Battery Technology - where is it ?!?!

SDK^

SDK^

SDK^

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My 3 year old son is now getting into small remote cars, dinosaurs etc... and i'm finding the same battery life issues that existed when I a child are still around today.

In 30+ years mainstream battery technology hasn't moved on at all.
Li-ion rechargeable battery life is still short as are the Duracell Alkaline / equivalents. The battery life of these can be measured in a maximum of a few hours which is rubbish when you're a child because the fun stops, or when you're a adult because you spend a small fortune keeping the toys going.

Where are the hydro, fusion batteries which have been in development for years, which charge in seconds and last for weeks or months ?!?!
 
If I compare my current laptop to what I had in 2005 it is at least 20 times more powerful and lasts 8 hours as opposed to 90 minutes.
 
It's moved on massively since you were a kid.

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And it's gone up massively since then.
 
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It has moved on, batteries are much smaller than they used to be while still having good storage. Lithium technology has come along quite a lot. I think it's just device manfuacturers that allow less and less room for batteries.

I remember the first video cameras back in the day had an additional bag you had to carry around just to house the battery. That can't be much more than 30 years ago.

Charging batteries is always going to be an issue, especially with lithiums as they are a bit explodey if not charged correctly.
 
I remember my dad having a mobile phone in the early 90's which had a whole rack of giant batteries in the car and another rack of them in the kitchen (3-4 of them) so that you could swap them out every few hours.

Must have come on a bit :p
 
Tealc said:
It has moved on, batteries are much smaller than they used to be while still having good storage. Lithium technology has come along quite a lot. I think it's just device manfuacturers that allow less and less room for batteries.

I remember the first video cameras back in the day had an additional bag you had to carry around just to house the battery. That can't be much more than 30 years ago.

Charging batteries is always going to be an issue, especially with lithiums as they are a bit explodey if not charged correctly.
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And the fact things are generally becoming higher and higher in energy demand.

The supply (battery) may be smaller in size but it'll be equivalent to something "not good enough still" - at least in OP's eyes. It's all about weight reduction and space saving, which also actually saves money on materials too, making the things cheaper to buy in the first place.
 
Jez said:
I remember my dad having a mobile phone in the early 90's which had a whole rack of giant batteries in the car and another rack of them in the kitchen (3-4 of them) so that you could swap them out every few hours.

Must have come on a bit :p
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He didnt advertise malibu did he:D
 
SpeedFreak said:
If I compare my current laptop to what I had in 2005 it is at least 20 times more powerful and lasts 8 hours as opposed to 90 minutes.
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Battery life in laptops has improved mostly because of software tweaks and onchip throttling. What's the life of your laptop battery when all of the power saving modes are switched off and it's running at 100%? Probably only a couple of hours.

Most other areas of tech have improved hundreds of thousands times over what was available in 1990 but if I walk Tesco now pretty much the same batteries are being sold as years ago.
 
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Housey said:
Sadly so has the consumption of it by cars :(
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Yep but there's a positive future, there's dozens of battery techs that are on the horizon that double to x10 the current energy density.

Sakti3 the company that Dyson has just backed, claims it's batteries are twice as energy dense and can be produce for $100 per kWh, current cost is about $300 per kWh.

It just takes a few years to get to mass production. and off course many will probably fail for one reason or another. But with so many prototypes I have faith at least one will make it to mass production.
 
SDK^ said:
Battery life in laptops has improved mostly because of software tweaks and onchip throttling. What's the life of your laptop battery when all of the power saving modes are switched off and it's running at 100%? Probably only a couple of hours.

Most other areas of tech have improved hundreds of thousands times over what was available in 1990 but if I walk Tesco now pretty much the same batteries are being sold as years ago.
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Things can only become "so" efficient. There will never be a 100% efficient thing, ever. Batteries are hard to effectively improve because really the only things you can change are like the electrolytic or the insulation (which is why more expensive batteries generally last longer than the cheapy rubbish ones).
 
SDK^ said:
Most other areas of tech have improved hundreds of thousands times over what was available in 1990 but if I walk Tesco now pretty much the same batteries are being sold as years ago.
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That just isn't the case. Might not be as good as you want but depending when you where a kid they've probably more than doubled in energy density.
 
SDK^ said:
Battery life in laptops has improved mostly because of software tweaks and onchip throttling. What's the life of your laptop battery when all of the power saving modes are switched off and it's running at 100%? Probably only a couple of hours.

Most other areas of tech have improved hundreds of thousands times over what was available in 1990 but if I walk Tesco now pretty much the same batteries are being sold as years ago.
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Even if performance has remained unchanged (it hasn't but we'll imagine) it still lasts 5-6 times longer. Can't you accept that you started a thread without giving it too much thought and have been rightly corrected? :)
 
I have a big box of rechargeable batteries and a multi-type intelligent charger. I use the Nitecore Intellicharge i4 V2, but there are any number of clones out there I suspect.

It does every type of rechargable I have thrown at it, from Industrial lithium based 18650's to cheapy AAA nicads. All with no fuss and in minimum time :) I even made a small jig to let it charge the wider C and D cells.

I never have to worry about not having any charged, as I just pull another 3 or 4 from the "charged" box and put the old ones into the charger. Unless my boy sits there at full throttle wheelspinning for 30 minutes, they will be charged well before he run out the others :D
 
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SDK^ said:
Battery life in laptops has improved mostly because of software tweaks and onchip throttling. What's the life of your laptop battery when all of the power saving modes are switched off and it's running at 100%? Probably only a couple of hours.

Most other areas of tech have improved hundreds of thousands times over what was available in 1990 but if I walk Tesco now pretty much the same batteries are being sold as years ago.
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The electronics themselves are more power efficient as well - ICs will have gone through a few die shrinks/revisions - for instance current windows tablets have SoCs that have pretty much the same specs/performance (with some improvements even) to the Core 2 Duo/Quad 65+watt parts but are 2-4 watt parts. As well as other components with better power efficiency being available cheaply in consumer space that 10 years ago or so would have been priced too high for anything other than high end application.

Battery tech itself really hasn't moved on all that much compared to some other tech.

Jez said:
I remember my dad having a mobile phone in the early 90's which had a whole rack of giant batteries in the car and another rack of them in the kitchen (3-4 of them) so that you could swap them out every few hours.

Must have come on a bit :p
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Yeah - in the early 90s my aunt was an on call medical specialist - the "mobile" phone she had was a briefcase sized phone coupled with briefcase sized power bank in the car.
 
SpeedFreak said:
Even if performance has remained unchanged (it hasn't but we'll imagine) it still lasts 5-6 times longer. Can't you accept that you started a thread without giving it too much thought and have been rightly corrected? :)
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I understand battery life has improved a little over time but it's still measured in hours. A 5-6x improvement since 2005 is slow development.
 
SDK^ said:
My 3 year old son is now getting into small remote cars, dinosaurs etc... and i'm finding the same battery life issues that existed when I a child are still around today.

In 30+ years mainstream battery technology hasn't moved on at all.
Li-ion rechargeable battery life is still short as are the Duracell Alkaline / equivalents. The battery life of these can be measured in a maximum of a few hours which is rubbish when you're a child because the fun stops, or when you're a adult because you spend a small fortune keeping the toys going.

Where are the hydro, fusion batteries which have been in development for years, which charge in seconds and last for weeks or months ?!?!
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The best way to get around it I've found is I bought a lot of good rechargeable batteries for my lamps, cameras and so on. When one set has run out, its on charge while I've got many other sets ready to go before I get back to those ones thats on charge. I'm never short of rechargeable batteries.
 
I use 74 Headway LifePO4 38140S 12Ah batteries in my power chair. I wish there was something better :(
The battery tech is very slow in moving forward.
 
balky12 said:
I imagine if we had cracked it battery powered cars wouldn't be such a complete waste of time atm.
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Although plenty are, not all electric cars are a waste of time. The latest Tesla gets an impressive range from a "full tank".
 
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