Toshiba's Super Charge Ion Battery (SCIB) is a Lithium Ion battery manufactured on the legacy technology for electronics and technology applications, laptop products and user PCs.
Toshiba has spent several years researching this battery. SCIB is currently producing a limited number of 150,000 batteries per month.
Toshiba's Declaration on December 24 said it will increase capacity to several tens of thousands of SCIB batteries each month at a new factory it plans to build in Kashiwazaki, Niigata, northwestern Japan. According to Toshiba spokesman Hiroko Mochida, the factory will start construction in late 2009 and the production process will start a year later.
According to Hiroko Mochida, the construction of the new factory will be in the hundreds of millions of dollars, and it will be the production of SCIB batteries for laptops and electronic devices and other technologies.
At the Japanese Ceatec Exhibition last September, Toshia demonstrated a laptop running on SCIB batteries. The battery still maintains its initial performance after the first 6,000 recharges, 10 times higher than regular Lithium Ion batteries. This means the battery life will be higher and there is no need to replace the battery after a period of use. Due to the special design of SCIB, the battery is difficult to catch fire, short circuit, or be destroyed in extreme conditions.
Kashiwazaki is a very popular place in Japan because it is the place that operates the largest Kariwa nuclear power plant in the world (in terms of capacity). Currently, this nuclear power plant is temporarily suspended after a 6.6-magnitude earthquake in July 2007.
Toshiba said it chose Kashiwazaki because the city has a very convenient distribution system. Toshiba will also place several branches in this city.