Research published by the good doctors at LBNL (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory) in Advanced Materials into alternative anode materials for Li-Ion batteries suggests that polyfluorene-based conducting polymers (PF) are showing good promise, and might cycle well over time.
Might we soon benefit with 360g 35200 mAh batteries? Six hour ArduPilot and two-and-a-half hour ArduCopter flights? Has anyone successful added a beverage holder to their fatsharks? It may be time to start the prototypes...
From the Berkeley press release:
"The icing on the anode cake is that the new PF-based anode is not only superior but economical. 'Using commercial silicon particles and without any conductive additive, our composite anode exhibits the best performance so far,' says Gao Liu. 'The whole manufacturing process is low cost and compatible with established manufacturing technologies.'"
Comments
@ramboky: Weird/trendy design. Low top speed and to short range for my needs.
The breakthroughs coming out 6 years ago seemed much more promising.
I often read about new advances like this in battery technology, often promising a ten-fold increase in capacity or faster charging times like with the nanowire batteries. Still they are nowehere to be seen because they are always years or a decade from the market... which annoys me to no end.
I have an eBike, and I'll predict an explosion in injuries if more people ride them.
Biking in a Hummer World isn't fun.
As much as the expansion issue raises a challenge for mounting, I think it might just have at least one outstanding benefit. The volume change plays well as a sort of "familiarity heuristic" of how we interact with so many natural equivalents - inflated is full, deflated is discharged. But then I am optimistic about seeing exploding tour de france events, I think it might just have a chance to cut into some of the NASCAR viewership...
When this becomes commercially available I predict an explosive growth in availability and use of light weight vehicles like e-bikes. E-bikes are great and so much fun. But the weight of batteries available today, makes them feel more like scooters then bicyles.