Tech Used to Be Bleeding Edge, Now it’s Just Bleeding | After a decade of scandals and half-assed product launches, people are no longer buying the future Big Tech is selling.::After a decade of scandals and half-assed product launches, people are no longer buying the future Big Tech is selling.
Aren’t we still using the same old Lithium ion batteries from 20 years ago?
Yup, no refinements, advancements or chemistry changes at all. Exact same, yup.
Chemistry changes?
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-15355-0
Ha yeah in the same way we’re still using the same old pn semiconductor wafers from the 90s - it’s basically the same thing which is why I still use my p120 and it’s just as good as any of these modern machines with their fancy 7nm pathways!
The batteries used today are much better than old batteries and the manufacturing technologies are far superior also, it depends on the device of course but energy density, charge speed, reliability has increased also manufacturing cost and requirements, low lithium batteries are getting more common for example.
Plus it’s getting increasingly likely that the lithium in your battery has already been a different battery previously thanks to new recycling methods so that’s pretty cool.
You’re right that it’s refined more but I was more hoping for a truly different combination. What we’ve done to li-ion seems akin to how we refined combustion engines.
To truly achieve a massive performance leap it seems like we need an actual different combination. I recall CATL making sodium-ion batteries. Lithium is still a rather scarce metal which poses a problem for mass production.