A ten-fold increase in energy density (from 100 Wh/Kg to 1000 Wh/Kg) may go from dream to reality by 2015 or there about.

When that happens, BEVs e-range per charge may very well go from 100 Km to 1000 Km. Most people could drive around with a single charge every two or three weeks. BEV city buses, taxis, delivery trucks etc would quickly become common place.

PHEV-100+ Km would be possible with a rather small lower cost battery pack making that option affordable.

Intgeresting transition decade ahead.

Harvey

Don't get too excited, this kind of breakthrough will take a lot of time to make it through (if it does), 200 cycles is still not enough and producing nanotubes at industrial scale is still out of reach. 10 years is a very minimum for such an exotic material to emerge but 20 years is more realistic. Look a the silicon solar cells, they were invented in the 70s an only now they are not scaled in production to make a dent in our energy production.

Tree....

A little dream does not hurt.

May it be 5, 10 or 20 years, it will come, specially if enough resources are allocated to new improved battery technologies.

Wow. This is a huge improvement in just a little over a year since Cui's last "breakthrough" (80% capacity after 20 charges I believe). Another 10x advance and oil is toast.

BTW, with these energy densities for an electric drivetrain, it is very interesting what happens to necessary pack size and overall vehicle weight. Smaller motors, wheels, and brakes are needed to achieve the same levels of acceleration, handling, and braking

@Plattsburgh7

Yep, that's about 10kw/h/kg. A 100kw/h battery pack would only weight 10kg/22lbs. Figure 50% loss for packaging and you are still looking at only 20kg/44lbs. 100kw/h should be good for 500 miles. Using the existing 200 charge cycle limit that means the battery would be good for 100,000 miles. Not bad.

Silicon photo cells were invented in the late 1950s not 1970s.

It will be very useful for miltary but if you look the charge capacity starts to nosedive rapidly at about 170 cycles.

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need to resume writing, but such guys like author don't do that. Thanks for the information. Really good information about Li-ion Batteries Hold Capacity and Efficiency Even After 200 Cycles.

The capacity of the anode "the Si nanotubes show a very high reversible charge capacity of 3,247 mAh/g" is not the whole story. In a typical Li-Ion cell with LiCoO2 cathode and carbon anode, the anode is only about 20% of the weight, including packaging and electrolyte. So if the anode capacity is increased by ten times, but the cathode is unchanged, the weight of a battery can't be reduced by more than 20%. This results in a battery with 125% the gravimetric capacity, not ten times.

However, the researchers say that "A Li-ion full cell consisting of a LiCoO2 cathode and Si nanotube anode demonstrated 10 times higher capacity." I'd love to know how that works because the gravimetric capacity of LiCoO2 cathode is only 140 mAh/g. How did they get the cathode capacity to increase by more than 20 times? Carbon anodes are about 370 mAh/g.

Looking at the chart, the capacity drops in a straight line until, at 200 cycles, there is a hint of a downward curve. This isn't enough to see what the capacity does after that. However, it's still about 12 times normal cell at 200 cycles, therefore maybe five times at 300 cycles. 200 cycles would be fine with me if the battery cost is ten times less than current batteries. Something like a 40 kg battery, with 300 mile range, charged once a week, might last about four years. Nanowire etching, according to Cui, is probably not very difficult, but clearly more expensive than simple carbon anodes.

HealthB... & danm

Have a look at USA Patent number 7544626

I don't believe what the writer of this article says - "A Li-ion full cell consisting of a LiCoO2 cathode and Si nanotube anode demonstrated 10 times higher capacity than commercially available cells with graphite anodes even after 200 cycles."

The paper and abstract of the researcher's paper are here - http://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1021/nl902058c

The abstract says something different - "Furthermore, the capacity in a Li-ion full cell consisting of a cathode of LiCoO2 and anode of Si nanotubes demonstrates a 10 times higher capacity than commercially available graphite even after 200 cycles."

With better grammar, this should say "Furthermore, the capacity OF THE NANOWIRES, in a Li-ion full cell consisting of a cathode of LiCoO2 and anode of Si nanotubes, demonstrates a 10 times higher capacity than commercially available graphite ANODES even after 200 cycles."

I'm not going to spend $30 to download a paper that was obviously misread not read at all by the GCC writer. Looks like he or she only read the abstract and rewrote it to create some exciting news.

Well BLEEP!

@Zhukova,

Well, that has been the question since Cui first published; What about the cathode? Do we cut annode bulk by 4/5ths and increase cathode material by 4/5ths and end up with a battery with 1.8x the density?

Do we try to apply nano features to the cathode to get some increase in capacity to heighten this ratio further?

Anybody know what Cui says about it?

I meant there are plenty of others trying to make better CATHODES, which is what Ajayan's group at Rice are doing.