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Research Promises Drastically Increased LiOn Capacity
daem0n1x writes "Could this be the breakthrough we've all been expecting that will finally make the electric car a reality? Researchers of Northwestern University USA discovered a new way to build lithium-ion batteries that changes dramatically both the charge time and capacity [original paper, paywalled]. Guess what it involves? That's right, graphene."
Graphene. Is there anything it can't do?
I'm assuming that this technology will also come with the elusive holographic storage we've been hearing about, as well as those nearly disposable folding color displays as well.
Stay in the car!
Korma: Good
But will it work with graphene....?
New device with more overall wattage requirements is always a few months out.
I swear they give me mod points to shut me up.
So what if the football team isn't in the top 25.
I can finally start saving to get my Tesla in 3-5 years!
What if I am still running Snow Leopard?
New technology will not revolutionize the market - not unless it can be mass-produced at reasonable price.
There are countless energy technologies that are 'better' than what we have. But they meaning nothing to the economy and to consumers unless they come with a plan to manufacture them cheaply.
Just in time for the cheap, ultra efficient solar panels that will be available then
I'm tired of hearing about new "breakthroughs". I dont wanna hear about it until its product on the shelf, that I can use, otherwise its just vaporware
Start the clock to an oil company purchasing the patent and locking it away ...
This is a must read article on the subject. Electric cars fail because batteries are too expensive, and because they required infrastructure of charging stations. This company however solves both these problems. You make an electric car without the battery, which is cheaper than a standard car and more reliable to boot. Then this company leases you a battery, which costs less per month than gas. And they handle the infrastructure, which includes stations that swap your battery out for a fully charged one. You never wait to charge your battery, and they can swap it out since you don't own it.
http://www.wired.com/cars/futuretransport/magazine/16-09/ff_agassi?currentPage=all
Part of this model is the assumption that battery technology still moves along rapidly. So the company can phase in newer, better batteries and you aren't tied to a battery you purchased when you bought your car.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
If it violates the TOS of the website, it's now a crime. Sort of a "make your own rules" clause for corporations that lets them throw customers in jail. I wouldn't want to see /. throw anonymous coward in jail, so I feel a duty to inform you.
I swear they give me mod points to shut me up.
I don't even comment on /. anymore.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Flying cars are already a reality. They are just expensive and inefficient.
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
Interstellar travel is already a reality. It is just expensive and inefficient.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
Well, I don't even own a TV!
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
So if this battery has ten times the capacity of standard Lithium ion batteries, and after a year it's only five times more. That means its capacity falls off by 50% per year. I guess that would be fine for phones, but not so much for cars. It would be quite the environmental nightmare if car owners threw out their gigantic batteries every three years because the car had only 1/8 of the range it had when you drove it off the lot.
That's right, bacon."
More appealing answer.
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Perhaps the discovery of graphene will be viewed as the event which tipped us over into the Singularity !
How is this from Northwestern Univ. if all the author affiliations are Wuhan University?
Sorry, but gray text on gray background is making my eyes bleed.
If we could combine all the tech from all of the battery stories we've read in the past year, we could power an interstallar craft for a year with a single AAA battery and recharge it by rubbing it on a fluffy shirt for a few seconds.
Having read the article (*gasp*) as well as a few others it seems these batteries do NOT hold 10x more power. They degrade 10x slower on on drain/recharge cycles and can be charged 10x faster. BUT this is not the same as having 10x more POWER per cycle. Gonna have to wait some more before you get an cheap electric car that can go 500 miles before charging (though charging 10x faster is nice).
Letter To Iran
Hey they're practical. A Nissan Leaf or Mistubishi i-whateverthefuck (depending on region) would both suit my needs for daily transportation quite well. The Mitsu is even affordable.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
If this technology reduces energy storage costs dramatically, renewable energies (solar, wind, etc) would become much more practical because they could be stored, ie, made available on demand instead of when Mother Nature provides them.
... they'll fit right into the steady curve of slowly but steadily increasing battery capacity. People assume that all these battery advancements we keep hearing about never pan out. Well, some of them do, but once the researchers silly claims are brought down to be a bit more realistic, and after the years go by before they actually hit the market, they're just incremental improvements on what was available before they came out.
There's nothing wrong with that.
The article only mentions how it will benefit small electronic gadgets. Is there any reason this might not benefit cars?
I am just a regular /.er, I don't RTFS, I normally even skip reading the summary. But you just have to push me into completely disregarding the words in the title at this point.
I am making a vague guess that this has something to do with increasing Lithium Ion battery capacity to store electricity, but really, somebody just 'promises' something?
I don't know. I promise to stop reading the titles of these stories too if they keep writing them this way. Hey, it never stopped me from posting!
You can't handle the truth.
Obviously missing data in TFA: estimated cost of production for these marvelous batteries ...
http://www.transparency.org
If I had a dime for every bulletin about some new battery technology, I'd be rich. And here we are today still plodding along with slow incremental bumps in battery capacities.
I'll believe this one too, as soon as I can go buy one. But I won't hold my breath.
If I didn't have absolutely NOTHING to do, I wouldn't be here.
In other words, they don't know if it will scale.
http://www.technologyreview.com/energy/23877/
It is irritating to read something saying electric cars might one day be reality, when I have a Nissan Leaf sitting in my garage and I have put 6,000 miles on it already. I've never come even close to running out of power. Why do we need some fancier battery to make something already here be a reality?
"...will finally make the electric car a reality?" Um, first of all electric cars are actually older than gasoline cars (snobby comment, done). Second, with current battery tech electric cars are already more cost effective than gas driven cars when you compare vehicles of identical costs. The only wrinkle is lack of highways travel, but there's a solution for that too. Compare a $10k used car to $10k electric car: The cost of a decent LiFePO4 battery pack is $6k, the distance per charge is at least 50 mi, the charge cycles is at least 2k -meaning that the $6k battery pack will last for 100k mi. The cost of electricity to recharge the pack is ~$0.10 per 950 Wh which means the cost of 100k mi is ~$1645.14 -or $7645.14 for the total cost of electricity and battery. Now, for the gasoline car lets say gas will average $4/gal for the next 10 years (that seems low considering it more than doubles in price every two years) and that a decent used car will get 35-40 MPG in the city. Considering ONLY the cost of gas (not oil, maintenance, or repairs on the engine), the cost of fuel for 100k mi will be between $10k and $12k. This is with a very conservative estimate of gasoline costs and not accounting for the lower maintenance costs of electric drive systems. To address highway travel, any car 3500 lbs and under requires about 18 HP to travel at 60-70 MPH. If you have trunk space or a trailer hitch on your electric car, you can add a gasoline or propane generator to produce the 13.5 kW that your car uses on the highway and have infinite range. Or do what I do and barrow someone's gas car when you need to go more than 50 mi. Sorry about the formatting, /. took away my paragraphs :(
Stories about breakthroughs where outstanding issues are simply not mentioning or downplayed is starting to get old.
That's quite affordable for a car that runs on electricity which is far, far cheaper than gas, and requires much less maintenance.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Rather than make an assumption and start a flame war, I'll just ask: what part of an electric car do you find inefficient?
How many zebras, antelopes and gazelles do you want to fit into one, seriously?
Geeks are so full of shit that "beating the crap out of them" takes a whole new meaning.
Will this improve the battery life on my cell phone, laptop, and tablet?
Advice: on VPS providers
Like soo many great new inovative technologies that could change the world for the better, it will never see the light of day!
Just how are they "inefficient"? Tesla's website has plenty of "scientific-like" data showing that they are *much* more efficient users of source energy...
Now you're just back at expensive and inefficient...
+1 Disagree
I'm assuming that this technology will also come with the elusive holographic storage we've been hearing about, as well as those nearly disposable folding color displays as well.
You forgot "efficient solar panels".
The Northwestern paper is titled "In-Plane Vacancy-Enabled High-Power Si–Graphene Composite Electrode for Lithium-Ion Batteries (pages 1079–1084)". The article linked in the summary is titled "In Situ Generation of Few-Layer Graphene Coatings on SnO2-SiC Core-Shell Nanoparticles for High-Performance Lithium-Ion Storage".
Can people mod me up or have the summary corrected?
In Soviet Russia, articles before post read *you*!
Yay, a decent comment from Anonymous Coward. He's not just trolling, hooray.
Democrats are already a reality. They're just expensive and inefficient.
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
Not all of us live in countries where "compact" is classed as a car that can comfortably seat 5 large adults and their luggage.
The Leaf is a pretty average sized car.
and yet not one of their resellers offers their product... i smell vaporware. and perhaps fraud.
i heard about inphase when everyone else did -- and i can't find one not even at $18,000.
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
I've ever heard of. Swapping out gigantic car batteries as the method of recharge?
That's just so wildly impractical. Why does that idea continue to hang around?
Oh man, I've heard this before.
They want to LEASE me a battery instead of letting me own it.
What happens if the DRM on my battery becomes obsolete??? Will the battery that I paid for stop working?
What happens if I want to play my battery in another manufacturer's CAR???
What happens if I want to LOAN MY BATTERY TO A FRIEND???
CAN I MAKE COPIES OF MY BATTERY???
WILL THEY WAN TO TRACK MY USAGE OF THE BATTERY???
WILL THEY WANT TO CONTROL WHETHER I CAN DRIVE WITH IT IN A PUBLIC AREA???
WILL I HAVE TO SIT THROUGH A LONG INTRO MOVIE ABOUT BATTERY PIRACY BEFORE I CAN START MY CARRR?????
No thanks. I'm sticking to open source batteries.
That was cringe-worthy. Of we put all our resources (money) on the planet together right now, we couldn't make interstellar travel a reality. This habit of some people to pretend that money solves everything is utterly idiotic.
We do not have material technology, we do not have viable energy sources, etc. We simply do not have them (yet?), and throwing money at the problem will not magically make these into existence any more then throwing money in 1800s would put people on the moon or throwing money at it now would put people into another solar system. It may make these necessary components of interstellar travel appear faster, or it may not, but it will not magically create them just by throwing money at the problem. It will require TIME first and foremost.
I was listening to someone on the radio who had an idea about improving elecctric cars that I liked. Start up a Indy-500 type of race for them. The teams individually decide on the cars design: large heavy battery for fewer pit stops, smaller lighter battery with more pit stops. The only problem is that the people watching the races will hear a "fweep" as the cars pass by, instead of a "VROOOOM!".
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
Democracies are already a reality. They're just expensive and inefficient.
FTFY.
I welcome our new master of batteries! Our lives our saved! All ye hail King...
...hold on, what was his name again? Ah, here it is...
...King Kung!
(I know, I know, terrible...sorry, I'm a bit of a nerd...I couldn't resist)
How about the existing technology where the norm is losing 100% of capacity after 300 charges? Is that any different?
Carbon is bad!
We can do interstellar travel, just not if we're expecting to have any travellers alive when they arive. We're getting the Voyager probes far enough to reach other stars - it'll only take half a million years or so.
1. It will weigh more (whether it's 10X or not needs to be compared to the weight of support structures in the battery)
2. It could cost a lot more (Lithium is the major cost component)
3. It will burn more, which is why the next project is about fire protection
Oh man, I've heard this before. They want to LEASE me a battery instead of letting me own it.
I know you're joking, but just for giggles...
What happens if the DRM on my battery becomes obsolete??? Will the battery that I paid for stop working?
Yes. And it will probably happen on a semi-regular basis to a very small number of people.
What happens if I want to play my battery in another manufacturer's CAR???
In theory, everyone will use compatible battery packs except Sony.
What happens if I want to LOAN MY BATTERY TO A FRIEND???
Your friend had better return the batteries to you instead of trying to pawn them.
CAN I MAKE COPIES OF MY BATTERY???
Do you own a factory in China?
WILL THEY WAN TO TRACK MY USAGE OF THE BATTERY???
Yes, they will. I don't doubt some of the battery's' energy will be used to power onboard microcircuitry designed to track usage trends. They might even try to include GPS if they feel lucky.
WILL THEY WANT TO CONTROL WHETHER I CAN DRIVE WITH IT IN A PUBLIC AREA???
No, but some governments may want to add a battery kill switch.
WILL I HAVE TO SIT THROUGH A LONG INTRO MOVIE ABOUT BATTERY PIRACY BEFORE I CAN START MY CARRR?????
Maybe battery safety in the DMV.
That's quite affordable for a car that runs on electricity which is far, far cheaper than gas, and requires much less maintenance.
Maybe for you, or other people that buy a new car every three or four years. Get back to me when I can buy and eight-year-old model on the used car market for around 2 grand. Oh, wait, that will never happen because those cars won't last that long without a $5000 battery replacement.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
Oh come on, where are the charts and graphs? This is prime data for charts and graphs!
The hobby statisticians in the room are quite displeased.
No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!
My cars are 16 and 20 years old.
By the time the car is 2 grand, an aftermarket replacement battery with double the capacity will be another 2 grand. Not bad for a car that never needs gas.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
I was specifically thinking of Voyager 2, which is described as being on an interstellar mission right now (technically, it might still be in our solar system depending on how exactly you define the boundaries). Such a mission for humans is not really possible, or barely so. Might technically be possible to send a person out there, not really sure. Point was, something won't become a feasible reality until it stops being expensive and inefficient.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
Yes, but charges and cycles are two different things and people often get them confused, even the news reporters. Most laptop batteries loose 50% of their capacity after 300 cycles. But keep in mind a full cycle is a total discharge, followed by a complete recharge. If you only use 10% of the charge, then recharge then that is only 0.1 cycles. So if a vehicle has 200 miles range, and you drive 30 miles a day or less like most Americans, do the math. That is about 1 full cycle per week. So it would take almost 3 years to lose half of the capacity. Granted, that is still not a great number, but not as bad as it sounds. The Nissan Leaf is supposed to still have 80% capacity after the 8 year warranty. I believe the battery is rated for 2,000 cycles.
Cloning technology is already a reality. It is just expensive and inefficient.
For my private reference use only: http://www.lime-exeter.co.uk/bat_paper.pdf
All other access unauthorized.
I say forget cars since there is a much more important use of this technology. I say put one in every house. That way we could vastly multiply the number of windmills and solar power cells. If we could store the excess power generated when the wind is blowing and the sun is shining than we could vastly decrease the number of coal powered plants. If they think this technology will be available in three to five years than we should put almost all of our engineers on it so it would be available within a year. If this has a good chance of becoming reality than President Obama should be using all the power of the federal government to promote it. We should be able to store enough power at night to make sure that the house does not need any excess power during the daytime. It is interesting since I live by a huge man made lake that is being used to store night time power for use in the day. I would think that this technology would make that lake obsolete. But until I see President Obama promoting this technology, I will continue to not believe that I will ever see it.
Given the existence of this article, I'd say the batteries.
I don't mean to belittle electric cars... just the implied claim that they aren't reality until this magic battery improvement.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
Given the existence of this article, I'd say the batteries.
I don't mean to belittle electric cars... just the implied claim that they aren't reality until this magic battery improvement.
(I will respond to further replies in the branch immediately preceding this one)
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
Will this improve the battery life on my cell phone, laptop, and tablet?
Seriously, dude. Are you having a hard time figuring that one out all by yourself?
> (I will respond to further replies in the branch immediately preceding this one)
Are you trying to turn the comment tree into a DAG?
And they only last a few seconds until they hit the ground after you drive them off the cliff. You forgot that part.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
Well, I'm travelling between galaxies right now on this large ball shaped thing with a life support system and 7 billion other passengers. Sure it's slow, but nobody's charging me for passage, per se (The taxes, of course, are *really* expensive).
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
Since graphene is only 1 atom thick it is tough to make a significant volume of material. It takes so many layers before you have any thickness. Hopefully the Si layer defines the bulk of the anode, because otherwise you'll just never be able to make a big battery. The cathode and anode need surface area to drive enough chemistry and a big enough cross section to handle the resulting current. That cross section will have to come from the Si...
Unfortunately there has been a news story about a battery breakthrough every week or so for the last 10 years. (In MIT technology review, for example, there's a constant drumbeat of battery-breakthrough stories). Few of these breakthroughs make it to commercialization at all, and those that do are less revolutionary than promised. Batteries have made only gradual progress.
That's nothing, I don't even own a computer.
Will the fires from these batteries be 10X bigger and 10X more likely?
it's not increasing the range per charge that matters for me (25 miles is plenty of range for my daily commute and then some), it's reducing the fscking weight of the battery pack and keeping the same range... reducing the charging time is a bonus... but those fscking batteries are heavy... and I have to cart the bike up three flights of stairs to my flat...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
Flying cars are already a reality. They are just expensive and inefficient.
Any car can fly. Flight distance and safe landing are the real problems...
Micheal Kristopeit355 = boring troll
Financially inefficient is probably the meaning of "inefficient" in this instance.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
"All right, lab workers, how's this new-fangled battery technology coming along?"
"It's going great, boss! We just reduced the charging time to a tenth of what was needed before! This could really be a gas-killer!"
"Excellent work. Now shelve it and let it never see the light of day."
"But..."
"Oh, you're getting your pay-check anyway. What do you care?"
Au contraire, mon frÃre!
These electric cars are MUCH MORE EFFICIENT at taking your money upfront!
But at least x brand products that use standard AA cells can't take away the warranty if you don't use x brand AA cells in countries that have something like the Magnuson-Moss Act. Apple voids the warranty if you change your own unibody MacBook's battery.
Same reason my car's manual says "only use Citroen-approved parts".
Do countries where Citroën vehicles are popular have any counterpart to the tie-in sales provision of the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act (15 USC 2302(c))?
Exactly. Spaceship Earth.
Indeed, I find that pretty much any /. article that includes the word "could" in the summary ends up being speculation or vaporware.
Some hard figures would be nice (are they available in the paywalled site?) but the press release seems to suggest 50% capacity loss after 150 cycles. This is *much* worse than current generation li-ion batteries (which typically lose about 20% over about 300 cycles), and would mean that these batteries are impractical for low-cost EVs (as they'd need replacing every 6 months to prevent significant range loss).
I'm assuming that this technology will also come with the elusive holographic storage we've been hearing about, as well as those nearly disposable folding color displays as well.
It might make flying cars more practical though.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
How about making battery usage more granular? On a short trip you drain one or two pounds of batteries. On your commute to work you use 20 pounds of batteries. Day's driving uses 50 pounds. Etc.
So at the eGas Station you swap out only the batteries that are discharged. The discharged 1 pound cells go on a conveyor belt where they are recharged on their way to and at the battery vault.
The downside I imagine is more battery wiring in the car...
I come here for the love
There has been research for a long time on silicon nanoparticles to be used to replace graphene anodes in current li-ion batteries and can offer up to 10x the power density. Only problem is, one, the polycrystalline silicon that you need is difficult and expensive to create, and two, silicon anodes have been shown to fracture very easily when an electric current is applied to it. There is tons of research going on for li-ion batteries and most show up as you can increase power density but reduce life cycle, or vice versa.