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Re:94-year-old Lithium-Ion Battery Inventor Introduces Solid... by jimrandomh on Thursday March 02, 2017 @06:33PM (#13779388)
Thank you for spotting the trick. The article says:

> The researchers demonstrated that their new battery cells have at least three times as much energy density as today’s lithium-ion batteries. A battery cell’s energy density gives an electric vehicle its driving range, so a higher energy density means that a car can drive more miles between charges.

I believe this is misleading enough that the article should be flagkilled, since the "energy density" they are talking about, volumetric energy density, is not what gives an electric vehicle its driving range, and on the metric that really matters - mass energy density - it does worse than regular Li-Ion batteries.

Re:94-year-old Lithium-Ion Battery Inventor Introduces Solid... by hwillis on Thursday March 02, 2017 @06:52PM (#13779516)
I think part of the confusion comes from the paper doing all of its energy and power comparisons to the mass of pure lithium in the battery- that leads to a lot of numbers being 10-15 times what they should be. Reading the paper is kind of confusing because of it. They also have a couple things that appear to be switched up and finally it doesn't help when they say things like this:

>Replacement of a host insertion compound as cathode by a redox center for plating an alkali-metal cathode provides a safe, low-cost, all-solid-state cell with a huge capacity giving a large energy density and a long cycle life suitable for powering an all-electric road vehicle or for storing electric power from wind or solar energy.

Re:94-year-old Lithium-Ion Battery Inventor Introduces Solid... by stagbeetle on Thursday March 02, 2017 @09:56PM (#13780409)
> finally it doesn't help when they say things like this:

> "Replacement of a host insertion compound as cathode by a redox center for plating an alkali-metal cathode provides a safe, low-cost, all-solid-state cell with a huge capacity giving a large energy density and a long cycle life suitable for powering an all-electric road vehicle or for storing electric power from wind or solar energy."

I don't understand. That was surprisingly easy to understand, compared to the bulk of HN comments.

Re:94-year-old Lithium-Ion Battery Inventor Introduces Solid... by FabHK on Saturday March 04, 2017 @06:41AM (#13790457)
FWIW, the usual terms are "energy density" for energy per volume (Wh/l), and "specific energy" for energy per mass (Wh/kg).

Similarly for power.

Re:94-year-old Lithium-Ion Battery Inventor Introduces Solid... by mtgx on Thursday March 02, 2017 @07:17PM (#13779668)
> it does worse than regular Li-Ion batteries.

Why do you say that if it's 3x the energy density per volume and "only" 2.5x heavier? That should give it at the same volume as Li-Ion 82.5% of the weight.

I agree this doesn't solve the weight problem for EVs, except only a little it seems, but if these batteries can be made competitive on price with Li-Ion (Eventually), and unless we find a much better alternative weight-wise, then this sort of battery would still be very useful for EVs because of the safety they give.

Re:94-year-old Lithium-Ion Battery Inventor Introduces Solid... by jimrandomh on Thursday March 02, 2017 @07:35PM (#13779777)
The grandparent comment says that it's 2.5x heavier for the same energy. So 1/2.5x the energy density.