I guess with the challenges ahead of Co2 reduction targets and more sustainable transport, the academics at the leading universities will be looking at and working on renewable energy sources and experimenting with new kinds of battery technologies. That will probably cross over into manufacturing.. increasingly we're seeing projects that turn into businesses run by Uni's or by individuals connected with Uni's.. I believe in China, that's the normal way? Most things start off as state-funded academic projects, and then go into part/fully state-funded factories.
Actually I'm sure I remember a news article by BBC concerning a UK university who claimed they had developed a new variant type of Lithium battery chemistry which provided a rapid charge cycle in under 30 mins, smaller, lighter package etc..but it was still in the development/testing phase and haven't heard anything more since.. I guess there's still the challenge of how to make even batteries sustainable though, how to design them so the chemicals don't harm the environment and so they can be recycled.
Perhaps one of these uni's will license their technology or sell it outright to some big manufacturer like Panasonic or Toshiba, or maybe some Chinese firm!
This has been happening for half a century, and with the motor industry pushing universities and battery companies hard ever since the Arab Oil Crisis of the early 1970s, the effort and expense has been huge. I've been following all this closely since the early 1960s and what I know is that all the breakthrough announcements are best ignored, they are invariably rubbish. Research needs funding, and funds are only forthcoming if the research shows promise. So it's in the interest of all research establishments to hype and issue regular "progress" announcements.
You mention the announcement of a 30 minute charge time, but Toshiba were demonstrating 2 minute charge times on lithium nearly two decades ago, it's that easy to achieve. Trouble is, it needs low content density meaning huge batteries of low capacity, not very suitable for vehicles due to the bulk and weight. We have a 30 minute charge time e-bike already for example, the Schwinn models using Toshiba's SCiB battery with the Tongxin motor, so what's the catch? Namely the capacity is very low for the battery size due to that low density, and in turn the controller for the Tongxin downrates the power to a low level to achieve an acceptable range.
This sums up the problem, one must trade factors. Fast charge costs either over large battery size or short life. High discharge rates cost short life unless the battery is a huge low density design. What vehicles need is high density compact batteries with high discharge rates and long life, but as you can see, that's not possible, you can pick any one at the cost of one or more of the others.
These broadly apply to all battery technologies and are as much due to the physical laws of our universe as much as anything else. For example, we have known for a long time what the ideal cathode element is for lithium batteries, it's iron, which sits at the top of all the suitable elements. It took decades of work to achieve it's use and we have the results in LiFePO
4, so there's nowhere to go with that now, short of creating an entirely new long lasting element in the periodic table. And as you probably know, we can only add those at the end, meaning ever shorter lives, often only a few seconds.
All in all I confidently predict that e-vehicles will never supercede i.c ones or even threaten them. The future is likely to lie in mass public transport with the electrical current supplied remotely, such as in trains, trams, modern trolley buses and personal transport systems. They are super efficient and have no waste batteries to dispose of.
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