Hitachi Maxell claims new Li-ion battery with 20x the power

Nikkei's reporting that Hitachi Maxell, in association with Nagasaki University, NIAIST, and Fuji Heavy Industries, has developed a new kind of lithium ion battery that can supposedly store 20 times the power, but is also cheap and easily mass produced. Apparently this new kind of battery drops cobalt, an expensive staple of the traditional Li-ion recipe, instead making use of nano-infused lithium with manganese. You know how it goes though -- unrealistic and exponential battery developments are all well and good, but until we see it productized, we're not exactly liable to buy into the hype. [Warning: subscription req'd]

[(Unverified) Posted Jun 16th 2008 4:24PM]

It wouldn't give you 20x more talk time, though it might allow you to crank the volume up a lot (which would actually shorten battery life).

[(Unverified) Posted Jun 2nd 2008 10:02AM]

And electric car "filling stations" are where???
Crap, you can hardly buy E-85 and GM has been pushing that to roll out to stations for how many years now? I fail to see how electric cars are gonna "take off" in our suburban landscape? Maybe in highly dense places like NYC or LA or Tokyo or London or ???

[(Unverified) Posted Jun 2nd 2008 10:17AM]

Electric car filling stations will be in your home. Think trickle recharge capacitors in your garage that fill up over a day's period, along with heavier charging overnight. Then when you need to charge up the car plug it in and quick dump it. As for on the go charging. Think about it. Which is more difficult to implement. A charging station or an infrastructure for hydrogen. Charging stations can EASILY be implemented.

PS- E85 is DEAD, or at least HEAVILY scaled back, within 2 years. Mark my words. You think people don't like paying at the pump. At least people can scale back their driving. Try going to the grocery store and spending $6 for a box of cereal or a $15 for a pound of beef. If we keep scaling there is NO way in hell we are going to be able to feel our appetite for gas and our appetite for cheap food.

[(Unverified) Posted Jun 2nd 2008 10:57AM]

I've never understood this thought that there aren't any electrical "filling stations". Go to the gas station at night - do they have lights? Yes? Then they can supply electricity.

You don't see any hookups because there aren't any electric cars yet (well ok, there's a handful out there, but there are far more Prius's than actual electric cars). The big question is whether you'll be able to recharge your battery in a reasonable amount of time at the gas station. Until then, you'll either be charging your electric car at home and only driving it around the city, or you'll be filling it up with gas for the longer trips out of state where you have to drive several hundred miles.

Obviously that's not ideal, it all depends on whether battery technology catches up...but if it does, since gas stations already get electric power it's not going to be a big jump for them to add a way to plug in your car there.

[Sam of the Sun Posted Jun 2nd 2008 2:58PM]

Paul Rivers, filling stations won't implement this until the very last minute in order to rinse every last pence/cent out of us all.

It wouldn't surprise me if the solution to fossil fuels in cars was already invented but it had just been bought up by BP & co. until they deemed necessary. Yes this is unlikely but you never know... Or do you?!

[(Unverified) Posted Jun 2nd 2008 10:08AM]

Horseshit. I run OS X and watch how the processor scales. Now maybe on the old school G4's it could scale well but on the new Macintels it sure as hell doesn't. I watch my MBP's CPU and it routinely is scaled to its full capacity of 2.23Ghz. Also a similarly speced out XPS 1530 gets pretty damn close to my MBP in terms of battery life with Vista on it.

I'm so sick of these Apple dipshits, eating the company line without using their fracking brain. Here's a thought....think for yourself for once you moron.

[(Unverified) Posted Jun 2nd 2008 11:03AM]

You store energy, not power. Power density is just a descriptive metric.

[(Unverified) Posted Jun 2nd 2008 1:39PM]

This got mistranslated.
The original Nikkei says that you can RECHARGE the battery up to 10000 times, which is 20X more than what current Li-ion batterys can handle.

Doen't say anything about power.
Also, Subaru is a division of Fuji Heavy Industries

[jriskin Posted Jun 2nd 2008 6:46PM]

POWER...NOT energy density...

Looks like some bad translation and/or understanding here. Other press releases talk about delivering 20Amps of current by reducing internal resistance compared to standard Lithium cobalt chemistries.

Move along, nothing to see here. The entire industry is gearing up for higher current LiFePO4, LiMn2O4 and other chemistries. Its all about the environment and faster charge/discharge rates.

[(Unverified) Posted Jun 5th 2008 2:28AM]

A lithium battery that is cheaper and lasts a LOT longer sounds really good news to me, especially when thinking I'm not gonna buy another gas-guzzler as my car. But if you can recharge 10000 times, that's only about 3-5x improvement, since even now you can recharge li-ion electric car batteries about 2000-3000 times. At least what manufacturers promise. Well, even that would mean you could drive around million miles (with 100mile range and 10000 recharges) before you need to change the battery to a new one...