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Matsushita Develops New Dry-Cell Battery
Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. Ltd. of Tokyo unveiled its new AA-sized
primary battery, the Oxyride dry-cell battery,
which has a 1.5 to 2 times longer life than alkaline
batteries. Matsushita is to start shipments of
the battery this month, and will ship globally
soon.
The new battery succeeds Matsushita’s nickel-manganese
dry battery designed exclusively for digital cameras.
The retail price of two Oxyride batteries is approximately
360 yen, while two conventional nic-kel-manganese
batteries is about 380 yen. Matsushita’s
Primary Battery Co. plans to add a AAA-sized Oxyride
to its battery portfolio in April 2005, and expects
to ship 70,000,000 to 100,000,000 units of them
in the first year.
Matsushita used zinc for the new battery’s
negative electrode, oxy-nickel hydroxide and the
newly developed manganese oxide for its positive
electrode, and potassium hydroxide for its electrolyte.
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