Or, better yet, they could provide the same range in smaller, lighter vehicles with less resource use.
From the article:
"Moreover, the silicon-gel electrolyte system demonstrated ion conductivity comparable to conventional batteries while achieving a remarkable 40 percent increase in energy density. This represents a significant leap forward in battery technology, offering a practical solution ready for immediate application."
So, same energy output, lower weight, similar range. Would be good if this soon becomes a drop in replacement option for older EVs that are nearing EOL on their batteries and require new ones anyway.
Why would we do that? I want to be able to sit in a car for 10 hours, pee in a bottle, and eat sandwiches I prepared ahead of time. This is an excellent way to spend most of a waking day. Who wants to do something as silly as getting out to stretch?
Article states the use of an electron beam to enable this. So not currently scalable, but still a seemingly significant result.
Oh I know, just put it in an oven. Trust me, I saw one video on impossible blue LEDs, I know what I'm talking about.
A microwave oven? According to some YouTube videos, Apple had this tech in their phones years ago.
Can you expand on this? There used to be multiple electron beams in every house in America.
Ok, maybe it's possible that they aren't using a very focused electron beam, but usually when scientists think about using an electron beam they mean something inside of a machine like an SEM or e-beam lithograph. These only operate on small areas.
If an unfocused beam (and therefore lower energy density) can be used, then this could likely be scaled more easily. Even if a focused beam is needed, scaling may still be possible, but will likely require additional developments to create that process.
All of the beams in my house have electrons
I wish people would stop obsessing so much over range. Once we have decent charging infrastructure in place and people overcome all the FUD, this will simply cease to be relevant.
Some people don't want to feel like they have to stop every hour for 15-20 minutes. If I'm going on a long road trip I'm fine driving 300-400 miles without stopping. I'm probably a minority but I'm sure I'm not the only one.
You're certainly not the only one but you're also being grossly irresponsible. Sufficient breaks are essential for staying attentive. Not stopping for five or six hours is just asking for disaster. Just think about what you're going to feel like if you killed someone because you fell asleep at the wheel.
Edit: and as per usual, lots of downvotes but no counterargument
Gonna upvote you, anyone who isnt taking regular breaks on long trips is asking for trouble. This is true of anything we do. No one here is going to argue we should work for 5-8 hours without a break.
They only make driving lessons 45 minutes because any longer and you start to lose concentration.
Truck drivers have to take breaks every 4.5 hours for 45 minutes.
When studying they recommend a 15 minute break every 45 minutes
When learning in school lessons are 45 minutes to an hour due to concentration lapsing and you get a break in the middle of the day.
If you are being downvoted its only by people who dont think about what you are saying or they think they are superhuman and the normal limitations of human beings dont apply to them.
Yea....no. Most of the USA is rural areas, range is a huge deal.
Exactly. Ideally in cities and surrounding suburbs we would want public transportation and no cars. Cars should really be reserved for the more rural places anyway.
You just need a charging station every hundred kilometres or so, that's perfectly doable even in sparsely populated areas. In fact, this kind of infrastructure is far easier to roll out than gas stations.
I'd rather not refuel in -20F weather on a single trip. Add in a trailer and a road trip becomes a charging trip with intermittent driving.
I drive 82 miles a day on average according to my tracking, but that frequently involves days of 400+ miles. And since I drive in hill country and require air conditioning most of the years I know the range estimates are wildly optimistic versus real-world performance.
And charging a car isn't like filling up with gas. It's not a 3-minute stop. If a car can get me as far as I'm willing to drive in a day, then an overnight charge seems like an option.
But even then, since I'm a renter and always will be because of the shit going on with housing I can't get a fast charger.
All of this is to say that it's not 1 issue. It's all of them. Range, charging speeds, and availability of chargers ALL have to be addressed and essentially 100% reliable before I can risk owning an all-electric vehicle.
I always find it amusing how people go through such mental contortions to justify not buying an EV. If you don't want an EV, just don't buy one. Nobody cares.
That's the thing. I DO want one.
But there's still significant drawbacks, and some of them are being completely ignored. The renter issue is HUGE.
FWIW I've had an EV for four years now and I rent an apartment with no charger too. There have been times when finding a charger has been inconvenient. But I've never looked back. None of those problems are insurmountable and most of the time it's a minor inconvenience at worst.
Once we have decent charging infrastructure in place
I think part of the range anxiety thing is that buyers think of their worst trip, target than the average trip.
On average, Canadians commute 8.7km to work. Those who commute for more than 60 minutes are averaging 40km. For these trips, drivers don't need charging infrastructure beyond what they have at home. (And yes, public transit would be an even better option)
There are always outliers, and every time this comes up, people talk about how far they drive on road trips and vacations. Those are not normal use, and they should probably be handled by renting an ICE car.
1k mile or kilometer range? Which is it? I'm inclined to believe it's kilometers. Time to read the article, I suppose. It's enticing either way.
A bit misleading but yes, 1000km is what they are talking about. Also the article doesn't address scalability.
Well, there's a lot the article doesn't address. I can say this with complete confidence, even as someone who hasn't read the article
Edit: don't freak out, I eventually did read the whole article. Every word. And I was right.
You READ it? What kind of madlad are you?!?!
They demonstrated 40% increase in energy density.
The stuff about the range appears to be simply applying that percentage to common EV ranges, which is nonsense. It’s probably more likely that an increase in energy density would be used to decrease battery size, leading to cheaper and lighter EVs
The title says “1000 miles”, the the subtitle right below says “moving closer to 1000 kilometers” which is only 621 miles and pretty close to what we already could do with a ridiculously big battery in a Lucid Air or Tesla (if they didn’t bother with the plaid speed bullshit and just build for single motor range).
Stupid editorial work for maximum click bait.
If anyone cares, I think this is the research paper. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/advs.202305298
Thanks for the source. I wish I understood it better
This research was focused on the lithium battery anode. Ideally we could just put a chunk of lithium in there but the stripping and deposition chemistry doesn't work well long term. Modern batteries use graphite instead. But of course you waste a significant amount of cell volume and weight with all of that carbon, and the potential is lower than Li metal. Alloying Li with silicon gets you properties more similar to Li.
So this paper talks about their efforts to make LiSi more viable as an anode. They gave it a coating to protect it from electrolyte side reactions and created a new gel electrolyte formation reaction. The capacity they report isn't remarkably higher than what's out there now since the cathode is the heaviest part of the cell.
As to the results I do have to say 60% capacity retention after 200 cycles is not nearly good enough for real world use. And I have no clue where they got the "1000 mile range" headline from.
The problem is we can't keep the same resources waste up. Lower range and smaller cars is what is needed. The perfect car of the future would be a one-seater that is as small and light as a electric velomobile (~70kg). Build a few millions of them and replace all cars in a city with those. Ideally self driving and as a robo-taxi, but even without the self driving this would be good. Of course cars isn't really that high on the list for climate change.
But as a civilization we are simply not an intelligent species.
A single person vehicle will never be the solution because families exist. No parent would want their kids in a separate vehicle.
I wish my kids would have separate vehicle sometimes. I'm sick of playing eye spy with people that can't spell.
how do we magically get goods to and from?
grocery store trips?
what about other items from the store such as TVs?
what about families?
have you seen what is required daily or weekly for a baby?
what about a Micro Center trip?
https://www.velomobileworld.com/
not intelligent to be able move people and objects around?
travel over 3,000 miles every few months for work out of state and could not see myself in that taking naps at a rest stop comfortably
with such out of touch comments the petrol conundrum may never be solved
Consider something like 50% bigger than a podbike.
3000 miles is not something we as a society should accommodate to travel by car. The whole problem is that everyone thinks we can keep doing the same lifestyle just with zero carbon. We simply can't. We need to change how we live and work.
That would go a long way towards solving the range anxiety barrier. 1000km is close to the maximum that same people can do in a single day. Yes, you could push further in a day in a pinch, but not comfortably unless you're rotating drivers. It's pretty close to the limits enforced on long haul truck drivers in Canada or the US (depends on speed limits and traffic density and a few other things).
gasoline cars and motorcycles will be missed, like analog film cameras and quarter inch reel tape. people will imagine what it must have been like when cars were bad ass.
Lots of electric cars outrun their dinosaur juice powered counterparts, but do feel free to go off about how they don't go vroom so you can't be as obnoxious with them.
I don't think there's any need to be snide about this comment. A 2015 Honda Civic is objectively superior in almost every way to a 1967 Corvette, but the 'vette is inherently cooler in a way that the Civic will never be. It's just nostalgia for a bygone era, that's all.
Some people will. The majority won't care.
Sodium is the future of batteries right now.
Projections from BNEF suggest that sodium-ion batteries could reach pack densities of nearly 150 watt-hours per kilogram by 2025. And some battery giants and automakers in China think the technology is already good enough for prime time. 1
+1 for them not exploding too.
I won't be buying a new car. ICE or EV. Specifically because my old car doesn't have a lot of the things that allow the car manufacturer to spy on me, and I won't upgrade to any of the nonsense. Right now I can fix pretty much everything in that car for less than the price of a new vehicle.
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
