Perhaps more than anything else it is the advent of electric cars that has really ushered in the age of the battery. Not that batteries haven’t been around for over a century, powering a range of different technologies that only seems to increase with the utility and efficiency of batteries. Once, batteries were restricted to small items of technology, those that did not use a great deal of a power. The reason for this was simply that batteries were not efficient enough to power energy-intensive objects. This, at any rate, was the public perception of battery power. A perception that has only shifted very recently – and it is all thanks to electric cars. If a battery can power something like a car – and not only that, but power it to the same level of efficiency as a traditional gas-powered vehicle – then the sky really is the limit to what technologies batteries could power in the future.
It was in 2019 that Elon Musk held Tesla’s Battery Day, an event at which he more than hinted at the future potential of battery power. Soon, according to Musk, Tesla will produce a car that runs on batteries with pure silicon anodes, which will boost their performance, and reduced cobalt in the cathodes, which will lower their price and weight. But more exciting than even this, these batteries are expected to be fully integrated into the chassis of the car, providing mechanical support to the vehicle as well as powering it. What is so remarkable about this development is that the traditional idea of the battery as a separate removeable component within the object which it powers could soon become a thing of the past. Furthermore, this could become a feature of many more technologies than just electric cars.
Recent Battery Developments
Yet even though Musk has hailed this new innovation as a “revolution” in battery technology (and although he has probably done more than anyone else to bring this technology into the broader public consciousness), this is not actually new technology and comes on the heels of a recent spurt of battery technology innovation.
This period of battery technology innovation really got going with the development of the lithium-ion battery in the early 1990s. Since then, all sorts of innovative technologies have appeared. This includes lithium-ion rechargeable smart batteries and USB rechargeable batteries, such as those produced by Pale Blue Earth out of Park City, Utah. This has led to faster charge times, more energy efficiency, and a massive increase in the longevity of rechargeable batteries across the board.
Musk is certainly, therefore, standing on the shoulders of giants. And even the technology he hailed as a “revolution” has been in development elsewhere before Tesla brought it to wider public attention. Material scientists at Imperial College London, for example, have been developing battery technology that erases the boundary between battery and object, essentially making the material of the object itself the power source.
Weightless and Invisible – The Batteries of the Future
It is precisely this area of technological development that could define the batteries of the future. These batteries would essentially be weightless and invisible. Currently, many battery-powered objects are mostly composed of their power cell. A smartphone is essentially a cell with a few processors attached to it, and drones are limited by the size of the battery they can fly with.
The future then is to change all of this and integrate the battery into the material of the object. In the future you will not be driving a battery-powered vehicle, you will be driving a battery with wheels.
