Climate change is inconsequential (because Peak Oil is a bigger issue)

[Bofferbrauer2]

fatslob-:O said:

SpokenTruth said:

I think you missed it the first time so I'll try again.

Lithium is getting its ass kicked in the battery research department.

That's not even remotely true. Lithium dominates 95%+ of the battery market ...

No other solutions in research can ever hope to match it's capabilities within at least 2 decades ...

research =/= irrelevant

results = relevant

It's down to 95% because the newer techs are starting to get financially viable in some sectors. Vanadium Flow Batteries for instance are taking over the high power batteries (those which are counted in Megawatts of energy retention) due to their extreme retention capacities (25 years without significant loss of power) and efficiency, and because they keep working for very long times. They store what we produce too much and release it when we don't produce enough power in the time it takes to power up or down some power plant.

Aluminium-ion Batteries are slowly coming into use in household batteries for solar panels or similar home power generation because they are 5-7 times denser than Lithium-ion batteries, meaning much smaller boxes to be installed than with other solutions. This power density is also the reason why much research  about them is going on in the automotive industry, as it could allow travel ranges much closer to a gas driven car - if not even surpass it. The reason it doesn't yet is because Al-ion batteries still loose their charge too fast. Imagine leaving your car for a couple weeks for a holiday trip and when you come back the battery is dead... Once that's solved they will certainly push the lithium batteries out of cars in no time.

Potassium-ion and Potassium-air batteries are meant to become the prime replacements of Lithium batteries. Potassium is cheaper to acquire and produce, can be recharged much more often, can be recharged faster, have better power retention and have an over 95% round trip efficiency (meaning the power you need to fully charge a battery and how much of that power can be used again; bu comparison Lithium batteries only reach 60% because they need overcharging)

What keeps Lithium in place is mostly just that the whole industry is fully geared to it now. But once Lithium starts getting rarer and the price shoots up, the cheaper alternatives will quickly push it out of the market.