New batteries could make phones, drones, and electric cars last twice as long
news.mit.edu
news.mit.edu
The most exciting part of this, is that they say the'll be in consumer devices early 2017.
I'd love to have one in my quadcopter!
"2010 (early) Max. capacity 2600mAh (This has existed before)
2011 (early) Max. capacity 2900mAh/3000mAh
2012 (early) Max. capacity 3100mAh
2012 (mid) Max. capacity 3400mAh
2013 (late) Max. capacity 3600mAh (Are not yet common)"
.
3600mAh is apparently still the max capacity available.
I'm not narcissistic enough to give this "law" a name.
The opposite is also probably true. A battery technology that promises to double today's capacity is at least 9 years away from being commercially available.
We might be left to forever squeeze out the last remaining bits of inefficiency from current technology (non-reacting mass fraction due to insufficient surface area per mass?)
There are a lot of experimental batteries that have like 5x capacity of the current Li-ion ones, but melt and explode when heated or crushed, which makes them effectively useless.
This is one of the hardest problems in high-capacity batteries - to avoid "rapid unscheduled heat dissipation" and the following "rapid unscheduled disassembly".
Say solar, kinetic, or wireless charging stations spread throughout a city? Maybe incorporate some kind of "witricity" into the next WiFi proposal? If stuff can be recharged while it's being used, or within seconds, it shouldn't matter how much capacity the battery has.
But that’s exactly what Li-ion batteries already do. x)
http://www.candlepowerforums.com/vb/showthread.php?120888-RO...
TL;DR: guy used stock flashlight with two stock CR123 batteries in series. One discharged faster than the other, so it got reverse charged from the one holding more charge, and promptly vented hydrogen gas that got ignited and blew up. Guy got glass and metal shrapnel damage to his foot, and hydrogen fluoride poisoning resulting in permanent lung damage and other bad symptoms. It's really horrible. Bad stuff starts at page 5.
With nasty cough as a bonus
As you have it isolated from the house in a specially built enclosure or garden shed it's less likely to get damaged and even if it is the damage can be manageable.
Then again in these cases it's more of a matter of how cheap it is vs the amount of energy it can hold and size doesn't matter a much.
1: http://goodforgas.com/hazardous-gases-associated-lead-acid-b...
Then there is Li-Po which can ignite if charged too much or if left to drain to low. I also suspect they'll burn if you give them a stern look or make a hurtful comment.
Animals can store a lot of energy, but they don't tend to explode with that energy when damaged. Are there techniques that could be learned from cells that could be used to make safer electrical batteries?
"Yet just as safe and long-lasting as the lithium ion batteries used in consumer electronics" is not happy-making as energy density increases. The existing lithium-ion technology just barely keeps from overheating and blowing itself up, and it takes about six safety devices to prevent that. (Latest major hoverboard explosion story: [1] All those safety devices really are needed.) Lithium metal batteries (available now as non-rechargeable batteries) are even more dangerous, and are currently prohibited on US passenger-carrying aircraft. Lithium metal battery fires require a class D (flammable metal) fire extinguisher.
They're vague about the safety issue. "We're going to make the anode ultra-thin" is a concern. There are safer battery technologies, such as lithium iron phosphate. That won't run away thermally, and passes the "nail test", where a nail is driven through the battery. Less capacity than regular lithium ion, which is why it's not widely used, although you can buy such batteries commercially from A123. "Boosted" skateboards use them, because they don't blow up.
Solid Energy Systems, submit your cell for UL testing. Otherwise, lithium metal is, literally, not going fly.
Company website: [2]. Uses the common "all hype no info" template.
[1] http://wsvn.com/news/local/hoverboard-explosion-causes-house... [2] http://www.solidenergysystems.com/
But I really hope for revolution in this space, rather than incremental changes. This will boost and give wings to so many other inventions.
For a very good survey on the state of the art in lithium-sulfur look up this recent study [1].
This is somewhat due to the underlying technology, but more largely due to the prevalence of cheap counterfeits/knock offs scattered throughout the supply chain.
ZAF had a very in-depth visit at Microsoft Research in June 2015. It is interesting to see the tribulations of a startup in commercializing technology that might become feasible but isn't quite yet and maybe never will. The 1h+ pre-sale meeting was taped [0] and I have an article in the writing about it [1].
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWwvHPaimlU
[1] https://docs.google.com/document/d/1R5gkh_A2vb6mDI5-e-EBlvP8...
Think of Rule 72, a 7.5% annual battery improvement rate compounds to a doubling every 9.6 years, which is amazing.
Most of the time these great battery breakthroughs go nowhere because they only manage to demonstrate with a tiny hand-built cell (often as not only presenting the result of the one cell that did finally work out of dozens of attempts), but there's no path to commercialisation.
If they really do ship usable batteries by november this could be huge.
What's strange though is that Tesla always brags about how it has a list with "hundreds" of such battery breakthroughs, and that they know everyone in the industry working on new tech, but none was anywhere close to coming to market, which is why they chose to go with normal Li-Ion batteries for Gigafactory.
And now we have this announcement? Was SolidEnergy that secretive with their battery tech evolution or why would Musk keep saying that then? I would imagine SolidEnergy would kill for a deal with Tesla. So I wonder what else is going on. Perhaps the battery is 2x as dense, but 4x as expensive, making it not useful for Tesla cars anytime soon?
It may have something to do with patents? Or maybe Tesla realizes making the cars is enough, leave the batteries up to others? Or, they have the market momentum now, so lets go for it, the world will bend to our will.
- What is the Power Density? If it can only charge and discharge slowly, then your Tesla becomes slow and not fun to drive, and you can't fill it up quickly at a supercharger, or maybe even overnight at home.
- What is the longevity of the cell? How fast does it degrade with usage?
- What are the temperature effects on the cell? Will the cell require a new thermal management system to get full capacity, power, and longevity?
- What is the cost?
Edit: Do the down voters care to comment? Anti-nationalism, anti-capitalism, or what?
It wouldn't be the first battery company out of MIT to go that route. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A123_Systems
If our trade policies assume a free market then we open the door to these situations. There's no free trade treaty to blame when China out maneuvers more developed countries like this. Perhaps the solution is to become more mercantilist instead of worshiping free markets.
It's money well spent because of the jobs created. Taxes from those jobs and profits from the corporations is the ROI.
It is the same income, but the outcome for the society is better I think. There will still be jobs created and corporate profits.
And if you follow the logic about jobs, why doesn't the government (i.e. the taxpayer) fund every potentially profitable venture (without asking for any share of the rewards)?
So without such funding, most research will be grounded. Companies like Yahoo!, Google, Sun Microsystems (RIP), Akamai, etc, were/are the result of publicly-funded research.
On the production side, we have countless products like automobiles and smart phones that corporations have produced, but none from the government. The only semi-exception I can think of is the USSR turned out a lot of great military technology, but that was part of an arms race, not providing commercial products.
But you are familiar with these sorts of examples, yet you think my claim is all wrong. Is it because you have lots of specific examples, for research and also for production?
* more areas to lock your bike/scooter/moped (electric or otherwise)
* coin-/card-operated charging stations (as in, "plug in while you shop")
* charging stations where you work (to charge your EV during the day)
I don't think swappable battery stations would be useful, since batteries are damaged by deep-discharging them, and swap-stations would end up with too many damaged batteries that way.
As more people start using EVs, it will be a no-brainer for companies (or even local electric utility companies) to start placing EV charging stations all over town.
Here's the census data from 2009 where they did a study on commuting in the US: https://www.census.gov/prod/2011pubs/acs-15.pdf It's pretty thorough.
My point is, you can either increase range by having better batteries, or you can do so by charging up while at your destination (ex., in your parking lot at work).
It gets even better if you're running errands and you've got a charging station at the grocery store, library, city hall, etc.
I suppose. But as it stands I'm already relying on gas stations.
> Also, it's probably a lot easier to get consumers to add chargers to their homes {snip}
Sorry if I was unclear. I was assuming that as a given. If I've got an EV, it's going to be plugged into the charger at home every night.
That depends - just design a tamper evident battery that contains enough electronics so that when you swap it you pay for not just the power to recharge it, but also the damage you did by using it. So long as the fees are upfront and the devices using it will give me plenty of notice before expensive damage happens I'll be find paying for it.
If your swapable battery is just a bunch of batteries you have the risks you state. However it isn't that expensive to ensure that doesn't happen.
I wonder if it's possible to have a battery go into a low-current mode when it gets down to $n percent charge ("Warning: time to recharge or swap! You have $x Amp-hours left! Going into econ mode."), then disconnect itself completely when down to $m (where $m < $n, and going lower than $m would significantly affect the life of the battery).
That is part of the business model: the batteries know how much charge they can take, so when one no longer has full capacity you sell it for less. Someone needs to work out what the price levels are so that people don't feel cheated, that is tricky math, but I think we know enough about battery life cycle (over different usage) to come up with something. It will probably be a multi-level thing, a "new battery" will be slightly more than a "slightly used" one, and have a longer safe range before they charge you abuse fees. A "new battery" that is never abused will after so many uses without abuse degrade to "slightly used", the users of it as "new" will pay for the normal wear and tear. If you are not trading in every time the battery needs charging you just pay a small monthly rental fee - if you never abuse your battery when it wears out you can trade in a "no longer usable battery" for a "new one" for just the normal trade in fee. If you abuse the battery you just pay for the actual costs that your abuse did to the battery.
It could work, the real trick isn't the technology (that is a simple computer watching the recharge and discharge rates). Even the business model isn't that complex (though the math is tricky). the hard part is convincing everyone to use your standard form factor for batteries. If every different car has a different battery in some way this will not work. It is only when you have one (or a few) models of battery that everyone has that this can work. There are only 3 grades of gasoline at the gas pump - if your engine would be fine on 60 octane gasoline (like my antique tractor) you just have pay for the more expensive 87 octane anyway. If your engine needs 100 octane (some race cars) - too bad you have to buy your own drum. The same way you need to ensure there is a one size fits all battery. (if you want more having two is an option)
There are plenty of people claiming to want battery life over thickness. And I don't even think a 1 cm thick phone will sell - there's a limit in that.
I'd be happy to buy a 50% thicker iPhone if it could handle a whole day of hard usage.
It's not like I get to choose two different versions of the same model of phone, where $a has a bigger battery, and $b has $feature. It's usually a funky mismatch between two different models, with different specs, some of which make it faster, and some of which have a bigger battery.
But I've never seen phones with a 1-to-1 comparison for batteries.
A) I don't want to buy something to upgrade my phone. I'd rather it come like that in the first place.
B) Everyone says "nobody wants a bigger battery", but if everyone just buys them after the fact, how do the manufacturers know? Sounds like they are just passing the buck
C) Many phones don't have a removable battery, or it voids warranties to do so.
Batteries are a difficult thing to engineer, and all this does is provide fodder for the 24-hour-news-cycle to give false hope.
A much better analogy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJRtxTyROOU
They will probably have real-time rendered 3D graphics in the user interface, and more expensive signal processing of their sensors, because of higher resolution of the sensors (especially regarding the camera resolution). And more sensors in total.
/s
They already do.
Later, it sunk in that the new screen had 5x as many pixels...
1. They were "forced to prototype on existing lithium ion manufacturing equipment". This brings them much closer to actual, scalable manufacturing.
2. Hu's ability to develop solutions when challenges arise. He figured out how to get the battery working at room temperature. He was able to adapt his approach to work on existing manufacturing equipment.
Hu sounds like a world class talent, and I admire his ability to overcome challenges. Here's hoping SolidEngergy succeeds!
Seriously, device thickness is for 2016 like camera megapixels was for 2006, it's totally unnecessary to keep pushing it and it hurts usability, yet, it looks good in the numbers you show the consumer, so companies keep doing it.
Nit-pick. To "shrink by half" would have the effect of doubling the size. Maybe he meant "to half the original", but surely not "by half."
This reminds me of the commonly heard "torn in half" when either "torn into halves" or "torn in two" is what's meant.
"Amazing New Battery will..."
Well actually...