Researchers Predict Next-Gen Batteries Will Last 10 Times Longer (newatlas.com)

Lithium-metal electrodes could increase the storage capacity of batteries 10-fold, predict researchers at the University of Michigan, allowing electric cars to drive from New York to Denver without recharging. Using a $100 piece of technology, the team is now peeking inside charging batteries to study the formation of "dendrites," which consume liquid electrolytes and reduce capacity. Slashdot reader Eloking quotes New Atlas: Battery cells are normally tested through cycles of charge and discharge, testing the capacity and flow potential of the cells before being dissected. Dasgupta and his team...added a window to a lithium cell so that they could film the dendrites forming and deforming during charge and discharge cycles.
In a video interview they're reporting that dendrites can actually help a battery if they form a small, even "carpet" inside of the battery which "can keep more lithium in play." According to the article, "The future of lithium-ion batteries is limited, says University of Michigan researcher Neil Dasgupta, because the chemistry cannot be pushed much further than it already has. Next-generation lithium cells will likely use lithium air and lithium sulfur chemistries."

Comments

I say BS

[Anonymous Coward]

This goes in a slashdot file with cures for cancer and efficient solar cells. And inexpensive housing for the poor.

Re:I say BS

[Tablizer]

and invented in a flying car.

Re:I say BS

[Anonymous Coward]

This goes in a slashdot file with cures for cancer and efficient solar cells. And inexpensive housing for the poor.

FWIW they found a way to house the homeless in Utah. They figured it out that it was less expensive to rent them a small apartment than to do the normal government social programs.

Re:I say BS

[Rei]

Yes, cue the standard "Batteries haven't advanced!" stuff from people carrying around cell phones with significantly more amp hours in a smaller battery profile than the last generation phones that they owned.

News flash: every time a new tech advance makes it into a product, they don't mail a letter about it to everybody who read an article about it years earlier. Example: hey, remember all of that stuff about breakthroughs in silicon anodes several years back? Yeah, they're in batteries now. Even Tesla is starting to use it in their higher-end packs.

Re:I say BS

[Anonymous Coward]

You're focusing on the immediate problem, not the long-term problem. Namely, what does society do with the homeless?

Unless you answer that question, your housing project will turn into Cabrini green.

A lot of the homeless problem comes from education in our country being so expensive; we've created this viscous cycle of biased education where teachers are required to possess masters degree's in order to teach the basics in kindergarten. We completely ignore the fact that teachers unions have an enforced-at-gunpoint monopoly. Case in point, I've been taking a college course and we had kids, in their 20's, in class, watching the blackhawks game, because their expectations are they just need to be in the course for a set period of time. That expectation was set by public schools who do not offer a clear path for very intelligent children to graduate early and skip grades, because there is no clear body of work that you can complete in order to demonstrate you meet the educators' standards. The teachers expect to walk in the door with their fancy degree's and expect the plebeians trust them and their educational might; one of the reasons K-12 schools feel like prison is because you aren't completing a body of work, you're instead doing your time. Due to that and ADA requirements, the instructor has been demoralized to the point he's doing his time there, in order to get experience, in order to get into a more prestigious institution. It's absolute madness.

We have this concept of diversity driving change within our communities for the better, and we have elites using it as an excuse to flood countries with migrant workers in order to depress the political and communal expectations of the indigenous population.

Unfortunately, none of this is easy to look at or solve, especially for government.

Re:I say BS

[Mr D from 63]

I don't recall anyone here every saying batteries haven't advanced. They certainly have. More so in manufacturing tech than actual battery chemistry tech, but they go hand in hand. They key advancement has been bringing the price down on lithium ion batteries through advanced production methods that allow higher density. This the result of half a century of intense effort to keep improving them. There are limits to lithium ion though, its been around a long time and there hasn't been another technology yet to supplant it.

Re: I say BS

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought It was a big hole with lots of Lyme. Don't miss your appointment homeless scum! I'm not taking about the families. Just the freaks crazy on the streets.

Re: I say BS

[Anonymous Coward]

Wrong. You can work at McDonald's and rent a room. This is not true for single homeless people. Most are mental. But even still there are student loans like everyone else. It's not that simple minded.

Re:I say BS

[DamonHD]

It happens regularly.

Quite a lot of my replies are asking people to stop doing it because it's ignorance, posturing or worse!

Rgds

Damon

Re:I say BS

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's not get crazy here.

Re:I say BS

[fyngyrz]

If you don't want to be homeless, build a house.

Homeless generally means both "not a landowner" and "has no money" which prevents the former even if they wanted to go there.

If you don't want to be hungry, go fishing.

Buy a license, buy a pole, collect bait somehow, weather considerations, legal locations, seasons, specific game fish, prepping, finding wood to cook with...

If you want to survive, get your ass moving instead of wasting the day pseudo-intellectualizing or lamenting about the unfairness of nature that has always existed since the beginning of time when it blew the first human village up with a volcano and the laws of the universe didn't even blink, let alone give a shit.

No, the universe doesn't, for sure. But people who are worth a shit, do give a shit.

WRT "get moving", to quote a fine summary of just one aspect of the problem, "I'm pretty sure McDonald's has an underwear inside the pants policy" (Source here at 3:31 but by all means, check out the whole performance, it's pretty much spot on from beginning to end.)

Re:I say BS

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, the smell of fresh crap on Slashdot on a Sunday afternoon:
"Inexpensive housing for the poor has existed since the first axe was used to chop wood and form walls and a roof."

And where, pray tell, do these resourceful Homeless and their shopping carts full of surplus building supplies, build their houses? Shanty towns have been around forever... until the Lords of the Land gets pissed off and levels them. Bulldozers do make it much easier these days, but in Ireland 170 years ago, special iron-tipped sticks were used to tumble the walls of the houses of the evicted, so that they couldn't return. Or perhaps you are more familiar with the thousands of "Hoovervilles" circa 1930. General Douglas MacArthur gained fame and good will by using Federal Troops to burn the ~15,000 Man "Bonus Army" Camp out of Washington, DC, with the able assistance of Patton and Eisenhower.
And then, by any chance did you see that movie with a young Hank Fonda made about a decade later, called "The Grapes Of Wrath"?. Those weren't Sets, that was a real Shanty Town, as was the Weedpatch Migrant Camp, which _was_ built by the Homeless, under Government Support. Damn commies.

"All that's left for that inexpensive housing is for the poor to do what humans with far less did thousands of years ago, and get their asses moving."

To where, you mushy turd of a Human Being? Your Backyard? The Parking Lot at where you work? Central Park in New York City... again? Or maybe you are thinking of some only slightly radioactive Nevada desert now surplus to Government needs, and only maybe fifty miles from the nearest Shopping, Schooling, and Employment? (Note: Even the Shoshone Tribes don't want that land back...) Or perhaps you are thinking of some place further away, where they can go with little chance of ever returning. Much of Quebec and Nova Scotia were settled by some suddenly Homeless; America's solution to the Loyalist Problem. But these days, Canada may object.

Re:I say BS

[Anonymous Coward]

News flash: every time a new tech advance makes it into a product, they don't mail a letter about it to everybody who read an article about it years earlier.

You mean decades? Typically it doesn't enter the market until the patents run out.

Re:I say BS

[Rei]

No, I meant precisely what I wrote. Every word. Go look at old cell phone batteries and how many amp hours they provide if you don't believe me.

Re:I say BS

[Anonymous Coward]

I think what they're saying is that lithium ion batteries have been around for decades.
Maybe not in consumer products, but at least in research labs.
What magical tech with 10 times the power density do they have in their labs that none of us are aware of?
Or or they saying they are going to invent that tech now?

Re: I say BS

[Anonymous Coward]

It may work... ifbthey can get them to stip blowing up.

Re:I say BS

[michelcolman]

I, for one, welcome our new flying Tesla overlords

Re:I say BS

[Anonymous Coward]

Some other cities have hit on an even cheaper idea. Put them on a bus to some other city.

Re:I say BS

[Rei]

*Sigh*

And I'm telling you that lithium-ion batteries are not a "single tech", that they've dramatically improved in power and energy density (both volumetric and gravimetric) over time. And if you doubt this, I repeat: go find and older lithium-ion battery and compare it to a new one.

As for li-air, yes, the maximum energy density of li-air is about 10x of the maximum of li-ion. Namely because it works by direct oxidation rather than intercalation, so you don't need the mass of the matrix into which the ions get intercalated. It is not a "magical tech". It exists. Like all technologies in all fields, however, you have to reach production specs. This means not only maintaining a combination of safety, reliability, longevity, efficiency, temperature range, power density (charge and discharge) and energy density, but also affordability in mass production. And to be able to guarantee that you can do all of these things to a high enough level for investors to take the risk.

As with all technologies, you start out with promise in one or two fields, but serious problems in many others that you have to deal with. With time you refine them, until all of refined to a state where the product is commercialized. Li-air has actually been advancing quite well. In the early days one of its biggest problems were efficiency and longevity, but they've made huge strides in both in recent years. Lithium sulfur still looks nearer term, but commercialization of Li-air appears to have gone from "possible" to "quite probable".

Re:I say BS

[FatdogHaiku]

I agree. Why, it used to be that you needed a laptop battery to cook a steak, and now a cell phone battery can do the same job! Plus, the fumes given off during the process give you food that certain something (as in "I'm certain this is toxic") which is tough to reproduce using fire from more mundane fuels...

Re:I say BS

[MBGMorden]

I'm sure many wouldn't mind, but see there's not really open land to just live on anymore. Most of it is either privately owned or public land that forbids camping.

And if you figure you'll hunt/gather? Everyone - even the homeless - are still subject to game seasons. Kinda hard to live off of hunting deer if its only legal to hunt them for a month or two out of the year.

The simple fact is that if you are broke, you can't just go live off the land like our ancestors did without breaking a myriad of laws and getting arrested. I'm not one for expansive social programs - I'm actually fairly conservative. However I think that as a public service we should absolutely provide a basic facility to house anyone without a permanent residence. It needn't be extravagant, but IMHO providing them with a bunk, a shower, and 3 basic no-frills meals until they can get back on their feet should be obvious. Otherwise you have people who get into a rut that they can basically never climb back out of.

If you don't most of them are going to resort to crime and you'll be providing all those things anyways - why not provide them in a way to promote getting people off the system ASAP?

Re:I say BS

[Anonymous Coward]

Let me guess, you just got done playing Minecraft and think you now have all the solutions and answers to society's problems?

Re:I say BS

[narcc]

Yeah, because technology is guaranteed to continually improve, inevitably circumventing any and all physical limits...

It's true. That's why the average automobile today gets 8,000 mpg, the shuttle to Jupiter runs three times a day, and cancer can be cured in an afternoon with an inexpensive over-the-counter remedy.

Re:I say BS

[Anonymous Coward]

the improvements have been minor in battery tech...

the main improvement has been in lowering energy use in the chips (shrinking mainly)

and the article say's nothing about 10x, so yes this is bullshit..

The problem is chemistry, no matter how much you want to believe it's possible to make a battery that is anywhere near as energy dense as gasoline, the chemistry say's no!!

Batteries compared to gasoline are shit at energy storage, and that isn't going to chnage anytime soon without finding a game changing chemical reaction..highly unlikley..

so keep dreaming but in 10 years time and batteries that are only 10 to 20% better, remember I did tell you..

Re:I say BS

[arglebargle_xiv]

Oh no, it's all true, they just forgot to mention that they also burn ten times as intensely, and explode with a yield where you'd normally expect to find fission byproducts. Samsung are already prepping them for the upcoming Galaxy M67.

Re:I say BS

[CanEHdian]

The "problem" is that engineers are already drooling over designs how they can make the battery 10x smaller. So, you're userspace "battery life" remains the exact same, which is: you have to charge it every night and it still dies on you mid-afternoon if you have been on it all morning. Hopefully one of the major manufacturers will release a phone in 2015 size ("Poweruser Edition") that actually has a 10x increased userspace battery life... so you'd have to charge it once a week. But if you still have 1,000 charge/recharge cycles, the industry-standard planned obsolence plans are foiled, so I don't think it will happen.

Re:I say BS

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll simply leave you this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium%E2%80%93air_battery#Future_Prospects

Re:I say BS

[Rei]

Wow, unreferenced rant someone added at the bottom - clearly you've got me there!

Try googling those quotes. The first one is only people quoting Wikipedia. The second one, I downloaded the paper and the conclusion says just the opposite ("A huge interest expressed by the scientific community in the development of Li-air battery is the demand of modern automotive industry. We have identified four major areas. If properly addressed, this technology may enter the commercial phase in the near future." (immediately after going into a wide range of papers on dealing with each of these four topics))

Re:I say BS

[RabidReindeer]

Jupiter three times a day, meh. What about the Kessel Run?

And computers can now fit on a single floor of an office building and consume less than 100KW/hr.

Seriously, we have a group of people who think that on the one hand you can lay off people ad infinitium and new jobs will magically appear for them all just because that's the way it's always happened and on the other, we have cynics who think that every new discovery counts for naught.

It might be well to recall that for probably 20 years, the laser was described as a solution looking for a problem, and now almost no home is without at least one doing something useful. Not everything comes in straight lines or simple curves. Sometimes it's one snowflake at a time, followed by an avalanche.

Re:I say BS

[RabidReindeer]

Give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day.

Teach a man to fish and slowly bleed him to death since you own the lake, the boats, the dock, the bait and tackle shop, the poles, and oh yes, the forests so he can't cut his own pole and he has to pay you for any and all of the above.

Oh, and the transportation lines, so even moving away isn't an option. Plus, of course, there's arrears on rent that have to be paid first.

The Real World isn't quite as simple as the soundbites make it out to be.

Re:I say BS

[Rei]

the improvements have been minor in battery tech... the main improvement has been in lowering energy use in the chips (shrinking mainly)

Flatly contradicted by comparing old batteries with new, amp hours vs. volume and mass. For the past couple decades, batteries have doubled in energy density once every 8 years or so. Do you perchance have an old cell phone lying around at home? Check out its amp-hour rating and see how big/heavy it is compared to the amp hour rating and size/mass of your current cell phone's battery.

and the article say's nothing about 10x, so yes this is bullshit..

No, it is not. The maximum theoretical energy density of li-air is about 10x that of the maximum theoretical for LCO/graphite li-ion.

The problem is chemistry, no matter how much you want to believe it's possible to make a battery that is anywhere near as energy dense as gasoline, the chemistry say's no!!

Once again, false. The maximum gravimetric energy density for li-air is comparable to gasoline (12kWh/kg vs. 13kWh/kg) in the charged state, and significantly better in the discharged state. Now, you don't ever achieve the maximum for a particular chemistry, or even close to it. But then again, for a given amount of EV range, you don't have to, as electric drivetrains are 3-5x more efficient than ICE drivetrains.

Of course, neither of these are actual impediments to EV adoption; nobody gives a rat's arse whether a battery pack is physically larger or heavier than a gas tank (partially or completely offset by the reduced drivetrain mass). The real impediment is price. That said, if cost per unit mass/volume remains the same and energy density improves, then cost per watt hour improves as well.

Re: I say BS

[Applehu Akbar]

Okay, you dig the hole and I'll get the ticks.

Re:I say BS

[Rei]

** Ed: Should read "in the discharged state, and significantly better in the charged state". It's heaviest in the discharge state.

Re: I say BS

[Anonymous Coward]

Flying Zee.Aero overlords, not Tesla.

Re:I say BS

[Anonymous Coward]

Bunch of philosophical "self-elevating" mumbojumbo.
If you don't want to be homeless, build a house.
If you don't want to be hungry, go fishing.
If you want to survive, get your ass moving instead of wasting the day pseudo-intellectualizing or lamenting about the unfairness of nature that has always existed since the beginning of time when it blew the first human village up with a volcano and the laws of the universe didn't even blink, let alone give a shit.

If you want to be wealthy, have technology, and have resources coming to you automatically instead of having to manually exploit them, then yes, we can talk about all that shit you outlined.
But we are not talking about all that shit you outlined. We are talking about homeless people staying homeless because they don't give a shit to move their asses like the humans of old who had far less at disposal.
Did the first human who built a house need a fucking university degree or some fucking books before he was qualified to survive? Did some magical hand blow a space-time sphincter in the sky and throw a book at some dumbass which told him how to survive in the world? Fucking no.

Eat shit and die, you libertarian fuckwad twat....

Re:I say BS

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a horrible feeling that 'or worse' figures quite significantly. Nice to see that you're still bodding around, by the way :-)

Re:I say BS

[Anonymous Coward]

Very insightful post, sir / madam. But it takes much less energy just to tell the fucktwad to eat shit and die than to try to reason with the Trump loving, knuckle dragging troglodyte piece of shit.....

Re:I say BS

[liquid_schwartz]

There has to be some middle ground if we look. For example it could be that we both take care of people while still requiring them to work. As long as there is trash on the streets or lonely people in retirement homes there is useful work that can be done. This allows us to take care of those who need help without having them become accustomed to being idle. Between welfare and unemployment we have an army of workers that could be used for much social good. As for those who refuse to work but still want a free lunch - too bad.

Re:I say BS

[Anonymous Coward]

"Once again, false. The maximum gravimetric energy density for li-air is comparable to gasoline (12kWh/kg vs. 13kWh/kg) in the charged state, and significantly better in the discharged state. Now, you don't ever achieve the maximum for a particular chemistry, or even close to it. But then again, for a given amount of EV range, you don't have to, as electric drivetrains are 3-5x more efficient than ICE drivetrains."

you do know that 12kWh/kg is not density, kg is weight, not volume

Re:I say BS

[Anonymous Coward]

You do know that "energy density" can be measured as either volumetric (kWh/m) or gravimetric (kWh/kg).

Re:I say BS

[Anonymous Coward]

^^^ That was supposed to be kWh/m^3, but the formatting stripped the superscript.

Re:I say BS

[Methadras]

Stop predicting, start doing. Really getting annoyed with these fantasy prediction articles.

Re:I say BS

[fisted]

Yes, cue the standard "Batteries haven't advanced!" stuff from people carrying around cell phones with significantly more amp hours in a smaller battery profile than the last generation phones that they owned.

Well in the eyes of the average smartphone zombie, what has really happened is "cell phone battery life" plummeting. My Nokia brick lasted weeks (plural) even when the battery was years old. Earlier this year it finally broke, I replaced it with a smartphone which, depending on usage, has a battery that lasts something between half a day and three days. So what is the obvious conclusion to arrive at? Battery tech isn't improving. Can't really blame them for that.

Re:I say BS

[Coren22]

It looks like TFS has this wrong though. Dendrites don't reduce a battery's capacity, but lifetime. Reducing the production of dendrites extends how long until the cell fails, which increases the total lifetime, not the capacity. This is good to make batteries that don't need to be replaced as often, which helps reduce the TCO of any battery powered device, including cars.

Also, for those doubting what you say above, I find the best thing is to point them at the facts:

https://www.quora.com/Is-it-tr...

Batteries have increased density quite well over time, it is just the push for smaller phones and faster processors eats the improvements so that it isn't as obvious to end users that the batteries are improving over time.

Progress!

[Tablizer]

and Note 7 II's will explode 10x brighter.

Re:Progress!

[Anonymous Coward]

and Note 7 II's will explode 10x brighter.

Well it will be a while before the tech moves from the laboratory to consumer devices, make that the Note 17.

I was concerned that we would no longer have the time to pull it from our pockets or drop our pants. :-)

Re:Progress!

[Rei]

Actually, that is a concern. Li-ion batteries don't have lithium metal in them unless something goes wrong. Lithium-air batteries always have lithium metal in them, by design.

In practice, you'll probably see a bit of the energy density given up in order to beef up the casing to prevent rupture/fire.

Thankfully, lithium-sulfur batteries don't use lithium metal, just lithium polysulfides. The max energy density isn't as high, but it's still quite good. They're already on the market, albeit in small quantities for applications that require the absolute highest rechargeable energy density (mainly aerospace).

Re:Progress!

[Anonymous Coward]

Samsung Note 7 ^10

Re:Progress!

[Anonymous Coward]

Real progress would be making them 10x more power efficient so that 10x the 'spolsions aren't even necessary. But, the laziness/lack of true innovation in a market as heavily saturated as the mobile electronics market dictates that eventually we'll all be walking around with miniature nuke plants on our hips. Though I guess that does solve the overpopulation problem with all the mass sterility having the brand new "Samsung Galaxy Note Plutonium Edition" will cause.

And eventually we'll solve that pesky "existence" problem with the "Samsung Galaxy Note Particle Accelerator Edition" with new "vacuum decay" technology installed.

Re:Progress!

[avandesande]

Instead of exploding the first day you get your Note, it will explode day ten.

Re:Progress!

[SeaFox]

I hear the military will be considering them for alternatives to the M84.

Re: Progress!

[Anonymous Coward]

Not funny. Not clever. It takes more than just stringing words together. Good try though. Better get back to the basement before sunrise.

Re: Progress!

[Anonymous Coward]

No, you'll just have to carry a 3kg fire extinguisher with your super-slim 30g phone.

Re:Progress!

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't increased energy density going to be a significant problem no matter what the tech is? I'm remind about what I've heard in the past about laser pistols: any way of storing energy densely enough to make them useful would probably be more effectively employed as an explosive instead of a power source. If I'm looking at the numbers correctly, Li-Ion batteries current have about an order of magnitude less energy density than gasoline (specific energy is two orders of magnitude less). This tech would get them to about equal. Is there a safe way to carry around a little gasoline tank in your pocket?

Huh

[Anonymous Coward]

If they are only predicting it, then i guess it will also take those batteries to appear in the world 10 times longer than predicted too.

Oh Boy

[sexconker]

10 times longer-lasting batteries? Given every other promised battery advancement over the last 50 years that hasn't come to fruition, we're going to be at infinite capacity batters when they all finally hit!

Re:Oh Boy

[tsa]

I remember when I was a young boy 40 years ago the batteries in my toys would last just an hour or so, and they would start to leak a very dirty brown liquid a few days after I had put them in my toys. Back then we hadn't even heard about rechargeable batteries, let alone Li-ion batteries. Nowadays I can play around with my Lego toys for a long time before my rechargeable, non-leaking batteries go flat. Li-ion batteries pack so much power into a small volume that they are able to explode all by themselves, or power a phone with the calculating capacities of a supercomputer from the 1990s for many hours on end. So reality doesn't support your claim that batteries haven't improved over the last 50 years.

Re:Oh Boy

[TheRealMindChild]

Things simply use less power these days. Long gone are the times you needed 2x D batteries to power a flashlight.

Re:Oh Boy

[Wookie Monster]

Batteries for Lego toys mostly power motors, not lights. Electric motor efficiency hasn't improved that much. 50 years ago, battery powered tools didn't exist at all because no battery could hold enough charge and still be portable.

Re:Oh Boy

[DamonHD]

Simply not true, see my earlier comment above.

Re:Oh Boy

[Anonymous Coward]

We certainly had rechargeable batteries in the 70's, how could you not have heard of them? My family had a cordless phone that sat on a recharging station.

The NiCad battery, heavily used in portable consumer electronics was invented in 1900. Having 1/4th the energy density of a LiIon battery only meant that you could only talk for an hour instead of five on your phone. A limitation certainly, but not a show stopper. I had NiCads in my radio shack 150-in-1 electronics kit and that was early 70's. I remember my dad bought a charger and tried to charge alkaline batteries ca. 1973.

Re:Oh Boy

[William Baric]

I'm 47. When I was a young boy, regular alkaline batteries were pretty much the same as what we have now. I did see some cheap batteries leak, but those were the exception. Almost no one was using rechargeable batteries, that's true, but it was because we didn't care about the environment and found buying batteries and changing batteries more convenient. As an example, in 80s I bought a Sony Walkman F-601 which came with a rechargeable battery giving me about 10 hours of tape and 40 hours of radio, but I still found recharging it a pain in the ass so I often used the external case to use two regular AA batteries instead.

Batteries did improve, but not as much as you make it look.

Re:Oh Boy

[Anonymous Coward]

10 times longer-lasting batteries? Given every other promised battery advancement over the last 50 years that hasn't come to fruition, we're going to be at infinite capacity batters when they all finally hit!

Then Apple will make their new phone slimmer and includ 1/10th the battery so your phone still only lasts a day...

Re:Oh Boy

[Anonymous Coward]

40 years ago people were working on todays batteries in the labs.
What replacement for lithium ion are they working on that is going to provide this 10 times improvement?
Advancement like that doesn't just fall out of the sky. It takes decades of research to bring to the market.

Re:Oh Boy

[chihowa]

50 years ago, battery powered tools didn't exist at all because no battery could hold enough charge and still be portable.

The first cordless electric drill was produced by Black and Decker in 1961, using NiCd batteries. That's 55 years ago.

Re:Oh Boy

[sexconker]

Bullshit. Nicads were prevalent in the 70s.

Re:Oh Boy

[sexconker]

He's bullshitting through and through. He's likely a millennial whose imaging a past that didn't exist so he can pretend battery tech has meaningfully progressed.
It hasn't.

Re:Oh Boy

[fnj]

And it was utter CRAP. The NiCads had miserable energy capacity. Battery capacity started to plummet after the first cycle. There was no provision for balance charging the individual cells, or cutting off the discharge when one of the cells discharged before the others and was driven into destructive reverse charge. Memory effect was just awful. Self discharge rate was prodigious.

Re:Oh Boy

[Anonymous Coward]

Try again, jackass. Having actually been there, I can state unequivocally that Ni-Cads weren't widely available in consmer-format cells until the mid-80's.

In the 70's even regular alkalines were exciting tech, with most consumer batteries being regular heavy duty Evereadies and the like.

Re:Oh Boy

[yuriklastalov]

He's bullshitting through and through. He's likely a millennial whose imaging a past that didn't exist so he can pretend battery tech has meaningfully progressed.
It hasn't.

God damn it, the Baby Boomers have failed us yet again! Is there anything their scourge hasn't touched?!

Re:Oh Boy

[tsa]

That's exactly why I used the Lego example.

Re: Oh Boy

[prefec2]

When you where a boy there where batteries in cars. The problem is in English you have not separate nouns for batteries who are rechargeable (akkumulator) and non rechargeable ones. However, they are different kinds if devices.

Re:Oh Boy

[Solandri]

Current Li-ion batteries only have about twice the energy density of NiCds. The reputation NiCds got for having lousy energy capacity was due to a memory effect. If you kept recharging the battery before it had been fully discharged, it "learned" the low charge state as its new zero state, and you lost that bottom portion of its capacity (due to crystalline growth).

Rechargeable batteries have increased about 2x in energy density in the last half century, and about 3.5x in the last century (from lead-acid to li-ion). So claims of a 10x increase in the near future are going to be met with a lot of skepticism.

Re:Oh Boy

[thegarbz]

Things simply use less power these days. Long gone are the times you needed 2x D batteries to power a flashlight.

No. Flashlights use less power these days. Kids electronic toys of 30-40 years ago either went duf duf duf (there few if any class-D amplifiers in toys, so they haven't increased in efficiency), or they went vreeeeeeeeeeeeeeuwwwww (and small DC motors powering moving toys haven't changed in efficiency in the best part of 50 years either). If you buy a little remote control car now you'll get the same 15minute run time as you did back then if you get a cheap one powered by AA or C cells.

But test your theory. Throw 3 C cells into a quadrocopter and see how long it flies. I'm going to place my bets on not at all because you won't be able to draw enough current out of the batteries to get it off the ground, but please let me know. You may get lucky and get it to above height if you throw it first, and then your batteries will be flat within a couple of minutes.

Re:Oh Boy

[TurboStar]

The reputation NiCds got for having lousy energy capacity was due to a memory effect. If you kept recharging the battery before it had been fully discharged, it "learned" the low charge state as its new zero state, and you lost that bottom portion of its capacity (due to crystalline growth).

You mean voltage depression. And it's from overcharging. Easily reversed by discharging the cells individually. Memory effect is something else.

Re:Oh Boy

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember when I was a young boy 40 years ago the batteries in my toys would last just an hour or so, and they would start to leak a very dirty brown liquid a few days after I had put them in my toys. Back then we hadn't even heard about rechargeable batteries, let alone Li-ion batteries. Nowadays I can play around with my Lego toys . . .

Do you have any idea how creepy that sounds?

Is this for real

[Feral Nerd]

If this pans out (have my doubts), even if the capacity is only increased five fold, there will be two kinds of car companies, those that go electric and those who go the way of camera manufacturers who bet on film cameras being the future and waited too long to go digital.

Re: Is this for real

[maxm]

+300 km range and 30 minutes charge time is probably enough that most of us will be satisfied. So in my book we are already there. Now all that will need to improve is the price, and that will come down radically in the next few years as production quadrouples.

Re: Is this for real

[Anonymous Coward]

Except one has to replace said battery every 5-10 years.

Re: Is this for real

[Anonymous Coward]

That was a lie fed to you by the right wing media funded by big oil. How many Priuses have needed new batteries? How many Volts? How many Tesla Roadsters or LEAFS? And these batteries will last 5-10 times longer.

Re: Is this for real

[avandesande]

1200 pounds and 15k dollars? At this point it seems like a bit of a kludge....

Re:Is this for real

[Anonymous Coward]

There will shortly be a battery tech that allows manufacture of capacitors on a flexible film substrate. These capacitors will have enough charge to run a truck for thirty miles (at first) and charge within a minute.
The person who invents this is already alive.
By the end of the 21st century all devices will be electric with the exception of military aircraft (no super-sonic electric engine tech) and rockets. The idea of charging anything will be ridiculous as the charge will last for months on anything smaller than a car and be recharged through micro-voltage trickle chargers and weak photo-voltaic panels.
What you are suggesting -- the end of the car manufacturers -- will not happen the way you seeit. The American auto manufacturers will do what they always do and just buy up small companies to get back into the game. Unfortunately what you are missing is the entire underpinning of the world's production and management infrastructure will disintegrate and be reformed in another way (no, not staying at home). It won't be so much that the gas powered car will die out as the idea of traveling to and from work and other local destinations will die out.
Hang on kid, things are about to get interesting.

Redundant

[Anonymous Coward]

About 2 times a year I read a story like that. Where are these so called awesome batteries ? Are they already in our appliances but they use them on really power hungry devices ? Kinda destroys the whole "battery life increase by 10 folds"... meh ...

Re:Redundant

[avandesande]

Can't wait until they come out with a cordless washing machine!

Re:Redundant

[Stewie241]

It does and it doesn't.

I wonder how long you could get an old school Nokia phone (thing monochrome display with only characters) to last these days if you replaced the battery with the exact same weight of current battery technology.

Or, take one of the earlier (say 80286) laptops and do the same.

On the one hand, you are right - as battery technology has improved, we've only increased how much power these devices use. On the other hand, these devices are infinitely more useful than what we had back then and the tradeoff is certainly worthwhile.

Re:Redundant

[Anonymous Coward]

"On the one hand, you are right - as battery technology has improved, we've only increased how much power these devices use."
Ah, rubbish. My original Powerbook 100 4/40, consuming ~17 Watts, lasted about two hours on its Lead-Acid Battery. This Macbook Air consumes less than three watts, and will go for more than 12 hours, and is immensely more capable.
But this is an Apple. Even back in the Powerbook 100 days, they did clever things like run the clock speed down, (To 200KHz), when possible. (Also note that the PB100 had Static RAM, which made instant Wake-From-Sleep plausible.) If one wants power high capacity, low power consumption, and long battery life, it is available, and will get more available in the future. But many, if not most people don't care about these things much.

As an aside, I'm a bit of a Tech Geek here. I've rewired and re-equipped my Sailboat with a lot of SOTA Gear, with one exception that I'll get to. The Mechless Stereo, feeding four speakers, consumes 1.1 Watts at normal listening levels. The Nav Station LED TV/Monitor consumes ~9 Watts. The VHF when squelched, 1 Watt. This Macbook Air. The one exception to the SOTA condition is the LED Lighting, with circuitry of my own design using some very carefully forward-matched Chips, which is Beyond SOTA. With everything lit, ~8 Watts, a good tenth of what the original equipment consumed, with better lighting. (The original design used Festoon Bulbs, in some fairly crappy fixtures.)

Because the Republicans hate the environment...

[Anonymous Coward]

they'll never let us have these batteries like they haven't let us have any of the other advancements that you read about weekly. Current batteries are just sad. My two year-old Dell Latitude E6440 went from nearly ninety minutes of battery life when new down to around twenty minutes now. It's just sad how quickly batteries die now.

I want capsule apartments

[Anonymous Coward]

Japan has 'capsule hotels'. I figured they could be cheap housing for the poor. However, crime, and other social problems can become important when lots of poor are concentrated. I don't know why, but history in NYC and Chicago seems to support the emergence of social problems.

Re: I want capsule apartments

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, like a morgue, but less cold!

Re:I want capsule apartments

[ShanghaiBill]

Japan has 'capsule hotels'. I figured they could be cheap housing for the poor.

Unless capsule hotels somehow magically cure mental illness and substance abuse, they will do little to solve "homelessness", which is a far deeper problem than mere lack of housing.

I have been to Tokyo many times, and have used the capsules. They are nice, and work well when people are quiet, clean, and respectful. They would not work well with typical homeless people, talking back to the voices in their heads, refusing to bathe, arguing and fighting with each other, and vandalizing the capsules.

I have also been "homeless" in America. When I first moved to Silicon Valley, I bought a used van for $4k, fixed it up, and lived in it for 2 years while I built up my savings to buy a house. My employer provided toilets, showers and a kitchen, and gave me permission to park overnight, which was a win-win because that meant I was available when the server crashed at 2am. I later sold the van for slightly more than I had paid for it. Now I am far from a typical homeless person, but I "solved" my homeless problem for a net cost of $0, and any halfway functional person could do the same. The real problem with homelessness is that most of them are not halfway functional, and any "cure" for homelessness needs to account for that.

Re:I want capsule apartments

[Anonymous Coward]

Put all the have-nots in one place and burn them. Problem solved. Seriously, the world does not need all that self-aware meat. A functioning civilization that does not want to waste most of its resources catering for oxygen breathers has to deal with the problem in a definitive way. Social cleansing by economic means (gentrification, corralling of undesirables away from the civilized areas, elimination of low-end jobs) is making progress but a Final Solution needs to be enacted. There should be no doubts that in the end a new, smaller, leaner, more beautiful society purged of all ugly people will exist, and there is no way the unwashed brutes can mount up any form of armed (futile, they are untrained and cannot organize) or unarmed (pointless, they will be destroyed) resistance. We are about to see the dawn of a new, greater, better civilization: the World of the One Percenters. It will happen. The dispossessed will soon be extinct.

Re:I want capsule apartments

[Anonymous Coward]

We have the equivalent of "capsule hotels" to house homeless people here in the US; we call them 'Jails'.

Not really joking, either. Once upon a time, vagrancy laws were used to prevent the homeless from lurking around a town. The person would be arrested, and then transferred to a workhouse, shelter, mental ward, prison, or released (usually elsewhere) as appropriate.
Then, in the 1970s, it became inhumane to get rid of the homeless, just because they were living in your parks and pissing on your lampposts. So now we have San Francisco.

Re:I want capsule apartments

[pslytely psycho]

Ahh, the memories...
I lived in a 1960 primer red GMC van in the Bay Area for just short of a year. My employer let me park and use the restrooms after hours (He got a bit of nighttime security out of it), we used memberships at the Y to shower.
Unfortunately moved out of the area just as the tech boom really hit due to a personal tragedy.
If I could of held onto the house another few years, I would have made a killing.....sigh....

Re:I want capsule apartments

[Applehu Akbar]

Japan has 'capsule hotels'. I figured they could be cheap housing for the poor. However, crime, and other social problems can become important when lots of poor are concentrated..

The problem is that we don't have Japanese poor. I have seen public housing in Tokyo, same architecture as our own welfare housing, but it's all clean and well maintained.

WARNING! OFFTOPIC!

[war4peace]

I've been seeing this unrelated thing for a long time (years) and maybe I should ask the question:
Is it just me, or Asian / Indian names appear more often than Western names when this type of articles are published?
By that, I mean "Researchers find/predict/invent/discover" articles.
Disclaimer: I'm Romanian.

Re:WARNING! OFFTOPIC!

[tsa]

Most electronics are made in the Far East, so I guess most battery research also goes on there.

Re:WARNING! OFFTOPIC!

[war4peace]

"says University of Michigan researcher Neil Dasgupta"
Michigan is not in the Far East, is it?

Re:WARNING! OFFTOPIC!

[Anonymous Coward]

If they keep importing refugees and Muslims, soon you won't be able to tell the difference...

Researchers + predict.... "cough"...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's been years I have been reading that kind of "prediction" with different technologies...

when?

[chengin]

I hear this story on and on from around 5 years. Nothing has emerged so far.

Re:when?

[chaosdivine69]

I think the technology exists (at least somewhere on this planet) but it's being held back to extract as much money as possible in the meantime on current technology. I have no direct evidence of this of course but when you think of what kinds of things humans can accomplish when they put their minds and copious amounts of funding toward it, you'd have to believe it's out there, even if only in a lab somewhere or in some military only role held in secret. This is going completely off topic (and I know I'll going all conspiracy theory and tin-foil hatter on ya) but consider the "non-battery tech" X-10 drone for example http://www.liveleak.com/view?i... and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... That sucker was swirling around the skies in 1953! It went over Mach 2 too. Re-read the year again and it will sink in. You don't just magically design and build something like that in a few years either. Stuff like that takes at LEAST 10 years to plan, build and test. Wikipedia says preliminary design was completed in 1951 and first flight was in 1953. So where are we now...approximately 1943 when they were drawing it up? Think about other technologies of that time frame...then it becomes more almost unicorn and Apple'ish magical! You could say similar things about German technologies of WW2. Like it's so far out there compared to earlier times and other countries offerings as to be mind blowing! Anyhow, back on topic...I'd be really surprised if 10x longer next-gen batteries have not existed for quite some time. DARPA funds crazy things like this all the time and they send people all over the world regularly to sit in on the latest University breakthroughs. If they don't have it, then no one has it - publicly at least.

That would be the real game changer

[SuperKendall]

Non-electric cars are simply more practical for most people not just because of range, but also charging time. Even Tesla Supercharger stations take way too long for most people to tolerate.

But if you have 1000 miles of range, suddenly it's much more practical to live with a very long charging time because you can wait a day or two to find a good charging solution - plus it would mean you could get somewhere faster than with a gas vehicle since you wouldn't have to stop on a long trip to fill up.

We'll see if the tech actually materializes in real life, but I really hope it does.

Re:That would be the real game changer

[Rick Schumann]

I wonder how much the development of room-temperature superconductors would improve battery technology (and supercapacitor technology, for that matter) and electric cars in general? Imagine if you could build electric motors with superconducting wire, for instance. How much more efficient would they be?

Re:That would be the real game changer

[tsa]

Long charging times are for most people only a problem on vacation. Normally people commute much shorter distances than the maximum modern electric cars can drive and can charge their cars at night. Long charging times are for most people only a problem on vacation, when they have time to wait half an hour for their car to get charged after driving for two hours.
I think this whole 'long charging time' thing is fed by Big Oil astroturfers.

Re:That would be the real game changer

[reboot246]

Vacations. Really? I know lots of people who drive more than 300 miles on their jobs. They're not commuting; they're working. For example, one of my friends reads meters once a month. The meters are radio read, but you still have to drive to within range. He drives 350 miles in that one day of reading. Stop to charge a battery? Hell, he doesn't even stop for lunch.

My job involves traveling long distances twice a week. I'm not commuting daily; I'm just going to where I'm going to be working during the week. If I have to be in another state 300 or 400 miles from home in a reasonable amount of time, I have to have a vehicle that can get me there. Sure, it would be nice to have an electric-powered pickup truck, but where do I find a motel in a small town in the middle of nowhere with charging capability?

Re:That would be the real game changer

[Anonymous Coward]

So because the two of you don't fit the demographic for an electric car the other few billion people on the planet can't have one?

Get over yourself.

Re:That would be the real game changer

[tsa]

I knew someone would start bitching about this. Just because "all those people" you know drive a lot every day doesn't meaneverybody does. Ever heard of statistics?

Re:That would be the real game changer

[floatpt]

Well clearly this tech wouldn't work for you in your specific profession yet. Maybe there are other people it might work for? Like almost everybody: http://www.statisticbrain.com/...

Hype

[avandesande]

We are already close to 1/5 for the theoretical limit for lithium ion batteries

Researchers predicted last 20 of 3 bat innovations

[JoeyRox]

Lots of hype yet batteries still suck.

I'll hold out for molecular distortion batteries

[Rick Schumann]

..or for dilithium power cells, or dark matter-based energy sources, or portable quantum singularity-based power sources. These 'chemical' batteries are so Last Thursday; totally uncool.

You know, if your smartphones had, I dunno, an OFF switch, so you could power them completely down when you're not using them, I'll bet you dollars to doughnuts that the battery would last longer. ;-) But, of course, then you wouldn't be able to be tracked and monitored 24/7/365, so of course the powers-that-be don't want to make them that way. A pity, that.

U of M? /eyeroll

[Anonymous Coward]

The only thing U of M is good for these days is getting rich celeb brats a liberal education. /signed Ann Arbor native who couldn't take it anymore.

Sure

[OneHundredAndTen]

They will give you minty fresh breath as well. Something advertised like this can be almost guaranteed to come to nothing.

Buy Axes for the Homeless (uh, hammers, too!)

[Geoffrey.landis]

...Axes are pretty cheap, and most homeless i see have those stashed....

I assume your post is trying to be humorous, right?

Really, on slashdot it is getting to be completely impossible to tell.

Assuming it is a kind of tongue-in-cheek dry humor: ok, LOL.

Re:Buy Axes for the Homeless (uh, hammers, too!)

[Stuarticus]

I think you're working from the crib sheet for the last election.

Normal is not what you think

[SuperKendall]

Long charging times are for most people only a problem on vacation. Normally people commute much shorter distances than the maximum modern electric cars can drive and can charge their cars at night.

I love how you say "normally" when the vast number of people who have cars live in apartments where it may not be "normal" to have a plug anywhere near the car at night.

Is your goal to have electric cars for only the elite? Or for EVERYONE? If electric cars are to break out of a tiny niche for the rich they have to work for people who do not own homes.

Re: Normal is not what you think

[Anonymous Coward]

There are many streets in Europe with only on-street parking, and it is difficult to envisage how charging stations will work in this context without them getting in the way of foot traffic, being vandalised, or being run into. Hopefully this can be solved, though.

Re: Normal is not what you think

[TheMeuge]

I suspect that you unknowingly confirmed that the desire of the left is to further dependency of the people on either the government or the elites for everything by making home ownership a luxury. Nothing like a society of renter's to be kicked around...

Re: Normal is not what you think

[Anonymous Coward]

and it is difficult to envisage how charging stations will work in this context without them getting in the way of foot traffic, being vandalised, or being run into.

For you maybe.

It is pretty damn easy to envisage a couple of concepts.

And considering how much easier it is to make a vandal resistant charger solution than a vandal proof windscreen that already is there it should be trivial to realize that vandalism is a non-issue.

Re:Normal is not what you think

[WalksOnDirt]

I love how you say "normally" when the vast number of people who have cars live in apartments where it may not be "normal" to have a plug anywhere near the car at night.

It will take a long time, but what we need are construction rules that require a parking place with access to power for each new apartment. Some effort has already gone into this but it's still just beginning.

Re: Normal is not what you think

[Anonymous Coward]

There's vandal proof windscreens? Tell my friend that who had theirs smashed out just the other day. I've had mine smashed out three times. It's not exactly rare for peoples windows on their cars to be smashed.

Re:Normal is not what you think

[Anonymous Coward]

I love how you say "normally" when the vast number of people who have cars live in apartments where it may not be "normal" to have a plug anywhere near the car at night.

Is your goal to have electric cars for only the elite? Or for EVERYONE?

Combine self-driving with automated charging stations. Problem solved.

Re: Normal is not what you think

[dwillden]

The vandal resistant windscreen does exist, it's a formed sheet of diamond plate steel with titanium reinforcement struts. Not very useful if you actually want to drive anywhere but is very resistant to vandals trying to break it. Though it does tend to gather graffiti instead. Early experiments with electrifying it look good for resolving that issue, but long life batteries for powering the system in high crime areas take up the entire passenger compartment. ;)

quid pro quo

[xushi]

And phones / laptops / etc will need 10 times the power, bring it down to the same situation we're in right now, and were 2, 5, 10 years ago... Big whoop..

Re:I'll hold out for molecular distortion batterie

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't need to shut the phone off. While idle (screen off), a typical smartphone should last around 5 days, maybe longer, if not actively used. If not, it's either due to poor cellular reception or background processes consuming processor time.

Re: Because the Republicans hate the environment..

[Anonymous Coward]

How did you get 90 minutes out of it? I guess you're not a software dev or your system has a slower CPU. I have the higher resolution screen, fastest i7, and a 2 TB 7200 RPM drive so I understand I'm an edge-case, but when compiling and running unit tests, I was lucky to get 40 minutes when my battery was new. Now that it hit three years, it's down to about seven minutes.

Re:I'll hold out for molecular distortion batterie

[Anonymous Coward]

You're missing the point, fool. Your 'smartphone', when in the state you think of as 'idle', still is able to be tracked and to surveil you at the behest of corporations and governments. Also they can turn it back on remotely. Only if it's unpowered can you actually have privacy from snooping.

Compact Florescents would like a word

[Anonymous Coward]

I seem to recall some time ago that Compact Florescent bulbs would be the future and last upwards of 5years. Since those initial promises I have yet to find a CF bulb that lasts any longer than a standard incandescent bulb. Plus the CF bulbs are chock full of mercury ..... so you can't even throw them away tho I'm more than sure most people still do.... which makes them a small to medium scale environmental disaster.

Can't wait to see how these next gen batteries manage to over promise and ultimately disappoint.

Re:Compact Florescents would like a word

[thinkwaitfast]

Regular fluorescent bulbs are chock full of mercury too. I've never understood why CF is singled out on this point. I have all LED now, but cf was a lifesaver when going off grid.

Re:Compact Florescents would like a word

[Anonymous Coward]

I have CFL globes more than 5 years old, you are either lying, have bad power or only bought cheap crap globes

Re:Compact Florescents would like a word

[ledow]

Fuck knows what shit it is that you're buying, but there's a CF replacement bulb in every socket in my house and I've literally never changed one.

The outdoors one is on from dusk to 11pm all year round and is a CF. Still going.

In fact, all that's happened is that I've started replacing the CFs with LED lights - and same thing there. Not one in the bin yet. In fact I've still got a box of 20 LED bulbs which are just waiting for the CFs to die but I don't get up on a chair to change them unless they do and NOT ONE has. In the same time, I've replaced 12 halogens and about 7 incandescents.

And I'm using the cheapest thing on Amazon that I can buy in bulk and is supplied in a direct-replacement for an existing bulb-shape.

Hell, I even replaced all the tiny little high-power halogens that were popular in light fittings with bigger-but-same-output LEDs that take 1/50th the power.

I honestly don't know what junk you're using or what's wrong with your house electrics, but CF's do what they claim, and so do LEDs.

Re:Compact Florescents would like a word

[thegarbz]

I seem to recall some time ago that Compact Florescent bulbs would be the future and last upwards of 5years. Since those initial promises I have yet to find a CF bulb that lasts any longer than a standard incandescent bulb.

And they do last just fine. I'm going to say that either you're buying them from Aliexpress for 10c per pop (pun intended), or that you're putting them in fittings which concentrate heat around the electronics. Personally the only CFL that's failed on my was one I dropped while getting out of the car.

Plus the CF bulbs are chock full of mercury ..... so you can't even throw them away tho I'm more than sure most people still do.... which makes them a small to medium scale environmental disaster.

Can't wait to see how these next gen batteries manage to over promise and ultimately disappoint.

If by chock full of mercury you mean 800micrograms, of which 70nanograms is in a gaseous phase then sure. If this troubles you don't ever eat fish as you will ingest the same dose of mercury if you eat a nice healthy tuna salad. Fish is CHOCK FULL of mercury by your definition and they are (a tasty) environmental disaster.

There's no environmental disaster in CFLs. Even if you just throw them in the bin there's no environmental disaster. If however you take them to a hardware store for recycling they can recover approximately 100% of all the solid mercury in the glass and phosphor, and you can feel good about the environment while eating your healthy tuna salad.

Re:Compact Florescents would like a word

[sandmaninator]

Well, I guess you've never bought bulbs from "Feit electric". I am a cheapskate and so, I've gone with the lowest-cost brand (Feit). Both their CFs AND LEDs fail after not much time. Mystery to me how they remain in business.

Re:Compact Florescents would like a word

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck knows what shit it is that you're buying, but there's a CF replacement bulb in every socket in my house and I've literally never changed one.

I'm using the standard "junk" from Amazon/Costco/whatever, and I see a similar problem. I don't know if they really are junk, or if the power in my area is just that dirty that it destroys bulbs. Anything of value is on a UPS surge suppressor/filter (I use Tripplite a lot), but incandescent bulbs only last a couple months. I get a year or two out of CFLs and/or LEDs. I've since stopped using incandescents, but I finally started putting dates on every CFL/LED bulb installed so I can get a better sense of how long they are actually lasting and maybe what's killing them.

Re:Compact Florescents would like a word

[ledow]

Then it's nothing to do with the bulbs. If incandescents barely last a couple of months, you have bigger issues.

I'd honestly suggest you get a whole house filter because you're just in a really bad shape, electrically. That's not the fault of any kind of bulb, and you're probably destroying all kinds of hardware.

To be honest, a lighting circuit can generally be UPS'd quite easily and has more than one advantage (less bulbs blowing, and a backup lighting in the case of a blackout). If you replace with LEDs and UPS, you can probably run your lighting for a couple of days off even a cheap one.

What you need to find is what's killing them, though, because that's damaging all kinds of stuff down the line. I'd suggest over-voltages and surges.

That's not what 10-fold means

[Anonymous Coward]

The summary and headline are in disagreement.

10-fold = (2^10)*original capacity. 1024*100 percent increase is a 102,400% improvement.
10-times longer is a 1000% improvement.

That's a two orders of magnitude difference.

Re:That's not what 10-fold means

[newcastlejon]

p>10-fold = (2^10)*original capacity. 1024*100 percent increase is a 102,400% improvement.

That's not what tenfold means. Saying something increases tenfold is the same as saying ten times (10x or 1000%).

Re: I'll hold out for molecular distortion batteri

[Anonymous Coward]

You are the fool. Checking back on your anonymous comment. Get a life. No one cares what you say. Your paranoid thoughts do. It matter. Do us all a favor and turn of the device you use to write this. For errr.. stopping snooping. Not because you are a dumb ass.

Re:I'll hold out for molecular distortion batterie

[Anonymous Coward]

Your 'smartphone', when in the state you think of as 'idle', still is able to be tracked...

Well, duh. How the fuck do you expect to receive calls if the system is not tracking your phone???

Lithium+Sulfur what could be wrong with that?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you thought the present generation of batteries were bad when they burnt wait until we get lithium sulfur batteries. Every car crash is going to be a hazardous materials site.

Re:Lithium+Sulfur what could be wrong with that?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's why we need autonomous cars, they'll never crash!

It can be solved - the solution is Hydrogen

[SuperKendall]

I've noticed that also in the past when traveling and staying with friends in Europe.

That's why I still think the future for most electric cars will end up being hydrogen, not battery power - though with advancements like these battery may be a higher percentage, especially if you could go somewhere just one day a week to spend a half hour charging.

Re:I'll hold out for molecular distortion batterie

[Anonymous Coward]

You're missing the point, fool. Your 'smartphone', when in the state you think of as 'idle', still is able to be tracked and to surveil you at the behest of corporations and governments. Also they can turn it back on remotely. Only if it's unpowered can you actually have privacy from snooping.

I use a Chinese phone, why would the Chinese government want to monitor me or have an interest in sharing my data with my government?

It's only an issue if you by into the regular propaganda that your own country is the bestest and makes the bestest manufacturing.

again

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm 57,I have heard exactly the same thing many,many times,apart from lithium bats,I'm still waiting for this massive leap in bat technology.
I'll believe it when it's been on the market at affordable prices for five years ,until then,I'm not holding my breathe but will yawn a lot...

Why not concerntrate development on primary batter

[somename]

Maybe it's not necessarily easier to develop higher density primary batteries as supposed to rechargeable ones, but it might not be a bad idea to approach density problem from a couple different approaches. Once batteries can approach 2-3 kwh/kg, 3-4 banks of say 10kg battery packs should be fairly easy to swap, negating charging problems. 30-40 kg battery packs should give similar range to gas burning cars, and they should be fairly easy to build out distribution network using existing gas stations. Of course efficient recycling also should be worked out.

Re:I'll hold out for molecular distortion batterie

[Vadim Makarov]

I'd like to have the physical switch. Too bad no mainstream handset is going to include one. So, tape over battery contacts will have to do.

Distance from New York to Denver in toothbrushes

[khz6955]

"allowing electric cars to drive from New York to Denver without recharging."

How many football pitches/swimming pools/toothbrushes is that equivalent to laid end to end?

Not Practical

[SuperKendall]

You can't just handwave away the massive cost of proving a charger per parking space, nor even the cost of an outlet per parking space along with the electrical lines buried capable of having every single parking space drawing enough current to charge...

Even if that were practical what exactly do you imagine will happen to someone's personal charging cables or equipment left unattended overnight. Thieves are taking copper pipe out of buildings with the water still on...

Re:Not Practical

[WalksOnDirt]

A parking spot should be well under the cost of an apartment. Use aluminum instead of copper for the wiring, or once standardized, put in wireless charging.

If your plumbing getting stolen is a problem you have bigger problems than I can handle. Move out if you can.

Show me

[AndyKron]

I keep hearing a lot but I don't see a lot.

Re: I'll hold out for molecular distortion batteri

[Anonymous Coward]

Haha, you're a dumb cuck who is just realizing he's got a government-branded buttplug up his ass 24/7/365 and is so addicted to his silly little 'smartphone' that he can't bring himself to put it away! LOL you sure drank the kool-aid didn't you? Now you're stuck and the government and nosy corporations know everything about you and your pathetic cuck life and you can't even do anything about it! Better just kill yourself, it's the only way out you have left.

Re: I'll hold out for molecular distortion batteri

[Anonymous Coward]

Because they want to sell you more stuff.

Abuse

[Anonymous Coward]

So these batteries will give apple the ability to make their phones the size and durability of a small piece of cardboard?

Oh JOY, because the phones aren't fucking small and thin enough already.

I hate these cunts, they're only doing it because they can charge so much money for it and the small/thin construction makes the device both hard to repair and extremely disposable.

Re:I'll hold out for molecular distortion batterie

[tsa]

I'm getting pretty fed up with conspiracy idiots like you.

Advertisement

[prefec2]

Typical overconfident US advertising. The best part, the word could implies that it could also be zero. It won't be worse as in that case we would use present designs.

Furthermore, 10 times longer is not precise. It could also indicate more charge discharge cycles. So they should have said, the capacity could be 10 times higher.

Re:Distance from New York to Denver in toothbrushe

[Anonymous Coward]

"allowing electric cars to drive from New York to Denver without recharging."

How many football pitches ... is that equivalent to laid end to end?

Unless you're driving one of those big sit on mowers I'm not sure that's really important. And if you are driving one of those big sit on mowers to cut the grass on a football pitch I suspect you're fairly close to a charging socket anyway.

And, really, no Wooosh required!

Yup, better batteries are right around the corner.

[gestalt_n_pepper]

And always will be.

Mystery solved

[drew_kime]

And I only have to reorder a few things.

Mystery to me how they remain in business. ~~ I am a cheapskate and so, I've gone with the lowest-cost brand (Feit).

People like you, that's how.

Longer than?

[BrendaEM]

Another referenced comparison for the pile.

Re:Longer than?

[BrendaEM]

err, unreferenced.

okay

[Anonymous Coward]

then phones will consume 10x more

Re:I'll hold out for molecular distortion batterie

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not a 'conspiracy theory' if there's documentable evidence supporting it, and we're all getting tired of people like you who slide through life with blinders on, ignoring and denying things that are right in front of your face. Or are you one of those "safety at any cost" idiots? If you are then why don't you just go kill yourself, or at least stop voting, so you don't keep helping muck everything up for the rest of us?

Not an improvement in energy density

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually read the article - I know, sacrilege, right?

This is about controlling dendrite growth during charge-discharge cycles to improve battery durability, not energy density. This would be great for cars, so you don't have to replace the battery pack after 50k miles, and similarly great for grid-scale storage if wide-scale solar and/or wind is going to take off, but for your phone, don't hold your breath. The phone makers would love higher energy density, so they can make ever smaller and lighter phones, but they don't want a battery that will last 10,000 charge cycles, as that would eat into their planned obsolescence.

Re:I'll hold out for molecular distortion batterie

[Rick Schumann]

Well guess what, friend? It's not the 1950's anymore, and by the way the America you thought you grew up in? It never existed in the first place. The only difference today is that the too-nosy-for-their-own-good government types, and corporations, now have much better technology to help them stick their little brown noses into things that are none of their business, and most people are carrying it around with them 24/7/365. This is the world we live in now. There's still time to change it so we're not under a microscope every moment of every day, but that won't happen if everyone just sticks their heads in the sand and pretends it's not real.

In Other News

[Anonymous Coward]

Researchers predict that commercially viable fusion power will be available by the end of the week. They also predict that a general-purpose Artificial Intelligence will be available by the end of the month, and that GNU/Hurd version 1.0 will be available Real Soon Now (even Researchers aren't dumb enough to put a date on that one).

Re:I'll hold out for molecular distortion batterie

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey dumbass, how about your read this legitimate, non-conspiracy-theory news story, then come back and claim it's all paranoid delusions?
https://consumerist.com/2016/10/25/att-makes-money-mining-selling-phone-use-data-to-police-nationwide/

Oh and by the way: Don't think for a single second that they're not doing even more than what that article says they've been doing. Oh, and also by the way, articles like that one are just the tip of the proverbial iceberg.

..and again: If you're one of those 'I'm not doing anything wrong, so I have nothing to fear' idiots, then you are clearly missing the point and are also part of the gods-be-damned problem.

Battery Moore's law? [Re:I say BS]

[Tablizer]

There is no observed equivalent of Moore's Law for batteries. If there is, it's a rather shallow curve compared to chips. That may be great for the Class of 2150.