I usually avoid David Pogue’s NOVA episodes, and this one is probably overly basic for most of the folks here, but I thought it was pretty good:
NOVA: Search for the Super Battery
I loved watching the 18650 manufactured at the U of M battery lab.
Interested in seeing this but not available in my country.
Thanks, I enjoyed it. It’s good to see an overview of some actually recent state-of-the-art potential battery options. I know what you mean about the host David Pogue, though.
https://hooktube.com/watch?v=a4McN9OYDwg
This might work in your country maybe, I think I found the right vid.
Great!
There are other, “alternative sources”, which can provide you with the video in question… :smiling_imp:
That works, thanks. Now I’ll need to devote some time too watching this.
There has to be something more to the plastic electrolyte than they talked about, like non-efficient charging, longevity, or something. Otherwise it would be in use right now.
I think the main problem with the solid state approach is low conductivity, so it would have a high internal resistance.
If anybody can’t find a way to watch it free it’s on amazon for $1.99. Season 16 ep 8.
And with more and more high power devices demanding lower resistance cells, these will probably never fly.
Could it be a money thing? Let’s say they did release a battery that went 5000 charge cycles instead of 500 and had the same or better charge and discharge characteristics. If people by less batteries then it’s less money. Most companies want something to have a finite life so you spend more money.
Kinda like the pharmaceutical companies, healthy people don’t buy medicine. Why cure something that gets billions a year in research money
I only bring this up because we had some pretty cool stuff in the military that won’t see the light of day in the civilian market for a very long time. No one will believe me anyway and it’s probably best but I’ll throw it out there. They have a backpack not overly heavy that a soldier can wear. And it will wirelessly transmit electricity. For so many miles around. And you can power your computers GPS whatever you need with it. Works great in Afghanistan mountain to mountain. It’s mostly your specialty units that have them. Your regular guys wont But in the civilian science they say they hadn’t perfected wireless electricity. It’s been perfected for a very long time ever since Tesla first did it. But military science is kept separate from civilian science. The batteries everyone wants are already invented guarantee it
There is also cost though. If someone had a 5000 cycle 90-100% DOD 3,5Ah 18650 cell, people would be all over it, especially if it can sustain 15A+ discharge rates and keeping up with that cycle life claim.
However, if it costs 20x more than the standard 3.5Ah 18650, most companies would not be suing them in their products.
We want the best, affordable, safe, long lasting, and high capacity battery. Building a good battery is extremely hard.
Also, what kind of battery pack is that military bag using? Must be enormous to be able to beam such high power, and heavy, really heavy. Adding to that, is it using radial wireless power distribution, like most wireless power transmission do, or is is using beamforming/concentrated power transmission? Because that ones exists, but isn’t used outside of specialty applications and the military for… safety reasons.
Oh, no! Not the “planned obsolescence” catfight again! 
Well, yah, but every time I ever bring up that point, I get called a “conspiracy nut”. 
Why cure cancer when you can simply “manage” it for years if not decades?
And with all the tek journals I get, “pioneering breakthroughs” using gold nanoparticles, stem cells, retrovirus therapies, “targeted therapy”, infrared/radiotherapy heating, etc., umm, when was the last time, or any time, you heard anyone being treated with any of those?
So I just quietly smile and nod when I hear people extolling all the good people in research and pharmcos who would love to be heroes and finally cure cancer, that money doesn’t mean anything to them.
Guess people have “planned obsolescence”, too. Keep them coming back for more therapy that gets billed sometimes 10kbux/mo, rather them just cure them and have happy’n’healthy customers.
But yeah, back to batteries (before I get dogpiled on)), incremental improvements is what it’s all about. Keep people happy enough with “longer running” doodads, just until they get used to it and start demanding more performance. Instead of having to recharge your mp3 player, phone, etc., pretty much every day, sometimes twice per day (old boss used to keep his phone in a charging stand every lunch because it’d run out of juice so fast), give ’em a few days worth of runtime. When phones get bigger hungrier displays, have to stream video, etc., and performance goes to Hell again, improve the battery tek a little more, and make ’em happy enough to buy new batteries (and new phones, mp3 players, etc.).
Whups, guess that sounds like “planned obsolescence”…
Yeah, it’s years or decades before it ever becomes COTS.
I don’t know the specs or how it works. But it broadcast 360 degrees. The range was miles. And it was light enough one man can carry it and his rifle and ammo and body armor. If you look at the radio backpacks. It was about that size. We arnt told anything we don’t need to know. If it broke IDK if he knew how to fix it or not. You don’t really ask questions he wouldn’t have answered anything anyways. There’s a lot of things I keep my mouth shut about one is because I signed a 50 year nda. But also because no one would ever believe me. I’m better off trying to convince people Bigfoot exist then some of technology we have.
The military would. Money’s no object. “The best for our troops! (No matter what the co$t to the taxpayer.)”
Only after it gets declassified, and/or when economies of scale bring down the cost sufficiently, will it trickle down to the consumer market.
Early microwave ovens used to cost over 1kbuk in, what?, late-1970s bux? And they were pretty anæmic by today’s standards. Now, 30bux can buy you a disposable microwave oven. Hell, don’t like the color of the display, junk it and buy another one for 30bux, 25bux on sale.
12” laserdiscs? Audio-DAT? Ceedees? Even a lotta NASA tek eventually made its way down to the civvie market. Emphasis on “eventually”. But it needed a market to pay for it, initially. Whether snobby audiophiles/videophiles or just “early adopters”, they helped bring down prices.
So an Überbattery is entirely possible… once it’s introduced and enough people buy them.
Sure, we do. But flashaholics and vapers are a minor market. Need something like a Tesla to jumpstart (haha) the market.
Hell, I wonder how many radar-techs and even Wild Weasel pilots end up getting all sorts of cancers years after the fact.
As great as Tesla (inventor, not car company) was, I’d be scared $#!+less if wireless tek ever became mainstream. Enough mutations, and who knows what would happen to the average life-expectancy. Like there’s not enough electrosmog as it is…
Hey, he does.
Little known fact… he’s only a size 11.
Mutations would not be the problem, but rather burns.
I would not want a 100W beam try to go through me. Imagine having on your skin a 21700 Emisar D4 with XP L2 emitters. That would burn through your flesh.
Also, by we, I mean the guys who want an affordable 600km+ car, and electric boats, and electric planes.
I hope that last one would be possible though.
Along with off grid guys and gals, everybody wants better batteries, not only us flashlight gurus.
Tesla’s idea was to have various distribution sites pretty much blanketing an area. Unless you were too close to the “antenna”, you shouldn’t be burned. ’Though just like sleeping with an electric blanket, I wouldn’t want to be in an EMF-frappe 24/7.
We all do. But once they give up the good stuff, vs letting it trickle out a little at a time, they got nothing more in reserve.
If someone comes up with a LiHGd cell that triples or quadruples energy density, people will at some point get used to them and sneer at current Li cells, NiMH, alkies, etc. But then what? Once people get used to 21700 performance in a 14500 form-factor, there is no “up”. Not until the next miraculous breakthrough.
Better (for the battery cos) to just tweak chemistries and such, to wring out a little more performance at a time, and make people happy enough to be willing to buy new for that incrementally better performance.
It’s a much more sustainable business model.
LOL following