IBM Aims for a Battery Breakthrough

Business Week by Steve Hamm | Jun. 23, 2009 (Special Report)

On June 23, IBM announced a multiyear effort to increase the performance of rechargeable batteries by a factor of 10. The aim is to design batteries that will make it possible for electric vehicles to travel 300 to 500 miles on a single charge, up from 50 to 100 miles currently. "We want to see if we can find a radically different battery technology," says Chandrasekhar "Spike" Narayan, who manages the Science & Technology Organization at IBM Research's ... Full Story »

Posted by Dwight Rousu

See All Reviews »

View | |

To:


Separate email addresses with commas.
25 recipients max.

Note:

Review

Member_photo_thumb
3.6
 by Dwight Rousu - Jul. 1, 2009

The article looks at hopes for technology that will make electric cars and the electrical grid more efficient. The real news will be when and if they succeed. It ignores environmental questions of nanomaterials.

The worry is that the U.S. will trade its current dependency on the Middle East for oil with a new dependency on Asia for vehicle batteries. “We lost control of battery technology in the 1970s,”

general electric is making a battery play, too

Toyota recently began looking into litium-air technology. And there are other technologies with breakthrough potential as well, including lithium-sulfur. Still, there’s considerable enthusiam in the scientific community for IBM’s approach. “It’s a very promising idea—one among a very few,” says Oak Ridge’s Wells.

Dwight posted this story.
(15 answers)

Dwight's Rating

Overall
3.6

Good
from 15 answers
Quality
3.6
Facts
3.0
Fairness
3.0
Sourcing
3.0
Style
4.0
Context
4.0
Depth
4.0
Enterprise
4.0
Relevance
4.0
Popularity
3.5
Recommendation
4.0
Credibility
3.0
More How our ratings work »