery management system function (BMS) that monitors voltage and temperature in order to protect the cells in case of emergency, and that balances the state of charge in each cell.

In addition to applications that include battery-powered bicycles, motorcycles, automated guided vehicles, electric forklift trucks and construction machinery, which already use rechargeable batteries, the SCiB is also a promising candidate for emergency power sources, electric power regeneration in wind power systems and stabilization of electric power supply. Application in hybrid cars is also planned, with the intent of extending application to electric cars in the future, after advancing development of a high-performance SCiB cell.

SCiB Major Characteristics

1. Excellent safety
	SCiB adopts a new negative-electrode material that offers a high level of thermal stability and a high flash point electrolyte, and has a structure resistant to internal short circuiting and thermal runaway. The possibility of rupture or combustion is very low.

2. Long-life cycle
	Capacity loss after 3,000 cycles of rapid charge and discharge is less than 10%. SCiB has an excellent long lifecycle, and is able to repeat the charge-discharge cycle over 5,000 times. This means that the SCiB can be continuously used for more than 10 years with a once-a-day recharge-discharge cycle.

3. Rapidly rechargeable
	The superb safety characteristics of SCiB allow recharge with a current as large as 50 amperes (A), allowing the SCiB Cell and SCiB Standard Module to recharge to 90% of full capacity in only five minutes.

4. High power (practical capacity)
	The SCiB has an input-output performance equivalent to that of an electric double layer capacitor. This feature is suited to high power applications.

5. Temperature
	SCiB operates well in temperature extremes, with sufficient discharge at temperatures as low as -30°C. This characteristic also assures wide application in cold climates.

SCiB Major Specifications