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Better Lithium-Ion batteries are on the way from Berkeley Lab
- tambourine_man 15y agoBut do we have enough lithium in the world to power all batteries of all cars? http://www.google.com/search?q=lithium+availability http://www.google.com/search?q=lithium+availability
- fletchowns 15y agoThere was a guest on Fresh Air that was talking about this recently: DAVIES: Now that there's more interest in electric cars, is there a concern that, you know, the known lithium deposits will be inadequate for our needs in the future? Mr. FLETCHER: Not anytime soon. I - these things are hard to forecast 100 years out, of course, because nobody knows what's going to happen. But when I was at the Annual Lithium Supply and Markets Conference last January, an analyst got up and basically told all the miners in the audience that there was going to be such an enormous oversupply in the last half of this decade that only the strongest were going to survive. There are a lot of people getting into the lithium mining business right now, but there seems to be more than enough to go around. And so I haven't seen anybody express concern about lithium supplies for any foreseeable reasonable number of these cars, you know, in batteries. Of course, I'll just point out a misperception. A lot of people speak of lithium as if its oil. They talk about Bolivia or Chile being the Saudi Arabia of lithium. But you don't burn lithium. Lithium is a metal used to make a device that stores energy that's produced by other means. So it can be recycled. The batteries can be reused. There is plenty to go around for quite some time. http://www.npr.org/2011/06/08/136856479/leading-the-charge-to-make-better-electric-cars http://www.npr.org/2011/06/08/136856479/leading-the-charge-t...
- StavrosK 15y agoDid the article say how much better these are than the current generation? A quick skim didn't show anything.
- ars 15y agoIt said it stores 10 times as much lithium. I don't know how that would translate into energy storage. But even if the only improvement is longer lifespan that would still be huge.
- BadassFractal 15y agoWhat about disposal?
- ars 15y agoWhat about it?
- jdale27 15y agoBerkeley.
- ChuckMcM 15y ago"on the way" as in "we're looking into it" versus "we've spun out a company to manufacture these." Basically they are attacking one of the current problems with LIon batteries which is degredation in the anode over time across recharge cycles causes them to lose capacity. The current 'best practice' anode is graphite which works well but limits the charge it can hold. Their polymer in the lab is 10x better at holding charge. They give some analysis of why its durability should be good too. If so, and we can get batteries made with this polymer ion they would have 10x the capacity of current batteries. That is all great except reduction into something manufacturable and repeatable is like a 3 year process so 2015 you might see them.