I am very enthusiastic about electric car, power and battery technology. In the last 3 years we had many car manufacturer announcing an electric car for 2010. In a way GM was the first to announce an affordable mass marketed model for 2010 with the Volt car. There was many "me too" from other car manufacturers since that. Additionally there are some rumors GM might be ready before that although, to be fair, naysayers are also reporting that they are not going to make it. Who knows, 2010 is going to be a great, turning over year!

Anyway for electric cars the sore point has always been the batteries. Electric engines are already, and by far, the most efficient ones. The "problem" (for an electric car enthusiastic such as me) is that oil packs a lot of energy (high energy density) and current battery (or fuel cell for that matter) fell quite short.

However in those last 3 year we also had many battery manufacturers announcing Lithium ion battery breakthrough, producing safer, longer lived, batteries which can pack as much as 10 times the energy density of Nickel batteries (company such as A123, LG Chem). We even had EEStor announcing a vapor ware product which might bury all other; A super potent super capacitor! No one has seen it yet, but Zen car and Lockheed Martin have a contract with them.

With such batteries the electric is almost viable. Thanks to the current petrol price (long-lived?) spike electric can be affordable. I often wonder if these battery maker couldn't share their trade secret and somehow increase improve their product. Well I'm not sure it's even practical.

But today I read this, this a 5 fold increase of Lithium ion battery. Could it be applied to these already advance Lithium ion battery produce by A123 and/or LG Chem? That would move electric car from barely viable, to a great bargain I reckon. I mean I hope!..

Anyway, as mentioned in the blog: "The company says it is likely to contract manufacturing to China and hopes to start commercial production in six months to a year".

Time is ripe, time is nigh, the end is coming, I mean the new beginning!!

On another power topic, the astute reader might have found my link on peak oil. Wether we reached it or not is still matter of academic debate I will concede. But it will come. And battery is not the solution... nor bio fuel it seems (I just summarize what I read in a couple of words there). Oil is so important, fuel for car, plane, power plant, base material for plastics, and I don't know what else. I hope we will still have plane in the future (in the latest news there was no fast electric plane).

Anyway, where I want to go is this, it would be nice to have sun powered electric vehicle. Apparently solar cell technology is progressing well, but far from there yet. But if we compliment it with high power wireless power transmission (another world changing new technology), we could envision some spatial sun power plant providing earth all it needs. It's not Sci-Fi, it's a research project close to experimentation.