It's no secret that lithium-ion batteries are at the forefront of modern energy storage and a key driver for electrification efforts worldwide. However, manufacturing them at the...
This is an ignorant opinion. My first cell phone (about 30 years ago) had a battery pack about as big as my current cell phone, and had a capacity of 500 mAh. My current phone has a bigger screen, the rest of the phone, and a 4000 mAh battery. How do you suppose that happened if none of those new battery technologies ever panned out?
Of course battery technology improved, but the amount of news articles claiming XYZ will change technology forever outnumbers the actual number of innovations 100 to 1
That’s just how media works. Sexy titles about revolutionary new technologies attract clicks, whereas titles about tiny incremental improvements don’t.
Most likely, the incremental and practical improvements have also been documented in special magazines and journals written for battery experts. It’s just that those articles tend to stay in the bubble of the battery experts.
I agree that the technologies did pan out, but I don’t think it’s an ignorant opinion.
I also feel blasé about the new battery articles because they tend to promise orders of magnitude changes rather than incremental change. Batteries did get much better, but it doesn’t really feel that way I suppose. Our experience of battery power hasn’t changed much.
It’s really about getting excited about the article or the tech, it takes so long to see its mild effects that there’s no real cashing out on the excitement, so it’s not very satisfying.
Our experience about internal combustion engines are the same. We get lower emissions, better mileage, more horsepower in a given form factor, and vehicles get bigger, have more features, and maybe a smaller gas tank and they feel like they have the same capacity as 60 years ago.
Likewise with phones. The phone I described had a 24-hour capacity, just like the one I have now. But the old one could only do phone calls and SMS, and had an amber LED display. Now my phone has more power, capacity, and connectivity than my first home computer…and needs to be charged daily.
People become accustomed to new things, and manufacturers design their products to utilize new capabilities in the way they think is most marketable. My phone could have a 10000 mAh battery, but then people would complain about weight and thickness.
from the first paragraph of the article, it sounds like they share your feelings:
Battery technology is one of those areas that is getting a lot of promising research results but very little in the form of commercial products we can use to power digital devices, electric vehicles, or off-grid homes. That may soon change thanks to sodium-ion batteries that are safer, more durable, and cheaper to manufacture when compared to conventional lithium-ion batteries.
I’ve seen so many “this new battery technology” articles over the past decade, I can’t bring myself to care until it enters production.
Until then take it with a grain of salt.
I see what you did there.
This is an ignorant opinion. My first cell phone (about 30 years ago) had a battery pack about as big as my current cell phone, and had a capacity of 500 mAh. My current phone has a bigger screen, the rest of the phone, and a 4000 mAh battery. How do you suppose that happened if none of those new battery technologies ever panned out?
Of course battery technology improved, but the amount of news articles claiming XYZ will change technology forever outnumbers the actual number of innovations 100 to 1
That’s just how media works. Sexy titles about revolutionary new technologies attract clicks, whereas titles about tiny incremental improvements don’t.
Most likely, the incremental and practical improvements have also been documented in special magazines and journals written for battery experts. It’s just that those articles tend to stay in the bubble of the battery experts.
Many of them are also like these announcements, just 5 or 10 years before they show up in batteries.
I agree that the technologies did pan out, but I don’t think it’s an ignorant opinion.
I also feel blasé about the new battery articles because they tend to promise orders of magnitude changes rather than incremental change. Batteries did get much better, but it doesn’t really feel that way I suppose. Our experience of battery power hasn’t changed much.
It’s really about getting excited about the article or the tech, it takes so long to see its mild effects that there’s no real cashing out on the excitement, so it’s not very satisfying.
Our experience about internal combustion engines are the same. We get lower emissions, better mileage, more horsepower in a given form factor, and vehicles get bigger, have more features, and maybe a smaller gas tank and they feel like they have the same capacity as 60 years ago.
Likewise with phones. The phone I described had a 24-hour capacity, just like the one I have now. But the old one could only do phone calls and SMS, and had an amber LED display. Now my phone has more power, capacity, and connectivity than my first home computer…and needs to be charged daily.
People become accustomed to new things, and manufacturers design their products to utilize new capabilities in the way they think is most marketable. My phone could have a 10000 mAh battery, but then people would complain about weight and thickness.
from the first paragraph of the article, it sounds like they share your feelings: