Yet another revolutionary new battery. Graphene batteries, liquid salt batteries, etc etc.
My dad has a popular mechanics do it yourself encyclopedia from the 1950s and it has several articles of new battery technologies in the works that will be available in a few months, just you wait and see.
For my entire life, new batteries have been just around the corner to replace lithium ion, every 12 to 18 months, one of these articles come out.
At this point, I will believe them when I see them on store shelves and not one second before.
You may be a little overly cynical. The first commercial lithium ion battery only went into production in 1991, we actually have made a hell of a lot of progress since the 1950’s.
You must be very young, I remember when mobile phones had Ni-Cd batteries and it was very bad (you could even casually destroy your battery by charging it incorrectly!).
Li-Ion felt like a huge revolution, and the improvements it had since its introduction on the smartphone market are incredible too.
My slim and lightweight pocket supercomputer has a battery comparable to a huge power bank I had 10 years ago. If that's not revolutionary, I don't know what is.
It's about the size of a VHS cassette and holds 95Wh (Maximum for airplane travel). This thing could power a dumbphone for months and it's half the size of the ye olde luggable phones.
I would say the big difference now is incentive. Lithium Ion batteries are the biggest bottleneck to mass EV adoption. With every car company going Electric, it's a very pertinent problem to solve. You can't really get "Gen2" Electric Vehicles without this tech.
Since the 1950s battery energy density has improved by orders of magnitude, it has been happening and is still happening. Hasn’t stopped these incessant cynical takes though.
My dad has a popular mechanics do it yourself encyclopedia from the 1950s and it has several articles of new battery technologies in the works that will be available in a few months, just you wait and see.
For my entire life, new batteries have been just around the corner to replace lithium ion, every 12 to 18 months, one of these articles come out.
At this point, I will believe them when I see them on store shelves and not one second before.