41–50 of 85 posts
"Today, with graphene and carbon nanotubes and fancy membranes coming out of our ears" Made me shudder. One, for the violent imagery, two, for the trivialization of remarkable science and technology.
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NASCAR fans are not very happy with "fuel mileage" races, and I would imagine what you describe would be far worse. // also not very fond of people who say we watch for the wrecks
But wouldn't it catch on if they actually thought they could help their favorite driver win? Seems like an idea like that could be revolutionary.
I want to watch a driver's skill, not the energy output of his / her fans.
Sorry to be skeptical, but I can't help but think: Number of "battery breakthrough" news I heard in the last 15 years: >100, Actual battery breakthroughs: 0
To add weight to your skepticism the article states, "Eventually (in another 10 years or so), li-ion batteries could be replaced with li-air batteries." !0 years is a long time-frame.
It changes everything. It's not just about better battery life on your MacBook. There are so many things held back right now by poor battery technology.
So do these batteries still suffer from the same problem of permanent damage if completely discharged? That's the biggest thing that scares me away from buying a Tesla (well, that and the high price of Tesla Motors models).
It may be a theoretical problem, but there are very sophisticated mechanisms in place to prevent this from actually happening in practice with current li-ion batteries. There was a big scare about it with Tesla vehicles a while back that turned out to mostly be one blogger spreading unsubstantiated claims. It's true that if you keep driving an electric car until the car stops running, and then leave it for weeks or m…
>If all continues to go well, we could see air-breathing batteries powering cars some time between 2020 and 2030
Ouch. Maybe laptops will come sooner?
This is slightly off topic but simply stated I just love IBM these days. There aren't many corporations that dedicate as much focus on research and yet, for a large corp. they also keep their nose surprisingly clean (these days). While we watch the swirling tech scandals ebb and flow they just quietly sit off to the side and keep changing the world.
This is more because of secrecy (and ignorance). Any company of such scale is engaged in hundreds patent disputes every year at least, maybe thousands, maybe tens of thousands, it really hard even to estimate. And this continues for decades. Those ten-twenty disputes that made to journals and blogs are in such small amount that they can be counted as statistical deviation and more of PR or anti-PR moves. Real patent…
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I'm running a thinkpad with an 8 hour (theoretical) maximum battery life. Actually it's like 5 or 6. But the model from a year or two years before that would have only gotten 1-2 hours battery life. So improvements are being made and we're seeing them. It's just slow going.
A lo of that improvement must also be from chips consuming less and more RAM resulting in no need for paging.
Moving heavy things up hills or through air at high speeds requires a respectable amount of energy, and current technology is already within an order of magnitude or so to the theoretical peak efficiency.
Li-Ion and older technologies make battery swapping hard because the pack is large and heavy enough that it really needs to be integrated into the vehicle chassis, which means that each model of vehicle—or at a minimum each class of vehicle—needs a different pack.
Something roughly the size and weight of a gas tank would be much easier to swap out and could probably come in only a few different sizes.
Another thing I'm wondering is if the battery could be simplified by "reprocessing" rather than recharging it. For instance, maybe the anode could be a big spool of lithium "tape" that is slowly unwound as it gets oxidized, with the spent lithium oxide wound around another spool. The whole thing could be mounted in a "cassette" that would be swapped out a reprocessing station, where it could be de-oxidized in a controlled environment and at a controlled rate using off-peak grid power.
When these can be used in laptops it would give a whole no meaning to "MacBook Air" - Sorry couldn't resist.