In fact, many researchers believe energy storage will have to take an entirely new chemistry and new physical form, beyond the lithium-ion batteries that over the last decade have shoved aside.
Cold fusion is eternally 20 years away, and new battery technology is eternally five years away. That skepticism is understandable when a new battery design promises a revolution, but it risks missing the fact that batteries have gotten better. Lithium-ion batteries have reigned for a while now—that's true.
The third important point: Batteries have been getting better over the decades. The reason we don't notice is that our devices have been getting faster, more powerful and more power-hungry at the same time. Heck, if you could put a modern iPhone battery into a 1995 phone, it'd probably go a year on a single charge.
One difficult thing about developing better batteries is that the technology is still poorly understood. Changing one part of a battery—say, by introducing a new electrode—can produce unforeseen problems, some of which can't be detected without years of testing.
A better battery could change everything. But while countless breakthroughs have been announced over the last decade, time and again these advances have failed to translate into commercial batteries with anything like the promised improvements in cost and energy storage.
Why are commercial batteries so difficult to develop?
While countless breakthroughs have been announced over the last decade, time and again these advances failed to translate into commercial batteries. One difficult thing about developing better batteries is that the technology is still poorly understood.
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