Comment by C4stor
4 years ago
>Your new technology claims to be superior to existing lithium-ion
To be fair, it doesn't. The article is explicit that it's only 20% as mass efficient s lithium-ion battery.
On the other hand, it's also true that the vehicle aluminium mass is mostly dead weight, so exploiting it to serve as a battery doesn't seem insane.
Except now, they need to know what to do when something hits it, breaks it, etc... So I'm not convinced this is a good idea for cars (or for anything), but at least, it goes in a direction that actually seems new instead of just doing "same but better". I could actually see that used as a support for solar panels so that they would litterally ship "batteries included".
> To be fair, it doesn't
Well yeah, there's no check in the checklist, nobody claimed that.
Or even as a supplement to a conventional battery - being able to squeeze in 10% more energy capacity without expanding the battery could be a way to incrementally improve range. And also possibly provide a small backup power source in case of main battery failure.