New breakthrough in Li-Air

[GSP]

Cars would be small potatoes. With that capacity, you could do electric aircraft, trucks, boats, heavy equipment, etc. ...

Reminds me of Elon Musk saying that everything except, ironically, rockets, will be electric.

GSP

[VolkerP]

The last few posts show why every "battery breakthrough" announcement is picked up feverishly. Most people are aware of the consequences of a big advancement in power storage, though not in every possible application (and the new ones arising). It is Science Fiction becoming reality.

Let me make some additions:
- electric planes
- grid storage
- uninterruptible/emergency power supply
- satellites (weight savings!)
- shipping containers full of charge to remote locations or disaster areas
- powering autonomous devices like environmental sensor equipment, drones, etc.

Sadly, most breakthrough announcements happen on the lab stadium and focus on one element of a battery (anode, cathode, electrolyte). The statement continues with feasibility of large-scale economical production. Then silence sets in.

[Grendal]

Instead, they would produce cars that can do 500mi, and use the rest of the improvement to reduce the cost of the car.

And weight. Let's not forget that EV's are currently heavy. A little lighter would be nice. And more efficient...

[dsm363]

This would be awesome. I agree, the need for a 1,600-3,000 mile EV (10X Model S) is very small but just the free press and the 'wow' factor from a 500 mile Model S (real world range at 65 mph) would be enough to win over almost everyone. There will always be people who say they need to drive 1,000 miles in a day or just hate EVs or anything green but most people not already in the boat just worry about range if it's their only car. 500 miles would take care of most of the reasonable people. Didn't IBM say this sort of thing is a decade off though (it's always 10 years away though).

[jerry33]

Well, I'd like 700, but 500 is close enough that I won't sweat it.

[dsm363]

It sounds like if this technology ever comes around, they could accommodate that if there was enough demand. The 300, 500, 700 mile Model S for example. Wonder how many years or decades this kind of breakthrough is away. It seems we're more likely to see slow, steady increases than any kind of 10X breakthrough.

[daniel]

I think a 1,000-mile car would get me through my summer hiking trip to Canada without having to charge while there. Typically, with the stinker, I leave the car parked at a heliport's parking area, well away from the building, while I'm off at the hiking lodge, so no charging. With a 500-mile car I could make the trip up, but I'd have to arrange for some place to leave it while I'm off hiking, where the cord is not going to be stolen, and someone to check to make sure the charging is not interrupted, and someone to drive me to and from the heliport. Doable, but a colossal pain in the neck. But a thousand miles of range, and I could just charge at home for the whole trip.

I don't expect that to be a reality in my lifetime. Mostly because I don't expect these batteries to be commercialized before I'm too old to hike, and also because, as noted above, they probably would use the technology to decrease the price of the car, and would not see a market for that much range.

[Teslawisher]

The other thing to consider is what kind of cost would be associated with these new (if it happened) 500, 700, 10000, 3000 mile battery packs. They don't mention potential cost per wh in the article. Might they be so expensive initially that they wouldn't be economically prudent to put in production vehicles initially? So, even if it became a reality tomorrow, it might be another 10 years before its price makes it possible to put it in, which by that time would be, a mass-market Tesla vehicle.

[curiousguy]

I love Li-air. However it will necessitate an open battery. Even with tetraglyme as solvent, and even if superoxide free-radical reactions are diminished enough (which i seriously doubt and expect a correction publication soon, just like the first time around) it will still evaporate over the course of years of usage.

Also, the article is misleading at the end : "

For comparison, current lithium technology is at around 150Wh/kg, and the most promising hardware that has been announced might be able to double that" . If "can handle up to 13,500Wh/kg of electrode" then Li/S can be estimated to deliver 3340 Wh/kg electrode and this one is a closed system and does not suffer from the formidable free-radical problem (albeit it has its own issues)