{"id":3926,"date":"2023-06-26T09:43:29","date_gmt":"2023-06-26T09:43:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/innovationisrael.org.il\/en\/?post_type=article&p=3926"},"modified":"2023-11-30T06:22:58","modified_gmt":"2023-11-30T06:22:58","slug":"3926-2","status":"publish","type":"article","link":"https:\/\/innovationisrael.org.il\/en\/article\/3926-2\/","title":{"rendered":"The Green Vehicle"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
“Anyone inventing something new encounters a unique dilemma \u2013 people don’t understand the invention, because it’s something new”, declares Aviv Tzidon<\/strong>, CEO of Phinergy<\/strong>. “We are constantly busy nowadays with fuel and the refueling of our vehicles. Nobody can imagine a world in which there was no gasoline anywhere. People don’t stop to reflect on what happened before there were gas stations, but at the beginning of the previous century, the few existing car owners still purchased gasoline at pharmacies.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n A hundred years or so later, a catalyst patent was developed at Bar Ilan University that will enable development of aluminum-air and zinc-air batteries \u2013 one of the leading candidates to replace gasoline in the cars of the future. The team of inventors was led by researchers Dr. Erik Khasin and Professor Arie Zaban. Tzidon, a visionary entrepreneur with a proven record of impressive exits, became aware of the technology and decided to acquire its rights together with his brother, Dekel. It was around this technology that the two founded Phinergy in 2008. The inventor, Dr. Erik Khasin, later joined the company’s founding team.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Tzidon, who serves today as the company’s CEO, says: “We brought the team from the university and basically reproduced the technology developed at the university at the company, which in turn, looked at it commercially with the objective of using it to set an electric vehicle in motion.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Metal-air battery technology is already more than a hundred years old and is based on the principle of producing energy released from metal by means of oxidization. “A battery is an energy tank”, Tzidon explains. “Our mission is to capture the oxygen in the air and, together with water and aluminum, create an electrochemical reaction that releases energy.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Phinergy focuses on the development of two main technologies: an aluminum-air battery and a zinc-air battery. These are two different technologies that enable entirely different pollution-free applications. They can be implemented in the electric motor vehicle industry, but also as backup systems for alternative energy sources such as emergency generators. This technology has succeeded in solving a central problem in electric vehicles, rendered the need for external charging redundant, and increased their limited travel range.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Until 2013 we worked ‘under the radar'”, Tzidon says. “The company had been supported a number of times since 2008 by Innovation Authority programs and with a budget allocated to ‘Alternative Fuels for Transportation’ initiatives within the framework of the Innovation Authority. Most of our support was from the Investment Incentive Program that aims to encourage Israeli and foreign investors in the field of alternative fuel for transportation. In addition to this budget, we also received assistance in opening doors \u2013 the Fuel Choice and Smart Mobility Initiative helped us establish international contacts with automotive manufacturers and solved many of our administrative problems. Furthermore, we have also won the support of the Ministry of Energy for building our first demonstration vehicle in 2013.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n The turning point was in 2013 when Phinergy presented its technology to President Obama during his visit to Israel. During the same year they signed an agreement to cooperate with Alcoa \u2013 the world’s largest aluminum company \u2013 and began working with a European automotive manufacturer, on a mass production electric vehicle that will include an aluminum-air battery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “In order to understand aluminum-air’s application in transportation, you need to understand how electric vehicles operate (vehicles without a hybrid motor). Since all the energy that Propels into motion these vehicles comes from the battery, their range is limited. At present, all electric vehicles run on a lithium battery that provides energy for a distance of 120-150 kilometers. This is perfectly adequate 90 percent of the time because most people only travel to and from work, however it’s just not enough for the other 10 percent of cases when someone travels more than the daily average. This is the problem the manufacturers are trying to overcome and, as of now, the existing solutions are extremely expensive.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Phinergy’s solution is an electric vehicle that has a combination of a regular electrically chargeable battery and an aluminum-air battery that supplies energy for longer trips.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “In our vehicle, the system only charges the battery when necessary, but for those days on which you need to travel more than the average, the vehicle has a non-pollutive system that can charge the lithium battery during the trip, thereby overcoming the distance limitation. Naturally, this expanded range is, in turn, limited by the amount of aluminum in the vehicle’s system.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Our demonstration model, carries an aluminum-air battery that contains 25 kilograms of aluminum and that provides the vehicle with a range of approximately 1000 kilometers. What happens after 1000 kilometers when it’s all depleted? You replace the aluminum. How? You stop at a service station, add new aluminum and five minutes later the driver continues on its way.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n<\/div>