Matsushita introduces new "Oxilide" battery Storage / National/Panasonic Posted by zmcnulty on Jan 28, 2004 - 06:59 AM |
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Its life is reportedly 1.5 times that of traditional alkaline batteries. This release represents the first advancement over Alkaline batteries in 40 years. More details inside. Matsushita Electrical Industries Corporation National Marketing Division will begin selling the next-generation battery, "Oxilide" on April 1st. A package of two batteries will cost 360 yen, and 4-20 battery packs are all listed as open price. Since Alkaline batteries were introduced in 1964, this is the first new type of tube-shaped battery. These are also perfectly compatible with all AA devices. Matsushita has presented that they average about 2 times the life when using a digital camera - and 1.5 times the life overall. Oxilide is named from the combination of the battery's ingredients: Oxy Nickel Hydroxide. To be more technically specific, these batteries use a combination of Oxy Nickel Hydroxide, a newly developed double-oxidize manganese, and a new type of graphite. In addition to increasing the volume of raw materials inside the battery itself, voltage maintenance has been improved upon. Since it also uses a high concentration system, the electrolytic potential of the batteries has also been improved. So, as a result of these improvements, a battery with longer life than alkaline yet less voltage has been successfully developed. The announced voltage is 1.5V. The size is 14.5 x 50.5mm (D x H), and one battery weighs 23g.<BR While the market in 2003 had AA batteries with a 66 percent market share, 2005 is supposed to have AAA batteries a 19 percent market share, or 9 times what it has been in the past. In addition, after releasing the batteries in Japan, Matsushita plans on introducing the batteries overseas, but there are no solidified plans for this yet. Also, the packaging will remain the same design throughout the world. At the announcement event, Yoshinobu Satou of National Marketing said, "The usage of AA batteries has been steadily increasing every year, and last year a total of 1,600,000,000 were used in Japan alone. This is 13 batteries for every citizen." He also suggested that there will be a large volume of needs for the batteries. |
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