I consider rechargeable lithium chemistry batteries just as crucial to the 21st century as the internal combustion engine was to the 20th. And we're only two decades in.<p>1) Practical electric cars.<p>2) Practical and scalable (both directions) and geographically independent grid storage.<p>3) High performance cellphones and smartphones.<p>4) Practical laptops and tablets.<p>5) Other wearable smart devices (smartwatches, portable VR/AR, fitness trackers, etc)<p>6) Medical devices (insulin pumps, CPAP, wearable artificial kidneys, portable oxygen generators, portable artificial heart, etc)<p>7) Electric trucks.<p>8) Electric aircraft (low range now, will soon be 1000km range, eventually will get long range and full size using more advanced chemistries like lithium sulfur, lithium anode, or even lithium air in a few decades).<p>9) Battery electric trains (including things like Hyperloop or Loop people movers).<p>10) Battery electric ships.<p>11) E-cigarrettes.<p>12) Various personal mobility devices like e-scooters, those funny hoverboard things, e-bikes, etc.<p>13) Lightweight spacecraft energy storage.<p>14) Aerial Drones. Both the ubiquitous quadcopter/DJI types and the more advanced winged flight delivery drones like Zipline is using to revolutionize high speed medical product delivery in places like infrastructure-hobbled Africa or rural India and may eventually become commonplace in the rest of the world for more products.<p>15) Greatly enhanced submarine propulsion, especially for underwater drones. (I have a feeling we're just scratching the surface with this one.)<p>16) Robotic prosthetics/assistance devices.<p>17) Animal or humanoid robotics like Boston Dynamics.<p>18) Ground based delivery drones.<p>19) Other ground-based drones like more compact robotic vacuums, those silly robotic trashcans, etc.<p>20) Secondary power sources, like for hybrid cars or APUs for aircraft or launch vehicles (such as SpaceX's Starship).<p>It's actually remarkable how big of an impact lithium ion batteries have already had. In some cases, it's just significantly extending the performance and convenience of things already marginally viable using lead acid or NiMH batteries, and in others it's truly enabling. And we're just getting started.<p>I truly believe the impact of the rechargeable lithium chemistry battery in the 21st Century will be just as great or greater than the internal combustion was for the 20th century.<p>So this prize is well-earned.