Why is lithium battery tech being hidden from vue?

Question

This medium, of energy storage, is the best by all accounts-why the sudden secret society?

Answer 1

What secrets?  Disposable lithium batteries have been around since the 1980s and everyone who has a mobile phone has a rechargeable lithium battery in his pocket.  The main drawbacks is cost (lithium is a fairly rare element) and energy density (better than other batteries but not nearly as good as gasoline).

Answer 2

what secret society? are you a conspiracy theorist? lithium ion batteries are used in millions of products from the digital camera i just bought to any laptop computer. as for use in automobiles. batteries are heavy and dont allow for distance traveling a much better alternative is the fuel cell

Answer 3

The technology is not being "hidden,"  its just not ready yet.

There has been a problem of lithium batteries catching fire.  I think it was Sony that had to recall thousands of their products.  But, that problem may have been solved.  I have not heard of any of the electric pickup trucks made by Phoenix Motorcars Inc (www.phoenixmotorcars.com) {Batteries made by Altair Nanotechnologies company (www.altairnanotechnologies.com} nor any of the $90,000 sport cars from Tesla Motors (www.teslamotors.com) {batteries by A123 Systems also used on Chevy's Volt and Think electric cars {bigger car, only 100 mile range}) burning up so that problem is solved.  The A123 Systems lithium batteries give the Tesla car a 220 mile range (so their web site says).  Don't know how long it takes to recharge.  Altair is working on improving their batteries to also give a range of about 200 miles and recharge from household current in 6 hours and in future "fueling stations" to recharge in 10 minutes.  Its not quite there yet.  I think they figure 10 minutes is the max time people will want to wait around and "stretch their legs" after a 3-4 hour, 200 mile ride.

Answer 4

You're absolutely right.

My best guess is that the technology that could actually get us off of fossil fuels and biofuels is being hidden/suppressed by the same companies that have the most to lose if we don't use fossil fuels anymore.

I'm not a conspiracy theorist or anything, I'm just saying they have the money and political clout to hide anything that could make them lose money. They've done it with electricity and solar power, they're gonna do it with lithium batteries and hydrogen fuel cells.

Answer 5

i just did a research paper on electric vehicles (EVs) and have found that they are so quiet b/c now all the major corperations are just waiting around. there have been some major breakthroughs in lithium ion technology and they should even be able to double the range that EVs can reach within the next 5-10 years. I assume that no1 is doing anything since they don't want to jump the gun and look like they make insufficient EVs.

The battery researchers are being quiet b/c they basically are trying out 2 different forms of modifying the batteries so they are very competative and secrative with each other until they can get their name on a pattent.

the future of EVs will be bright as far as i can tell so there is nothing to worry about. they are just making sure they are at their full potential before release so that they don't get shot down again like they did in the 90s

Answer 6

It's better than some battery schemes, but not all that great, really.  Li-ion cells lack durability and stability, for one thing, and there are lots of competing technologies, all of which you can read about if you care to learn enough electrochemistry to understand the journal articles.  As it is, you're getting your impression of events through layers of news directors and publicists, none of whom took anything more challenging than botany in school.  Conductive polymers will probably work better than Li-ion stuff, but there are problems with those as well.  

What you don't understand is that the progress you've seen in computers and communications is not reflective of most other technologies.  Computers double in performance every couple of years.  Batteries have gotten a few percent better in the last twenty years, and it's not going to move any faster than that.  Sorry.