New Lithium Ion Batteries Increase Lifespan To 20 Years

By Evan Ackerman

Lithium ion batteries are way, way better than nickel metal hydride batteries or (shudder) nickle cadmium batteries. But still, batteries are batteries, and they have a way of going from cool to sucks in a matter of only a few hundred charging cycles, whatever their supposed lifetimes are purported to be. The six cell battery on my netbook, which incidentally cost about a third as much as the entire computer, was advertised as being able to last six hours, lasted four brand new, and is now (a year later) down to three on a good day.

By doing something clever involving keeping tin particles bonded together, a Japanese company called Eamex is saying that they’ve been able to develop a battery that can be charged and discharged some 10,000 times, which means that they should last about 20 years if you recharge them about 1.3 times a day. Also, they’re talking about having a battery with a power density of 10,000 W/kg by the end of the year. Most of this stuff is probably headed for electric cars and such, at least initially… Guess it’s time to go buy one of those, then.

Oh, and I spent 20 minutes looking for an interesting picture of a lithium ion battery. I couldn’t find one, so instead here’s a picture of a bunny with a pancake on his head.

[ Eamex ] VIA [ CrunchGear ]