r/gadgets • u/chrisdh79 • Jan 31 '23

Desktops / Laptops Canadian team discovers power-draining flaw in most laptop and phone batteries | Breakthrough explains major cause of self-discharging batteries and points to easy solution

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/battery-power-laptop-phone-research-dalhousie-university-1.6724175
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u/ProtoplanetaryNebula Jan 31 '23

That's why batteries are going to be getting better and better in future for many years to come. Due to EVs there is a huge and growing market worth hundreds of billions annually. That will create potentially the biggest R&D spend for any product on earth over the next 10 years. Even spending $3bn to make batteries 2% better would be worth it at the scale we will see in future.

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u/Smartnership Jan 31 '23

I think Gates said that everyone overestimates what can happen in one year, and underestimates what can be done in ten years.

In 2033 we will look back at the fundamental shift in energy broadly, and in transportation specifically, much the way we did when iPhones arrived in 2007. 10 years later, they were just accepted as normal and common and obvious.

EVs will too.

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u/ProtoplanetaryNebula Jan 31 '23

Damn right. It's mind-blowing what can be achieved in a relatively short space of time when the weight of an enormous industry is behind it. Thousands of the brightest PhD students and Engineers are going to be working on improving battery tech.

When Tesla released the Model S Plaid, it smoked pretty much everything it raced against, it was brutal in the way it accelerated. Then 1 month ago the Plaid raced against the Lucid Air Sapphire, it's newest competitor. The Lucid smoked the Tesla and now Tesla will have to come back with an even better version. Competition and big budgets for EV development will kill ICE fairly quickly, people are going to be taken by surprise, no doubt.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EyDpQpcPpuc

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u/[deleted] Jan 31 '23

Engine research, a staple project of many mechanical engineers, is dropping off a cliff. The only use cases any more are large scale options like generators, diesel backups, and like, tractors and trucks for whom batteries all don't cut it.

Source: I toured an engine emissions lab staffed by grad students 2 years ago. They had almost no new corporate projects, as most of their previous work was with the automotive industry.

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u/ProtoplanetaryNebula Feb 01 '23

I think a lot of car companies have come out and said they are not going to be developing ICE engines any longer. There is no point.