A range of new battery developments will be rolled out on Jan. 30 to Feb. 2 at the Advanced Automotive Battery Conference (AABC) in Mainz, Germany.

While a variety of technologies will be vying for attention, the Advanced Lead Acid Battery Consortium (ALABC) says that some of the most impressive new developments are coming from the world of lead. This includes the very first rechargeable lead battery technology, reworked to deliver more energy and power, with less weight and longer life for current and next generation start-stop cars.

Start-stop technology, where conventional internal combustion engines (ICE) can be shut down at traffic lights and restarted by the battery, which is then re-charged by the kinetic energy of the car without plugging into the grid, is now a standard of all ICE vehicles. This outpaces sales of pure electric and hybrid electric cars. Start-stop technology is expected to make up more than 80 percent of the entire European automotive market by 2020.

The new developments, promoted by the ALABC, which is presenting and exhibiting at AABC, center on the addition of state-of-the-art carbons to lead batteries, which improve what is known as “Dynamic Charge Acceptance” (DCA) — a battery’s ability to accept recharge from a car’s alternator or generator many thousands of times during the start-stop duty cycle. More than a dozen scientists from research institutes and battery firms all over Europe will show their findings on lead battery enhancements in a conference track dedicated to lead technology, which until recently was perceived by many to have limited future potential.

While advanced carbon technology has been in development for the past decade, it is only now that car manufacturers are taking a long-term interest because lead still has two major advantages – it is still the lowest-cost battery technology available and has a near 100 percent recycling rate.

Alistair Davidson, International Lead Association products and sustainability director, said, “The future for lead battery technology is very exciting as it can compare very favorably with lithium-ion in terms of cost, performance and recycling.”

According to Dr. Boris Monahov, ALABC program manager, these developments are far from over. “We are just beginning to understand the interaction between lead and carbon at the molecular level using new investigative analytical techniques. These are going to yield even greater performance improvements in the next few years…lead is far from dead.”