MAMEWorld Forums - The Loony Bin - Re: Go look at teslamotors' blog...

> > don't forget the plethora of articles on using nanotubes and varying uses of
> > graphite/silicon in that subject...
>
> Yeah. They seem to have had fairly significant trouble productizing all this stuff
> though. Cell phone makers alone could make someone who had a real shippable
> breakthrough seriously rich.

Well I'd say we actually have seen a battery revolution in our lifetime. Bringing NiMH chemistry down from aerospace scale to AA and even AAA scale was revolutionary, and we've seen steady improvements in capacity, internal resistance and discharge curve since. Lithium ion and lithium polymer were definitely revolutionary in terms of the improvement in capacity per unit mass. They seemed almost magical when they first appeared, and they're even better now than they were in the late '90s. Primary cells have been steadily improving at the same time. Alkaline manganese cells have higher capacity, lower self-discharge and lower internal resistance than ever. Disposable lithium cells gave a big jump in capacity over previously available technologies, at the expense of somewhat poorer temperature characteristics. Sure, batteries still can't challenge the energy density of diesel, but they're come a long, long way in the time we've been watching.