The article mentions laptop and cellphone batteries, but the silence is deafening wrt automotive. For good reason. The cost of lithium.
Before any "bettery" concept will become economically feasible for automotive, IMHO -- it would seem that they will have to get away from lithium as the electrolyte.
The Tesla's Roadster runs on 6,831 lithium ion batteries, similar to what is used in laptop computers. The company boasts on its Web site that the car can go 245 miles on a single charge and costs two cents per mile to operate. Assuming no explosions, such as have consistently plagued this kind of battery for the bast 15 year, that is. Not to mention, this car costs $100,000 to buy, and the batteries are at least half of that cost.
If you amortize the cost of the batteries over their expected lifetime, even with out an explosion, the cost per mile jumps from two to fifty cents per mile. It is sadly little more than an enticing gimmick for Hollywood stars. However, like most vorticians, I covet one dearly, to sinful proportions...
Because of limited supplies, no one is real sure what the price of lithium would be with increased demand. Realistically, it is probably going to be far in excess of $100 per pound with the weak dollar...
This probably puts the mass-produced plug-in hybrid application out of reach for lithium-based batteries ... but the good news is that sodium is ubiquitous, and potentially hundreds of times cheaper than lithium, also of low density and reactive, though less so than lithium.
Wouldn't it be nice if the silicon nanowires worked with a sodium electrolyte ? Wonder if this was anticipated in the original R&D ? If not and if there are any "patent trolls" lurking out there, they may be already rushing to USPTO with this variation.
GEORGE HOLZ wrote: http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2008/january9/nanowire-010908.html
