Among the obstacles to EV adoption often cited are the high cost and limited range of the battery packs that keep them running. Now a California battery maker says it has made a major breakthrough that could revolutionize the cost, range and safety of electric vehicles.

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Envia Systems, a stimulus-funded California startup focused on high performance, low cost lithium-ion storage solutions, says it has achieved world record energy density for rechargeable lithium-ion batteries with a new technology. When commercialized Envia believes its 400 watt hours-per-kilogram battery could slash the price of a 300-mile range electric vehicle by cutting the cost of the battery pack more than 50 percent.

“In an industry where energy density tends to increase five percent a year, our achievement of more than doubling state‐of‐art energy density and lowering the cost by half is a giant step towards realizing Envia's mission of mass market affordability of a 300-mile range electric vehicle," said Envia Systems Chairman and CEO Atul Kapadia.

Kapadia told The New York Times that what it has "are not demonstrations, not experiments, but actual products. We could be in automotive production in a year and a half.”

Envia was awarded grants by both the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) and the California Energy Commission in 2010. Last year, General Motors Ventures LLC participated in an equity investment round of $17 million.

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