I Trust Altair Nanotechnologies will be interested in this.

Darius

It won't be difficult to outperform EESTOR, since EESTOR is nothing but vaporware.

I bet a bottle of Champagne that EESTOR will postpone his next milestone (again) and won't have any cell tested by third party next year, but will keep announcing more deals and patnerships with fooled innocent companies like ZennMotor car

No . . . keyword is "paper." As in "we did a study." When the keyword is even "prototype" you can talk like it means anything.

Lower voltage means more cells, different electronics, different standards, reliability hit, bigger motors, different chargers, etc., etc.

There are no standards developed yet, or even any accepted standards bodies to turn to for all this EV stuff. It is about 1976 for the microprocessor/PC right now on this. In about 30 years it will advance from that to where semiconductors, SW, computer science, etc are today.

In the meantime oil, natural gas, and coal, with a little nuclear and maybe a few dams and some solar plants that run in the sunshine to get through those 30 years.

The electric car is not dead -- it just has not been completely invented yet . . . . .

In 1976 the microprocessor industry was 8 years old already. If indeed the two technologies are on a similar growth track - we should see a figurative explosion along the lines of Moore's Law soon. Not only in electrical storage materials - but also in areas like nanoparticle materials catalysts: http://www.greencarcongress.com/2008/10/real-time-obser.html

We can expect to see rapid simultaneous development of energy storage and energy production chemistry and materials. All of which will make even the microprocessor revolution look somewhat tame.

Sulleny

I sincerely doubt that the technology of batteries will follow the Moore law, there is no evidence to support that, what is true for one type of industry is not necessarily true for another. Each industry has its own specificity. Progress in battery has always been slow, battery (at the difference of micoprocessor) is an old industry and if they could have made pogress faster they will have done it, believe me, because the markets opportunities for more powerful batteries have always existed. I don't believe in disruptive technology for batteries the progress will be incremental.

@ Treehugger,

"I don't believe in disruptive technology for batteries the progress will be incremental."

Going from the 300 cycle life at 1C of late 90s lithium-ion batteries to >15,000 cycles of deep charge/discharge at 10C of today's titanate batteries must surely be considered disruptive!

Or how about the 500 Wh/kg lithium-sulphur batteries from Sion et al? (still with safety and cycle life issues, but with 5x the capacity of A123 cells etc that would really be disruptive if they cracked the final problems ie 250 mile range from a 100 kg pack). Or how about the 11,600 Wh/kg lithium-air couple?

There are some very disruptive technologies just around the battery corner!

Considering that transistors are only 50 years old +/- and integrated circuitss less, Moores law was a given based on physics.

Useful thermodynamics and IC engine technology is 3+ times that old, as is battery technology. It started in the 1700's with the birth of physics. Way past any Moores Law stuff that comes from moderm physics / quantum mechanics which is barely 100 years old and was a new thing.

A Li battery that had lots of cycles or is a bit more efficient or a bit lighter is incremental change. The theoretical chemical limits on any battery are well known and no matter how you build them you will not have geometric improvements since the limits are close to current technology.

Ultra capacitors, high speed flywheels, batteries, efficient IC engines -- all that have a part and all of them are linear with small changes.

Magic doesn't happen. Spock and Kirk and the warp starship with antimatter engines are pretend. Elon Musk blew up Scotty's ashes this summer and Kirk is a fat make believe lawyer now.

Hopefully we can get batteries that will, with negligible wear-and-tear, efficiently store the energy during high-speed regenerative braking.

If we can get compact ultracapacitors from EESTOR that can store no more than the energy from a single high-speed regenerative stop, then EESTOR could have a successful product.

Anyway, EESTOR is not the topic that I want feedback about; here's what I want comments about:

Randell Mills is a Harvard medical graduate who developed a "Grand Unified Theory of Classical Physics" that claims that electrons can exist in stable states below the "ground state" in atoms. He has also claimed to have discovered processes using catalysts that can induce hydrogen atoms to convert into such states below ground state (and such converted hydrogen atoms he terms "hydrinos"), along with significant releases of energy. In fact, his company BlackLight Power claims to have made numerous devices that generate (heat) energy released by hydrino formation - eventually (he says) to produce electricity as cheaply as 2 cents per kWh:

http://money.cnn.com/2008/07/01/smallbusiness/blacklight.fsb/index.htm?postversion=2008070210

Remarkably, BlackLight Power (founded by Randell Mills) has had the claims for their power generators tested and confirmed by well-qualified engineers and scientists at New Jersey's Rowan University:

http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/gigaom/startups/2008_10_21_blacklight_validates_physics_defying_hydrogen_power.html

http://www.blacklightpower.com/

I've been following Randell Mills' hydrino saga since 1994 (after I saw a CBC documentary on Cold Fusion theories called "Witness").

Sure, almost every professional physicist (e.g., the American Physical Society) rejects hydrinos - and most also reject Cold Fusion.

But many professional chemists (e.g., the American Chemical Society) consider Cold Fusion possible - and they respect Pons and Fleischmann.

I'm neither a professional physicist nor chemist, but like many chemists I believe that statistically significant though mysterious low-energy nuclear reactions can occur within the complex atomic lattices of condensed matter (solids and liquids).

And so-called "Cold Fusion" phenomena can be replicated on demand:

http://www.thaindian.com/newsportal/sci-tech/cold-fusion-success-in-japan-gets-warm-reception-in-india_10053182.html

Anyway, if the BlackLight Power generators deliver many kiloWatts as cheaply as 2 cents per kWh (and safely too), then this could be the biggest energy breakthrough since fire.

On the other hand, if BlackLight Power is a scam, we could end up with one of the biggest energy bubbles.

So would it be mischievous to ask governments to organize first-class top-to-bottom investigations about such BlackLight Power generators??

Would BlackLight Power be mischievous if they refused to cooperate with such proposed investigations??

(And I don't think I'm mischievous for posting such questions.)

"I don't believe in disruptive technology for batteries the progress will be incremental."

Interesting. Most people at GCC post notices demanding clean, sustainable, highly efficient machines and living practices RIGHT NOW!! How does non-disruptive, incremental growth resolve these demands??

Beleivers and Skeptics,
Clearly Moore's Law does not apply to batteries. It applies to computer chips and more specifically to packing more gates onto the same chip by designing and etching ever smaller circuit lines/parts.
In spite of this, some recent Li Ion battery improvements can be considered disruptive. As Clett points out, Altairnano is good for >15,000 deep cycles. Toshiba SCiB 90% good after 3,000 cycles and useable to 6,000 cycles. I don't have information on Ener1 yet. Those are all TiO2 as mentioned in the article. GM's two contenders for the Volt battery (A123 & Saft?) have to meet 5,000 cycle-life and push the car for a minimum of 150,000 miles. Clett is right. Time for us to wake you up Kevin Cameron. We have the battery technology for Extended-Range Electric Vehicles right now. Several companies are ramping up their production. ...and it can only improve from here.

Jay Dee,
Blacklight power is obvious a scam. Why? "since 1994" 14 years and they don't have a demo product? Well then they don't have anything that's worth any trouble. Government to investigate? Why? Isn't it just plain obvious? Companies with miraculous products that can't get anyone to back them, do not really have miraculous products. EEStor has backing so maybe they'll turn out to have something. Proof is still in the pudding ...when it gets served. Steorn is another scam that mysteriously can't find investors. Get it?