Ovshinsky, nickel-metal hydride battery inventor, dies at 89

Stanford Ovshinsky, the inventor of the nickel-hydride (NiMH) battery that is widely used in many non-plug-in hybrid-electric vehicles, among other amazing things, died October 17 at the age of 89 from complications due to cancer.

Ovshinsky, who didn't go to college, had hundreds of patents to his credit, and a 2006 Financial Expressarticle went so far as to compare Ovshinsky to Thomas Edison. It wasn't the only outlet to do that. Ovshinsky's discoveries, which date back to the late 1950s, helped further the development of such widely used products such as flat-panel displays, solar panels and rewritable compact discs. In 1960, he founded ECD Ovonics (first called Energy Conversion Devices), which was named a top 20 green company byPlenty magazine in 2007. An extensive obituary can be found in the New York Times here.

Ovshinsky sold his NiMH patent to GM who subsequently sold it to Texaco, and one day later, Texaco was bought by Chevron and the battery in large scale EV format essentially died at that point. Chevron would allow the use of NiMH batteries in smaller packs to be used in vehicles like the Prius but not useful vehicles like the Toyota RAV4 EV.


Source: Autoblog Green