Why new battery technologies rarely-never appear

ericB
ericB Registered Users, Users Awaiting Email Confirmation Posts: 1 ✭
in New Battery Technologies #1
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.

Looks as though we are stuck with lithium for a while.....
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  • BB.
    BB. Super Moderators, Administrators Posts: 33,613 admin
    #2
    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
    Near San Francisco California: 3.5kWatt Grid Tied Solar power system+small backup genset
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  • Estragon
    Estragon Registered Users Posts: 4,496 ✭✭✭✭✭
    #3
    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.
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  • BB.
    BB. Super Moderators, Administrators Posts: 33,613 admin
    #4
    Sorry Estragon, you are correct... Tape "thin film" equipment.

    -Bill
    Near San Francisco California: 3.5kWatt Grid Tied Solar power system+small backup genset
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