My brother passes this along:
Bill Nye The Science Guy told me (the only thing he ever said to me): "If you want to get really rich, invent a better battery." At the time, we were looking under the hood of a display model of a hybrid car in the Los Angeles Federal Building downtown.
Presumably the world will beat a path to MIT sometime soon...
Researchers at MIT have developed a new type of lithium battery that could become a cheaper alternative to the batteries that now power hybrid electric cars.Until now, lithium batteries have not had the rapid charging capability or safety level needed for use in cars. Hybrid cars now run on nickel metal hydride batteries, which power an electric motor and can rapidly recharge while the car is decelerating or standing still.
But lithium nickel manganese oxide, described in a paper to be published in Science on Feb. 17, could revolutionize the hybrid car industry -- a sector that has "enormous growth potential," says Gerbrand Ceder, MIT professor of materials science and engineering, who led the project.
It's safer, cheaper, and recharges faster than the lithium cobalt oxide batteries that power cell phones and the like. Still, I hate batteries on principle... let's just skip them and go straight to Mr. Fusion.
I, too, hate batteries on principle. Being in the Information Technology field, my biggest personal gripe is with laptop batteries. I've worked with many a laptop in my day from just about every manufacturer. None of them have proved to be anything I'd trust. The batteries develop a memory that often no BIOS battery retraining utility can undo. Sure, the battery technology is often identical between laptop manufacturers, but how the laptop draws power from the battery is indeed something that falls within the purview of laptop manufacturers. I think they're making the best of a bad battery technology situation. Intel's Centrino stuff (Pentium M processor, chipset, and integrated wireless) is a nice step forward, but it still doesn't cut it with me.
Mobile laptop carts for an instant computer lab? Ha.. keep dreaming. Nothing will wear out the AC power connector, ruin the laptop batteries, and fray the AC adapter's wires faster.
People don't buy a laptop with a really fast processor only to have its speed cut in half simply because the laptop is running on battery power.
If I never had to use a battery-powered device again, I'd be thrilled.
While battery powered cars might make the environmentalists happy, what happens when those batteries start to wear out and you need to dispose of them? One giant land fill of decomposing, leaking batteries.
Yay! Chalk one for the environmentalists.
Meanwhile, let's continue the path to fusion power...it sound like our best bet at this point.