Why Battery Technology Still Hasn't Had A Breakthrough
First, all of the new alternatives to lithium-ion batteries might
improve in one aspect of performance, but compromise in another. So that
means different teams focus on different aspects and we have since
ended up with rather than one clearly-better battery, a bunch of
different sort-of-better batteries. That means any funding money gets
split up a bunch of different ways and slows down.
The second
point further deals with funding, explaining that research on these
batteries needs a lot of money over a lot of time, and existing research
projects have been lacking in either one or both. Independent research
teams that are working with millions of dollars need hundreds of
millions of dollars that they don’t have to set up production. The
companies that do have hundreds of millions of dollars either didn’t
have enough long-term investment to get to the point of major production
or they’re sticking with current lithium-ion designs. The infamous A123
system falls into the first category while the “Big Three” battery
companies of Samsun, LG, and Panasonic fall into the second. It makes
sense then that the biggest automotive battery production investment of
our day, Tesla’s Panasonic-backed Gigafactory, is still sticking with lithium-ion.
(Jalopnik.com)
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