Why new battery technologies rarely-never appear

ericB

This Register article summarizes the situation better than anything I've seen yet. Goes over all the major alternatives to lithium ion: magnesium, lithium-sulphur, sodium ion, solid state, etc. etc. We got lithium-ion thru a confluence of economics (Sony's idle thin-film factories converted to battery film manufacture) and chemistry.

https://www.theregister.com/2020/12/30/beyond_lithium_ion_batteries/

Looks as though we are stuck with lithium for a while.....

BB.

Very interesting Eric,

I did not know that Sony was able to convert thin film manufacturing equipment for CDROMs into manufacturing Lithium Batteries. That explains the relatively (only took a 100+ years of battery tech to get there) quick move into volume production.

-Bill

Estragon

I think the Sony thing was redundant thin film plants for tape (8-track/cassette/Beta/VHS/et.al), which CDs replaced over a fairly short time.  The general idea holds though.  The redundant plants were a solution in search of a problem.  It seems to me that a lot of the apparently rapid innovation spurts in history were actually a bunch of such underutilized solutions finding problems for which they could be repurposed.

BB.

Sorry Estragon, you are correct... Tape "thin film" equipment.

-Bill