More Power Required
The limits of batteries, and how they will improve
Whenever I get into a conversation about modern consumer technology, the subject eventually comes around to battery life. Last year I read a small cluster of articles about interesting developments in battery technology, and wrote this (superficial and no doubt over-simplified) briefing note based on what I learned.
Technology is being held back because we can’t make better batteries. Ten years ago a mobile phone handset might have lasted a week on a full charge, while your new smartphone likely doesn’t even last an entire day. This is because your phone is capable of doing so much more, thanks to the fact that everything about it has got smaller and more powerful in recent years — except for the battery.
The general principle is: the larger the battery, the more charge it holds. That’s why your tablet can keep a charge for days, but your phone needs that daily charge. But phones have a limit imposed by their portability — carrying a heavy battery around would make it longer-lasting, but much less useful.
The Lithium-ion (Li-ion) battery, invented in 1991 and used in the majority of portable consumer electronics, is about as good as it gets at the moment. Even Tesla’s cars (and recently announced Powerwall home battery) run on Li-ion batteries, albeit thousands of them in a larger battery container.
Manufacturers are getting very good at squeezing performance increases from Li-ion, but major improvements aren’t happening. The next step is not to make Li-ion batteries better, but to make them cheaper. Tesla are building a huge new factory that will more than double worldwide production of Li-ion, and although all of those will go into their own products, the net effect should be cheaper batteries overall (they estimate a 30% reduction). New startup 24M have also announced that they’ve reinvented the manufacturing process to cut development time by 80%, and costs by 50% (they claim performance benefits too, but these have yet to be quantified).
A promising new entrant to the arena is Sakti3, who claim to have invented a new solid state battery that can store twice as much energy as the Li-ion. The battery is currently only at prototype stage, but they recently received a large investment from Dyson to bring it into production.
In any case, it will take a few years for these new developments to come to market, so don’t expect your smartphone to get cheaper, lighter, or to hold a charge longer, any time in the near future.
References:
- The story of the invention that could revolutionize batteries — and maybe American manufacturing as well
- How Tesla Will Change The World
- Dyson invests $15m in technology that may double smartphone battery life
For a much more in-depth piece about batteries see Batteries Not Excluded by Simon Parkin for How We Get To Next.
Originally published at Peter Gasston.