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New batteries could make phones, drones, and electric cars last twice as long

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Re: New batteries could make phones, drones, and electric cars last twice as long

#91

Post by kbenson »

branchly2 wrote: post #72
Fuxy wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok so that rules out phones, laptops and other devices that tend to get roughed up over time but I would still consider using it as energy storage for the solar panel on my house for instance. 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 i…

Where weight and energy density is not a concern, you'd just use regular old-fashioned lead-acid. Lots of charge cycles, easily recycled, simple, no overheating, existing infrastructure.

When the Powerwall was announced, weren't people explaining one of the benefits over lead-acid based systems as you don't have to worry about accidentally generating noxious or explosive gases if the system isn't well vented? I just found something regarding that[1], but I'm unqualified to know how much of a problem this is in reality.

1: http://goodforgas.com/hazardous-gases-associated-lead-acid-b...

Re: New batteries could make phones, drones, and electric cars last twice as long

#92

Post by ihowlatthemoon »

CaptSpify wrote: post #67
FooBarWidget wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If battery life is really what people care about, even over features, then everbody would be using dumbphones instead of smartphones. So as much as people cynically complain about companies, battery life isn't what people value after all.

I don't think this is true. I've never been given a true option about batteries. 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 f…

You mean like the Moto Z and the Z force? Z has a 2600mAh battery and is thinner. Z force has a 3500mAh battery for a 1.8mm addition of thickness. Motorola has done this before with the Droid Maxx.

Re: New batteries could make phones, drones, and electric cars last twice as long

#93

Post by CaptSpify »

ihowlatthemoon wrote: post #92
CaptSpify wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think this is true. I've never been given a true option about batteries. 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 f…

You mean like the Moto Z and the Z force? Z has a 2600mAh battery and is thinner. Z force has a 3500mAh battery for a 1.8mm addition of thickness. Motorola has done this before with the Droid Maxx.

Yeah, I'd love to have something like that for every phone. They aren't completely the same, but they are close enough for me. I don't think I've seen any other phone with a choice like that, though.

Re: New batteries could make phones, drones, and electric cars last twice as long

#95

Post by akiselev »

touristtam wrote: post #85
cheriot wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

American government funded research that turns into a business creating jobs in America sounds like a reasonable outcome to me. After China stole solar, we need some other industry with growth potential. Edit: Do the down voters care to comment? Anti-nationalism, anti-capitalism, or what?

The issue is publicly founded research aleviate the burden of the investment from the private sector, while selling the right to the new technology to a sole private entity. The whole thing could, unless the government blocked it, be sold to a private chinese company down the line.

This is how the system has worked, quite well, for decades if not centuries. The short term profit motive prevents the vast majority of companies from carrying out basic research like this and without IP protections most won't risk investing into manufacturing infrastructure that will quickly be copied in lower cost jurisdictions. There is a lot wrong with our patent system but it does its job for the most part.

Re: New batteries could make phones, drones, and electric cars last twice as long

#96

Post by usrusr »

ptaipale wrote: post #38
Retr0spectrum wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Undoubtedly, but my impression is that it's been more of a gradual refinement of the same technology, rather than a sudden 2x improvement as claimed here.

Well, there have been clear technological jumps. I remember the time when the mainstream technology for electronic gadgets was NiCd. Then came NiMH -> Li-ion -> Li-Po. The differences are quite significant.

Li-Ion is nearly as old as NiMH. They coexisted for a long time, on very different price levels. When people think of battery progress, they usually just think of how LiIon got cheap enough for a use case that was on NiMH before. That certainly is also progress, but of a very differed kind than what they think it was.

Re: New batteries could make phones, drones, and electric cars last twice as long

#97

Post by lutusp »

Quote: "That shrunk the battery size by half."

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.

Re: New batteries could make phones, drones, and electric cars last twice as long

#98

Post by AgentME »

wizzard0 wrote: post #9
Retr0spectrum wrote: post #3

It seems like we're always hearing about the next big thing in battery technology, but they seem to stay in research forever, and never hit the consumer market. 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!

Note that having a compressed energy ready for rapid release is exactly equal to handling an explosive in your laptop :) 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…

> Note that having a compressed energy ready for rapid release is exactly equal to handling an explosive in your laptop :)

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?

Re: New batteries could make phones, drones, and electric cars last twice as long

#99

Post by ptaipale »

usrusr wrote: post #96
ptaipale wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, there have been clear technological jumps. I remember the time when the mainstream technology for electronic gadgets was NiCd. Then came NiMH -> Li-ion -> Li-Po. The differences are quite significant.

Li-Ion is nearly as old as NiMH. They coexisted for a long time, on very different price levels. When people think of battery progress, they usually just think of how LiIon got cheap enough for a use case that was on NiMH before. That certainly is also progress, but of a very differed kind than what they think it was.

I think it is clear progress if manufacturing becomes so much cheaper that the technology is actually available to more people.

Re: New batteries could make phones, drones, and electric cars last twice as long

#100

Post by finid »

matthew_morgan wrote: post #90
finid wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has always been the case. Researchers are free to take the results of their publicly-funded research and run. The govt. sees it as a win-win. It's money well spent because of the jobs created. Taxes from those jobs and profits from the corporations is the ROI.

So we're taxed in order to generate more money in taxes... How is that a "return on investment"? When is the return, exactly? 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)?

I'm not saying that it's the best arrangement, but that's how it works now. Most university research are publicly funded via the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

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.

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