By asking only opinion of
"our expert battery techies" you are probably limiting number of members who are willing to participate.
While I definitely do not qualify, I just a guy who is a fan of battery tech... I do generally go extra step and read published papers(if available) for any "breakthrough" that are picked by popular science medias that I find interesting/promising. There is a lot to be revealed usually, like for one solid state li-ion recently discussed on this board had 70[SUP]o[/SUP]C (158 Fahrenheit) optimal operating temperature... Guess freezing weather performance... Or mine personal favorite zn-air battery that require at least 33% percent of extra energy wasted as heat during charging... Sure both properties are not a show stoppers, but you know, devil is in the details. And some details are hard to pick even by reading the paper, authors do not always explain details about things that they think are obvious to anyone who is working in the field.
For this one no free access papers were released. Big minus. They talk about 1350Wh/kg, this is a great number! But language suggest it is "theoretical"... But then they say their chemistry could provide 3X times better specific energy then li-ion... Ok, an educated guess, they are probably talking about 400Wh/kg. Cuz authors are not interested to pick up most dense commercially deployed tech like Tesla's ~260Wh/kg NCA or Nissan's ~~~200Wh/kg heavily modified LMO (
Types of Lithium-ion Batteries – Battery University ). So not so great. I know i know being a skeptic is a cheapest way to be right. But! There are things that are actually happening and worth being optimistic about. One is silicon anodes for li-ion. 400Wh/kg. Already commercially available. Another one Li-sulfur batteries, 600Wh/kg++. May be next year. Zn-air - 500 Wh/kg, already commercialized in 2012/2013. I hope for Al-ion batteries to gain market share soon(multivalent chemistry!!!). But there is Mn-ion and Mn-air developments too. Hey, there are even iron air batteries that are close to commercialization! And while iron is heavy, there is a chance that iron air would compete with li-ion to some degree, and definitely on specific energy ground... How about naming more metals, other then li, mn, fe, al I've already mentioned, I know you could do it:wink:
But do not forget, some batteries do require extreme temperatures to operate. Like one commercially produced by GE is having operational temperature higher then 400[SUP]o[/SUP]C (752 F) etc. And temperature is not only factor. Almost all air batteries (all metal air chemistries I aware of) do suffer from low power densities. Etc.
