A sign of things to come and the direction of the automotive industry, Sanyo, one of the largest producers of nickel hydride batteries used in hybrid vehicle production, is boosting their production levels by 75 percent.

The bulk of Sanyo’s hybrid vehicle batteries are currently being sold to Honda and Ford and to lesser degree Audi and VW for upcoming hybrid lines.

This is particularly big news for Ford which has had a bottle neck in it’s hybrid production levels due to lack of components like batteries. As Ford starts to focus on smaller more eco-friendly vehicles like the 2010 Ford Fusion Hybrid (pictured above), it will definitely be looking to acquire more batteries.

Sanyo will crank its hybrid battery production up from 2.5 million per month to 3.5 million. It has not yet been announced which companies will get how many of the new Sanyo batteries.

With plans popping up around the globe for various electric vehicle charging infrastructures it’s probably a good idea for all the EV manufacturers and charging stations to be on the same page. It wouldn’t be very convenient if you rolled into a charging station only to find out the damn charging plug doesn’t fit your car.

Fortunately the Society of Automotive Engineers is working on standardizing connector plugs for electric vehicles. The Society is meeting in Detroit next week to hash out what that standard should be.

The standardized EV plugs will not only allow all electric cars to plug in at any charging station but they will allow the station to see how “full” a battery is and charge and bill accordingly.

You have to love the attention getting antics of a company like BYD and a CEO like Wang Chuan-Fu. He knows how to work the press and he proved it at the Detroit Auto Show last January when he illegally drove around the showroom floor in one of BYD’s prototype hybrids.

Now Wang Chuan-Fu has caught our attention again, this time by drinking the fluid from one of BYD’s batteries. The stunt was designed to draw attention to the lack of toxicity of their new batteries.

With batteries likely to play an ever-larger role in the vehicles of the future and their inherent toxicity a growing environmental concern, it’s great to see BYD investing in safer batteries.

BYD (Build Your Dreams) is a Chinese automaker that also produces 65% of the world’s nickel-cadmium batteries and 30% of the world’s lithium-ion mobile phone batteries.

Volkswagen’s upcoming new line of small electric cars will see their electric drive trains developed in concert with Japan’s Toshiba Corporation.

According to Volkswagen, their goal is to produce the first affordable electric car. They admit that while there is a still a lot of research and development required in order for them to be able to mass produce such an electric car, they expect their first model to be available as early as 2012.

Toshiba’s lithium-ion batteries will power the new line of Volkswagen electric cars and will use their Super Charge Ion Battery (SCIB) technology. The SCIB is resistant to shorting and can impressively absorb 90 percent of its maximum charge in only a few minutes.

Toshiba will also be looking for other places to make use of the SCIB technology like electric bikes and electric industrial vehicles.

Our friends over at EcoGeek got an interesting little piece of video of Denise Grey, GM’s Battery Director, talking about communication GM has had with EEStor.

EEStor, for those who don’t know, is a curious little company out of Austin, TX that claims to have reinvented the electric car battery, or rather made electric car batteries altogether obsolete. EEStor’s invention is an ultracapacitor that can supposedly hold significantly more energy than a lithium battery, doesn’t degrade and is cheap to produce.

Hard to believe right? Well it’s even harder to believe considering there’s no sign of these EEStor ultracapacitors being produced, let alone some verifiable proof that a working prototype exists. I always assumed that most people just dismissed EEStor’s claims as ludicrous.

The above video shows Lyle Dennis from GM-Volt asking Grey about GM’s relationship with EEStor. Her answers indicate that EEStor might have some level of credibility that its didn’t have before since GM is lintening to what they have to say.

Although Grey says she can’t comment on whether she’s seen a working prototype or not, if you watch the video you see that it seems like she hasn’t seen one. But still, there does seem to be a relationship and GM hasn’t dismissed EEStor as a bunch of crackpots, so maybe there is something there.

I’m still skeptical but we’ll see. I’d love to be proven wrong about EEStor.

GM made a couple big announcements at their press conference today, at the 2009 Detroit Auto Show. The first announcement being that they are building a battery pack assembly factory in Michigan.

While lithium-ion cells for the new Chevy Volt will be supplied by LG Chem of South Korea, the full battery packs will be assembled in a plant to be built this year in Michigan.

Also to be built in Michigan by GM later this year, is a new battery lab. The 31,000 square foot lab will be the largest of its kind in the world. Interestingly, once the lab is completed it will be made available for testing the batteries of all advanced battery manufacturers.

Apparently any company that develops new cells will be allowed to bring them to the new GM lab for testing. A total evaluation of the cells will be performed for free and all data will be given to the cells’ manufacturers. Ideally this will improve advanced battery development on a large scale. GM will benefit from overall improved battery performance and reduced costs.