By Kevin Krolicki

DEARBORN, Michigan (Reuters) - Ford Motor Co expects a new generation of more powerful batteries to be on the road in hybrid vehicles in the next three to five years, a senior Ford engineer said on Tuesday.

Ford and its major rivals are all working to adapt the lithium-ion battery technology now widely used in consumer electronics for use in hybrids as a way to boost the fuel economy of vehicles still in the development stage.

"I think within three to five years you'll see lithium-ion hybrid electric vehicles out there in some volume," Ford's chief hybrid engineer, Sherif Marakby, said on Tuesday.

The auto industry's race to develop the new battery technology has drawn close scrutiny because it is expected to open the door to a new market for electric vehicles and allow automakers to meet tougher U.S. fuel economy standards.

Current hybrids, including Toyota Motor Corp's market-leading Prius, run on nickel-metal hydride batteries. That battery technology is seen as approaching the end of its usefulness because of chemical limits on how much power it can store and the cost of the metals it requires.

General Motors Corp is the only mass-market automaker to have committed to a timetable for rolling out a next-generation lithium-ion powered electric car.

GM has said it will launch the rechargeable Chevy Volt in late 2010 using lithium-ion batteries the automaker plans to buy from one of two vendors now competing for the high-profile contract.

Toyota executives have said they do not expect lithium-ion batteries to be ready for use in the next generation of the Prius hybrid by GM's 2010 timetable.

For its part, Ford will use nickel-metal hydride batteries in new hybrid sedans slated to go into production next year, the Ford Fusion, the Mercury Milan and the Lincoln MKZ.

But Marakby said subsequent Ford hybrid models -- such as a hybrid variant of the Ford Edge crossover -- could be equipped with the next-generation batteries.

"I think we're still looking at those options," he said, speaking on the sidelines of a Ford briefing on its research into rechargeable electric cars, commonly known as plug-ins.

Marakby said it would take longer to ready lithium-ion batteries for commercial use in plug-in vehicles, which can be recharged at a normal outlet and can run on battery power alone for short trips.

Ford has been testing a fleet of plug-in versions of its Ford Escape hybrid with one of the nation's largest power utilities, Southern California Edison .

Marakby said it would likely be five to 10 years before plug-in hybrids were sold widely, in part because of the technical challenge of building lithium-ion batteries designed to be frequently drained of all their power.

The expensive battery packs required for a plug-in vehicle are also as much as much as six times larger than the briefcase-sized batteries Ford expects to deploy in its first lithium-ion powered cars.

In conjunction with the SoCal Edison, Ford is studying ways to cut the cost of the lithium-ion battery packs for consumers.

Marakby said that included studying whether consumers would be able to lease the components for the term of their ownership and then have them recycled to power other kinds of equipment.

(Reporting by Kevin Krolicki, editing by Richard Chang)
© Copyright 2007 Reuters.

Photo:
The Ford Equinox fuel cell hybrid SUV sits on display at the New York International Auto Show, April 4, 2007. Ford Motor Co expects a new generation of more powerful batteries to be on the road in hybrid vehicles in the next three to five years, a senior Ford engineer said on Tuesday. REUTERS/Keith Bedford