A company named Contour Energy recently announced their new battery – Carbon-Fluorine based Lithium-Ion technology. They’re just starting to work to commercialize it, but even if it takes five years to show up its still a significant step up.
The raw numbers are very interesting – a theoretical maximum of over 2,000 Wh/kg, with initial numbers (though not available for many years) around 700Wh/kg. This figure is a huge leap above current technologies. Given “Musk’s Law” of 8% per year, we wouldn’t hit 700Wh/kg until about 2030. As long as they can deliver sometime in the next 5 years it would provide for a new level of energy storage capabilities. Batteries would reduce in volume by 50%. Size and weight would no longer be the issue (how to recharge such batteries quickly would still be).
The batteries also offer superior thermal behavior – down to -60C and up to +160C. This would be beneficial to the automotive applications where cold weather performance can be an issue.
The real question is how fast can they make a product and make it manufacturable. Contour hasn’t even bothered to announce any target dates for product delivery on their website or available documents. They have the talent and are attracting venture capital, so we’ll see how quickly they can turn their lab work into factories putting out large volumes of their unique chemistry.
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wow, 700 W/h is around 10x as dense in energy from LiCoO2 cells, if you put them on the roadster, provided they can supply enough charge you’d have a car just as good as a gas powered car but with superior acceleration properties
Yes, would be nice. Just that this is a *primary* battery and cannot be recharged…
Yes, but they’re goal is to build a rechargeable battery. This is a non-rechargeable battery now.