Hybrid Cars

Since the bottleneck for the advancement of hybrid and EV technology lies in battery technology, it’s refreshing to see reports like this one out of California. Looks like the eggheads over at Stanford U continue to make radical advancements in things battery parts like silicone nanowire anodes and mesoporous nanocomposites.

For the rest of us—they discovered something in 2007, reworked it and come up with the lithium-sulfur battery. The new cells are safer and hold four times the charge as lithium-ions, which promises great things for the future battery-powered products.

But before your dreams of the vibrator-equivalent to the everlasting gobstopper can come true, the scientists must overcome the fact that the new batteries can only be charged 40 – 50 times, which puts a damper on the fun—for now.