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It looks like graphene batteries are getting closer and we should see them in the near future. This is just the latest research project that has a 45% capacity increase, while charging five times as fast. It looks like we'll need a Moore's law for batteries. This is showing that more than any other sector, the chip technology companies from supply to fab ccompanies are mastering nanotechnology faster than any other sector. This is why the semi sector has significant room to grow vertically and horizontally and into totally new markets they haven't been in before.
What if it takes 10+ years for this research to be commercialized?
Remember, it was the same Samsung that had to recall millions of Galaxy Note smart phones for batteries that caught fire, so there's certainly an uphill marketing battle to rebuild consumer confidence in their brand when it comes to any battery technology.
There are numerous battery and battery like technologies in labs around the world right now and last year battery capacities went up 15 percent, when only 6 percent had been anticipated. I feel the advances in electrical energy storage of many types will continue at a rapid clip with many pleasant and some unpleasant surprises along the way. The increases in money and talent chasing this goal should not only help battery technology, but hopefully more than a few spin off technologies dealing with electricity and nanomaterials. I see a cross between super capacitor and battery technology merging in a hybrid manner.
Battery cost performance has been improving 10-15% a year in surprisingly steady fashion. Not quite Moore's law, but a doubling of battery cost performance every 10 years is nothing to sneeze at. Anyone with doubts about the future of the EV sector need to look no further than the data on battery performance improvement, because at this rate, the internal combustion engine will be obsolete in a short decade or two.
This seemed like an important announcement to me, the kind made after significant patent filings have issued. Samsung SDI has the #2 position in the market so that is another reason it seems important.
Moore's Law essentially means miniaturization of functional units, leading to cost reduction. Batteries, unfortunately, are different; smaller batteries don't usually perform better (more mAh is better, and it correlates to size and weight). This announcement shows that maybe there are ways to make smaller batteries with more mAh, uncoupling mAh from size through the use of novel chemistry.
I just used Moore's law as a reference and feel we might see a law on increases in battery capacity come about. This will also apply to the lowering of cost per kilowatt stored. We are also seeing the cost/performance ratio in solar shrinking at a good clip.
There was a pretty good database tracking the performance of some of these technologies (batteries and solar included), but hasn't been updated since 2010. Still very useful:
