Now that crude oil is toying with $135 a barrel and anything within $10 of that appears relatively stable, the push to save fuel (and, thus, money) is giving pause to our old ways of doing business. While energy grids are making use of wind, solar, and nuclear, the transportation sector, unfortunately, is left hauling a heavy bag.
Our economy is largely fueled by movement. All of us need to shift products around, and doing so almost always means burning gasoline or diesel. The only widespread alternative to the internal combustion engine is a battery. Unfortunately, the power-to-weight ratio of batteries has always been too poor for mobile applications, despite the wide variety of types available to researchers.
Concurrent advances in thin film deposition techniques and carbon nanotube manufacturing holds a lot of promise, but still, 13 years after the Prius hybrid appeared on Japanese roads, the automotive industry is trapped by old designs. The lead-acid battery, of course, was de rigeur for turn-of-the-20th-century electric cars. Toyota is unable to break away from nickel hydride battery packs for its two newest hybrids for 2009, and can’t even keep up with demand for the old design. GM, meanwhile, has suffered setbacks with catastrophic battery failures in its tepid Saturn hybrids, and will likely have trouble keeping its innovative Volt project anywhere near the price of a new Malibu.
Fortunately, creativity abounds. Some UK scientists have decided to combine what they like about batteries—high energy storage capacity—with what’s great about capacitors—fast charge/discharge to create a supercapattery. Other researchers are toying with supercapacitors, industrial flywheels, metal-air batteries, and there’s even a steam-gasoline hybrid out there. I know we will find a workaround or a breakthrough for the battery problem, I just hope it’s before we have to kiss transportation good-bye for a while.
