Futurology

it's a prototype pouch format, what are you even comparing it to? lead acid 12v? you're just seeing kinda small numbers and thinking that sucks, aren't you?

you know you get whatever voltage and amps out of batteries you want by wiring the cells together in parallel and series, right? right???

the point of this is the cobalt free and fast charging, which are both good.

All large batteries are just smaller batteries wired in series for more voltage and parallel for more capacity. Both these numbers are reasonable and comparable to most battery tech.

It’s a starting point at least

And this is...what...bad?

This is obviously at a prototype stage.

They clearly state that this tech would need further improvements including significantly increased capacity. But that may only be a question of size as is the case with pretty much every other battery technology.

And they produce 3V max--so what? Lead acid cells' nominal voltage is 1.2V, lipo 3.7, Nickel is like 1.3V (I can't recall for sure). Want more voltage, wire cells in series, want more current and capacity, wire in parallel.

The battery tech has interesting, useful properties that offer some promise. I don't really see why you're shitting on it. They're not claiming this is some paradigm changing tech or anything.

Before condescendingly ask if I know anything about electronics or how my phone works, while I am admittedly weak on RF design, I have written drivers for accelerometers, gyros, magnetometers, UARTs, displays, GPS receivers, etc., I've done a little bit of work writing code for cameras, I've worked with ADCs, DACs, I have written code for PIC, AVR, ARM, RISC, etc. microcontrollers in C (also a bit of assembly and c++), and I have designed and sold a variety of circuit boards for hobby use using various microcontrollers, sensors, and other components.

I probably don't know how everything in my phone works but I probably have at least a working knowledge of 80-90% of it. I don't do electronics professionally but I've always enjoyed it. That's why, along with enjoying programming, I got my computer engineering degree back when 80386 and 68020 was the latest, greatest (lol) and why I still do electronics and robotics (the kids call it mechatronics now) as a hobby.

Anyway... I am curious to see if they're able to bring this new chemistry to the market in 5 years as they claim. It may not revolutionize anything but it could offer a nice alternative in a variety of applications.

It's expensive for metal parts because it's a pita to fabricate.

In batteries, it'll be a miniscule amount used and instead of a chunk of titanium, a chemical mix that includes titanium.

Otherwise, titanium, like aluminium, are rather common (like the 8 or 9th most common element on earth).

EDIT: reading the details, it's not just titanium, it's niobium-titanium oxide.

And niobium isn't quite as common as titanium (it's less common than lithium and cobalt) and is in high demand for quite a few industrial applications.

So dunno if this is actually an improvement other than that niobium being mined in Brazil and Canada instead of the hell conditions in central Africa.

While it is relatively expensive compared to iron, we actually use 95% of all titanium mined for white paint since titanium dioxide is really white.

So if we're able to put almost all titanium production into white paint, I think we could take some of that capacity and put it towards batteries.

Metallic titanium is just really difficult to work with, apparently. It doesn't like being machined, requires very large presses to be cold or hot formed, and eats drill bits for breakfast. Basically stainless on steroids.

But titanium itself is one the most abundant minerals on earth.