On 3/4/20 3:12 PM, Martin Gregorie wrote:
On Wed, 04 Mar 2020 18:46:18 +0000, Dave Walsh wrote:

Really? You think "progress being made on electric cars and their
batteries"? Sure there are a lot of them out there but the battery
technology they use has been around for years. Lots of fancy batteries
in development labs and in Universities but none in any commercially
available vehicle.


A new technology has just been announced, which uses sodium anodes and a
lithium-glass electrolyte. It claims greater durability, much less
flammability, and a considerably longer life than Lithium-ion.

Normally I'd go off muttering abouyt pipe-dreams except that the lead
researcher is John Goodenough. He has an excellent track record in this
field since he was in the team that developed the lithium-ion battery,
and shared the Nobel Prize for Chemistry for that. Says this tech could
be commercially successful in 5 - 10 years. The story is he

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/03/02/
canadian_firm_to_develop_goodenoughs_new_glass_bat tery/



Yep, that's been making the rounds again recently. Announced in 2016,
supposed to be commercially viable in another 5-10 years. The good
thing is Goodenough is 97 years old, and unlikely to be around to take
criticism if it doesn't pay off.

In the mean time, we've got lithium-sulfer, lithium-carbon dioxide,
lithium graphene, the mysterious IBM seawater battery, semi-solidstate
lithium, and others to look forward to. Which one will deliver the
miraculous increase in capacity in a couple years that the electric
plane makers keep talking about?

I see the Germans burned up their Lilium eVTOL "jet" prototype a few
days ago, 36 ducted fans on something targeted as an electric flying
taxi cab. If they're going to keep burning up prototypes, maybe they
should do it in Greta Thundberg's back yeard, so she can experience what
a fully involved lithium battery fire actually smells like.