A virus could increase lithium batteries capacity by 10x

The biggest winner of this, should it come to fruition, would seem to be electric vehicles. Electronic devices would surely prosper, but further miniaturization of smartphones doesn't really seem desirable, so it would go towards increased computational power and battery life. EVs, on the other hand, derive a double benefit: By shrinking the battery, you reduce weight, which increases range and efficiency, which reduces the requisite battery size, etc. The end product would be much cheaper and much more efficient. Having an economical EV that could get 1000 miles to a charge for the price of a Civic would be huge.

I can't be the only one that hates the word "automagically." I don't see anything magic - he's explaining it right there and "therefore" or something similar would have worked fine.

There seems to be news about new and revolutionary battery technologies that will increase capacity N-fold every few weeks. I have more or less stopped reading about this, as none of the ideas ever seem to make it to the market. I prefer to be ignorant of emerging battery tech, and would rather be pleasantly surprised if anything of this actually turns into a product :-)

Perfect timing. I was only just discussing battery technology with some friends, who believe batteries cannot possibly grow to capacities larger than we have today on the basis of 'gee, they haven't grown as fast as other technology in the past 100 years'<p>No faith in scientists, I tell you.

Given that Li batteries are packing enough power now to be considered unsafe and "explosive" in some cases, imagine what would happen if their capacity was increased 10 times. I've started thinking conservatively about battery capacity - it's the chips and software we should redesign, not only the batteries.

Every now and then there's news about radically improving battery lifetime. I'm skeptical. Wouldn't the organic cell structure of the TMV decay over time?

The one thing that popped in my mind when reading this was "poor viruses, they put electric charge on them". :) Now it's clear that a virus is so simple that it's not even clear if it can be considered alive, but what if something similar was devised with bacteria? Where would we draw an ethical line? :)

wow, i'm all for better batteries, but that's a lot of viral mass we're talking about. what are the potential consequences of producing tons of viral matter?<p>are we already doing this?<p>and on a related note, i wonder how much viral mass a human gets when he/she is sick from a nasty flu.

I thought electrode surface area related to recharge Time, not capacity? Its a current-density thing.

Original article: <a href="http://www.eng.umd.edu/media/release.php?id=71" rel="nofollow">http://www.eng.umd.edu/media/release.php?id=71</a><p>Video: <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8L-ur4masU" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8L-ur4masU</a>

So, if the batteries have 10x the capacity, what is the charge time?

Yay! Looks cool! Now to wait 20 years for it to be implemented commercially.

After much deliberation from top management we have decided that the 10x lithium battery device must be brought in on-time and under budget. Sincerely, Thaddeus Plotz.