I wonder how long will these battery last... ... 3 years? or better?
current lithium ion or polymer batteries will last for 3 years before they will not be able to store a charge... ...

If the notebooks can have longer batery life, than this is a time for great graphics cards to appear. i don't mind having a system that only lasts 2h, with full gaming!! I think now there will be a bigger diference on gaming notebooks and This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

to my mind battery capacity is one of the most important factors in computer technology.

from time to time i wonder about the sense of e.g. laptops tha t last for a mere 2 hours or cell phones that turn off after just 2 days of stand by.

in my opinion gadgets (laptops, phones, mp3) have quite enough power for the mainstream-user, so the most important change would be a dramatically increase of battery-life.

It's still just research results, but even so, it is promising. I sure hope we manage to improve our batteries this much as it's now one of the least efficient forms of energy we use.

Even if the battery life was to be increased fivefold, the components that make up such products is going to consume that much more power.

Like v3ctor mentioned above, there are going to be people wanting to shove everything they can get into a laptop. If there is the technology and the demand available, laptop builders are going to do exactly that: shove everything in a laptop, forgetting why we have a laptop in the first place.

Maybe we should put batteries that last half as long. Then maybe people will start to get more power conscious and try to save up power. More is not more.

One of the biggest albatrosses around the neck of people acceptance of electric vehicles is limited range. The best to date appears to be the Tesla, at a bit over 200 miles range.

If this new battery technology can be applied (and the article says it should work) then a Tesla with these would have a range of 400 miles. Very few people would have cause to complain about THAT range.

Further, rechargable lithium batteries are expensive. Article says this newer tech is cheaper. Bonus!

I only wonder about two gotcha's the article doesn't address. The Tesla has a lot of system in place to make sure it's existing batteries don't fail (ignite) during use. It would be bad if this new tech is less stable in that regard. Also, if this new tech takes longer to charge than current lithium batteries, that would also be a problem.

Still , all in all, a very positive development!

I wonder what the charge time is like. If it can be charged quickly, this could be the start of mass pure electric vehicles. Double the range of current EV's is a big step.

I agree, the battery life is what turns me off on getting a laptop. Hopefully this will carryover to hybrids (although my $ is on fuel cell).

TGDaily - get rid of that intellitxt junk. its annoying and seems to come back even after disabling it. Does anyone like having a window pop up when you move your mouse across some text?

Double the capacity --> Double the energy stored --> Double the explosive fun!

I hope these developments also allow for more stability than the current generation of lithium batteries...

This is pretty great news. The price/performance delta between gas and electric cars should get smaller when this technology ramps up to mass production.

I think that the charge time will actually be a little shorter as one of the benefits from the "composite" structure should be more uniform energy distribution during a charge cycle.

As for fire potential, I can't say. The melting point for nickel is about 2650 F while manganese is slightly lower at 2275 F. This does not take into account their actual chemical properties in a battery, just the separate base chemical.

Anyway, I'll switch to a total electric vehicle if this comes to fruition.

This sounds great for portable electronics, but unless they can increase the battery life to 10 years or more, it won't do a whole lot to boost the market for electric vehicles that use these batteries. Who wants to replace $10k worth of batteries in their car every 3 years? Also, the environmental impact of manufacturing and then disposing of all those batteries is huge. Like the poster above, my money is also on fuel cell.

sure you could use just as many batteries and get twice the range...however how many of us drive 200 or even 400 miles a day? why not stick with 200 and make the batteries (that'd have to be replaced in x years) and make it half the cost, half the weight, and half the space... same thing with laptops, they may not throw more stuff into them but they will make them smaller and lighter. guess its just up to the manufacturer to decide what you need... we arent at the end either, there will be plenty higher capacity batteries in the future, unless we melt the polar ice caps and drown first :)

For those interested, a similar technology is already in production. Check out http://www.a123systems.com for more information. I'm testing them on one of my combat robots with very promising results so far.

I just calculated weight / kWh for those a123 batteries, and it isn't any better than conventional lithium-ion. Actually it is quite a bit worse. They DO give you much better peak power however, and there is no risk for them exploding so it could be much better for something like combat robot that doesn't need much range, but needs a lot of energy for short period of time.

The better battery would be great. It would be a first step in making longer running notebook/laptop, pda's and UMPC / MIDS if they were also using flash hard drives instead of regular hard drives and OLEd (OR E-INK?) screens isntead of LCD.

The issue with an electric car remains the fact that in winter once you turn on the heater and defroster and clear the windows you back out of the driveway and the battery is dead.

Where there is winter a hybrid is the only choice. The Fuel cell is sadly turning into the great undelivered promise. So we are left with the rather ugly Toyota Prius and it's highlander and camry cousins as the only practical semi affordable true hybrids available.

Yes, yes there will be those who say buy it as a summer car... but honestly if I was in the position to buy a $100k summer car it wouldn't be an electric! It would be red and built in Italy!

Why do you think GM only sold the EV-1 only in California? Same thing is happening with the Tesla, Being based on the Lotus Elise I really am pulling for its success as I like british cars.

But here is the simple reality I won't buy an electric car until it can handle a canadian winter.

I'm not holding my breath.

On the other hand these batteries will make the laptop much more moble and my phone hold a charge longer and these are good things.

Rob in the great white north

Currently there aren't many really useful EV:s and Tesla Roadster is pretty much all there is so I use that as template for EV.

Tesla Roadster uses approx. 15kW power when driven carefully. If you add your heater and defroster you would be adding...what, 500W? Less? That really is not very noticeable loss of power. You could run your heater and defroster in full power for four full days before Tesla battery would be empty. It would of course cut range a little bit, but that same loss would be just as noticeable in hybrid car fuel consumption.

Tesla has been already tested in Sweden for winter performance. It works well in sub-zero temperatures and in icy road. There is a video for that in Tesla website.

Of course Tesla Roadster is very high power sportcar and as such could be a little bit tricky to control in icy surface. But that is true for all sportcars. Tesla is working on more conventional and cheaper sedan called "whitestar", that could be more useful for us mundanes. Even for Canada.

One could use these battieres in conjunction with a fuel cell to make a hybrid that does farther and has extra energy for going faster when needed or farther. At the Fuel Cell Store, there is a device to 'refill' the fuel cell fuel. http://www.fuelcellstore.com/ There is also fuel cells that trickle charge the batteries above without having to worry about where to plug in ones ev to recharge it or find a sunny spot if one has a solar cell roof on ones vehicle.

translate to russia please =)

Pound for pound, no one can beat the amount of potential energy stored in a hydrocarbon fuel.

As for consuming 15kW when driving the Tesla carefully, that is the equivalent of 20 HP.

It generates 240 HP @ 8000 RPM.

They also claim that the electric motor is 85 to 95% efficient. But, that doesn't take into account wind resistance when the car moves. That will cut the overall efficiency of the vehicle by more than half.

The makers also claim:

"six times as efficient as the best sports cars while producing one-tenth of the pollution."

They have a fancy chart that shows the vehicle is twice as efficient than anything else. There are a few problems:

1. They claim that electricity is generated by Natural Gas. Yes that looks nice and clean, but electricity is also generated by burning coal, garbage, diesel fuel, kerosene (turbines), and Uranium.

2. The marketing people can't read charts.

The Tesla scored a 1.14 km/Mj (Best)
The Honda CNG scored a 0.32 km/Mj (Worst)

That is only 3.5 times more efficient (overall efficiency is only what counts). Logically a car that is 3.5 times more efficient would only make 3.5 times less pollution.

Honestly, I think that it is a lot of marketing spin to get rich people to pay $100,000 to make themselves feel good about saving the enviroment. They even take standard features that are nessecary for the operation of the car and make it sound like the latest and greatest performance feature. Real car manufactures don't market performance features like this.

Rabbit said that "Pound for pound, no one can beat the amount of potential energy stored in a hydrocarbon fuel.". This is true, but problem is that no combustion engine can use all of that. Combustion engine efficiency really sucks. Electric engines are much much more efficient. 95-85% efficiency is *normal* for electric engine.

About cutting overall efficiency to half by wind resistance, that same applies to all cars. It is all relative. If combustion car is 20% efficient you need to cut that to half too.

Also Rabbit said "It generates 240 HP @ 8000 RPM." That is what it can produce. It isn't what it is producing when you are just rolling in the highway. What it is using is around 15kW or 20HP. Same applies to all cars. You can run your porche of whatever in third gear doing 60miles/h in 4000RPM it still uses a lot less power than it can generate at that RPM. You get the max power only by flooring the accelerator.

About pollution: Car itself doesn't pollute at all. All pollution comes from power plants and manufacturing the car. It is true that most those power plants pollute, but ratio of energy generated vs pollution generated at those plants is much better than in cars. Also gasoline refinerys pollute too.

Generation of electricity is also changing to be less polluting all of time. Solar panels, wind, wave, water in general, biologigal, geothermic etc. all are pollute-free ways to generate electricity.

About 100000$ cost of the Tesla. Lotus Elise which it is based costs about 40000$ and needs more service and uses a lot of fuel. By the time you have driven 100000 miles with Tesla it has pretty much paid the cost-difference back. And Tesla is quicker. And totally silent.

*Only* reason not to use EV:s instead of ancient cars is really Energy Storage System IE. batteries. With this new innovation in Lithium-ion batteries it could double the range, or half the weight of the battery pack.

Electric vehicles are great all year; especially if one lives in warmer climates. :) I think a fuel cell would help in colder areas. I do not think they - fuel cells - are an undelivered promise. There are many companies working on it.

The case against electric vehicles in winter is overstated. And improved batteries will only serve to mitigate the impacts further. Besides, with Global Warming, it will be summer everywhere ;)

I'll be impressed when they invent wireless electricity.

thriftstoretee wrote:
"I'll be impressed when they invent wireless electricity."

His name was Nikola Tesla.
Read about his life and work.
He did wireless electricity 100 years ago!

Once a battery has been cycled enough times, its completely useless. A combustion engine that has been well maintained can last alot longer. Also, manufacturing large batteries harms the environment alot more than the carbon emissions from an SUV. Search for the article about why a Hummer H2 is better than a Prius, or "Why the Prius is Bad for the Environment."