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Technology

New Batteries Promise 2.5 Times Longer Uptime 103

Posted by timothy from the want-to-believe dept.
DarrylM writes: "CBC News has this story about the opening of a factory for new rechargeable batteries. They are supposed to be capable of supplying a laptop with power for 12-16 hours. The batteries are manufactured by electrofuel Inc., and come in various sizes. They will also produce batteries for phones, and hope to eventually provide battery power for bikes and cars." Sounds promising -- more power, smaller package is always nice. I wonder what sort of power draw they're expecting from a laptop though; will low-power chips like the Crusoe extend those hours, or is a trend toward more efficient chips already taken optimistically into account?
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New Batteries Promise 2.5 Times Longer Uptime More

New Batteries Promise 2.5 Times Longer Uptime

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  • > These are 1100mAh high-capacity batteries! In case you don't know...
    > That puts it at the same power point as Alkaline batteries

    No it doesn't. Alkaline AAs are good for about 2200mAh at least, maybe 2800, depending on type. That's for low drain applications, though; NiCds and NiMH cells have lower internal resistance and can deliver all of their rated capacity into quite high loads, while alkalines crap out rapidly in things like digital cameras that draw a lot of current. For those applications, high capacity rechargeables (you can easily get NiMH AAs with 1600mAh capacity!) last better than alkalines.

    But NiCd and NiMH also have lousy self-discharge (they lose charge relatively rapidly just sitting there), so they're unsuitable for standby applications. Put a set of alkalines and a set of 1600mAh rechargeable AAs in identical digital cameras and put them on the shelf for six months before you use them, and the alkalines will be the less useless of the two :-).
  • ...by some yutz promoting http://www.fivestaradvantage.com/electrofuel/ [fivestaradvantage.com]. Which is not the manufacturers' site, I hasten to add.

    So if you buy one, don't buy one from there :-).

  • I'd just settle for something compact, light and inexpensive. The battery for this Sony Vaio PCG-505TX is about shot and new ones are priced at ~$200. Not such a good deal for a battery that ran it for about 2 hours in the best of times.

    --

  • > They can be recharged about twice before that memory effect kicks in.

    This is a popular myth.

    Check out http://www.repairfaq.org/ELE/F_NiCd_Memory.html [repairfaq.org] and the full NiCd Battery Frequently Asked Questions file at http://www.repairfaq.org/ELE/F_NiCd_Battery.html [repairfaq.org] before you flame me about this.

  • I'd just settle for something compact, light and inexpensive. The battery for this Sony Vaio PCG-505TX is about shot and new ones are priced at ~$200. Not such a good deal for a battery that ran it for about 2 hours in the best of times.

    --

  • ... the batteries will stay up longer than Windows.
  • At MIT they make mini gas turbines (basically airplane engines) the size of a credit card but a bit thicker. Imagine the jet-powered laptop if you hook up a dynamo to that.

  • And most of the points you made ring very true.

    I'd add that oil changes are more frequent due to combustion contamination. However it's possible to mix 2cycle oil into the fuel and remove the need to burn oil.

    Exhaust temps aren't just hot but damned hot! Remove the cats from a late model Mazda rotary and blowing flames out the back on a shift is VERY easy - even through a turbo. Exhaust noise is an issue too, these puppies are noisy if not muffled well and it's a completely different sort of noice than an engine with a valvetrain makes.

    Torque isn't a rotary strong suit unless it's forced induction - I cannot imagine how that will be done in a very small application. Rotaries run well at high RPMs and make great HP but they need that RPM. The new Renesis will make as much power naturally aspirated as my turbo does now but it will have to turn 10,000RPM in order to do it - in a passenger car?!

    A shame that page didn't have any test results....
  • plus they`ll have memory effect - arent ni-mh worth the extra?
  • New batteries promise 2.5 times longer uptime


    One might say they're Viagra for laptops!
    (groan)

  • Note that the VE has 64 MB more ram and an 8 MB ati rage mobility where it predecessor has a 2,5 MB graphic chip.

  • Translation of the article into English (Score:3)

    by hawk ( 1151 ) <hawk@eyry.org> on Wednesday April 18, 2001 @07:15AM (#283402) Journal
    First stage:
    There is no memory effect; what is perceived as memory effect is a result of overcharging.


    Second stage (going between the lines):
    There are no consumer available chargers or computers that will charge properly; they all overcharge:


    Final step (in english):
    The life of your NiCad will drop quickly in any normal use in any available product with any available charger.

  • In law school, I carried a tandy 102 and a tape recorder to class. I also had two or three spare four-packs of charged nicads in my pockets.


    The 102 claimed it wanted 4 alkalines, for 6 volts. On these, the battery warning came on with 20 minuts or so left. On my NiCads, it was 20 seconds . . .


    If I'd made the modification to house a 5th nicad, as many people did, to get the whole 6 volts, it probably would have been worse: by running at 5/6 voltage, the current draw as also 5/6 (for the cmos technology that that thing used). With the full 6v, I would have lost battery life and warning time.


    hawk, who still occasionally uses the 102 (modern email at 300 baud can be interesting. . . :)

  • If you have a deep-cycle battery which gives you 50 amp-hours of capacity at 12 volts nominal terminal voltage, that's 600 watt-hours. If your laptop consumes 50 watts average, that's 12 hours running time more or less. If you can pare that down to 30 watts, you'd get 20 hours or so. The running time will probably increase faster than the power consumption goes down because resistive losses in the battery are decreased (this assumes a switching regulator in the laptop instead of a linear regulator).
    --
    spam spam spam spam spam spam
    No one expects the Spammish Repetition!

  • Come to think of it, on a second look at this, this whole situation sounds like a public relations person's dream of a press release getting believed... ick, spin. (On an 'objective' trainee journalist [whitireia.ac.nz]'s POV though, I have to say, good technology, but slick PR move...)

  • I've got a whole bunch of them (4 children meant $30 of batteries on Dec. 26 1999), and I"m afinding that when you try to recharge them, you have about a 5 in 6 chance of success--even on the first recharge. And of those 5, one may only take a partial charge. I'm starting to switch kids stuff over to NiMh.
  • Torque isn't a rotary strong suit unless it's forced induction - I cannot imagine how that will be done in a very small application. Rotaries run well at high RPMs and make great HP but they need that RPM.
    You can also get around the torque issue with more rotors. NSU had a single rotor car and a number of single rotor motorcycles, but a car really needs 2-3 rotors. I have a hard time remembering the details - it's been a while, but John Deere has a larger engine that puts out torque but doesn't rev. I think it's about 7 liters, and has more than four rotors.
    On the other hand, the generator could be wound to make the required power at a higher rpm, but be easier to turn against a load.
    For the forced induction thing, you could use a small electric motor to blow the air into the engine.
  • You're going to have a hard time convincing someone who had three different nicad packs from three different companies (apple, bti, and I forget who) consistantly see the lives of all three batteries drop from about 1:40 to about :35 unless regularlyu discharged. . . .
  • You can't compare the OLD technology used in NI-CADs to the ones used today! I know the problems you're talking about, I've had them myself, but within the last 5 years, the technology has improved to a point that Ni-Cads can easially outlast Alkaline everytime.
  • My MiniDisc player runs on a single 3.6v L-ion battery. With that, it gets 7 hours runtime. With two Ni-Cads in it's place, I get 12 hours of running time. However, I will admit that L-ion does better in Higher-Volage, lower-power applications, but for electronics of most kinds, it's high-amperage needed, not voltage.
  • Brilliant. Really. There are a few problems and considerations with using a rotary like the one in the site you mentioned [berkeley.edu].

    It would be loud. Internal combustion engines are loud to begin with, but wankels are damn loud, mostly because there is no valve train on the exhaust side serving to muffle the sound.

    The lack of a valve train also means the exhaust gases are very, very hot.

    While the wankel isn't itself the cleanest burning design, it does tend to lend itself well to use with cleaner fuels, like hydrogen. Hydrogen tends to be a tricky fuel because it can be prone to igniting as soon as it hits the hot cylinder of a traditional piston engine. With a rotary, the intake portion of the engine stays cool, and the combustion takes place elsewhere, avoiding preignition.

    Wankels also tend be very smooth when running at higher rpms.

    Traditional fuel and lubrication systems tend to be very sensitive to being turned upside down. That means fuel injection and dry sump lubrication more than likely, and that tends to mean there will have to be a bit of pressure in both those systems.

    Maintainance. Most current wankel designs I've seen burn lubricant because of the large swept area in the combustion chamber. Not only does that mean emissions, it also means you'll need to refill the lubricant.

    I could see that engine built into a generator the size of a laptop battery, but I don't think it will ever actually fit in the laptop. It will probably be rather noisy, and I suspect it will be a specialized product. It would, for example, be perfect for satillite phones, backpackers, just about any electronics on a sailboat, and of course, it would make a great UPS.

  • So what?

    Companies such as PolyPlus, PolyStor, Moltech, and other have been working on this for years. In theory the patten used by PolyPlus and Moltech have the highest theoretical energy density of any Li based battery. I can't find anything in the electrofuel release with technical merit.

    Is this PR piece really worthy of publication on /. ?

  • Hello??

    their batteries have 435Wh/L, compared to normal Li-ions that have 250-300Wh/L. That's plastered all over their site.
  • Erm....
    Damn, I gotta say, that comment [slashdot.org] wasn't there when I posted mine [slashdot.org]. Spooky too, down to the bullets...
  • I can't comment on the technical specs cause I've never actually tested an Alkaline AA, and I assume you're wrong for one simple reason:

    In every device where I've used them, they last just slightly less than the Alkaline batteries I used previously (Energizer AAs if you really care to know). Besides that, on an equal mAh rating between Alkaline and NickelCadmium batteries, the NiCad should be significantly shorter because of the 1/4 volt less chrarge. This leads me to believe that the NiCad hold more charge than their alkaline couterparts.
  • Where did you find that? I looked around their web site, and couldn't find anything but PR puffery, utterly devoid of specs -- unless you had to register to get them. And I will generally not bother with registration unless I already know the products are worth looking at, so if I was looking for batteries to design into a product, chances are I would pass them by. There are too many competitors that put the crucial information up front for an engineer to bother with those that hide it.
  • I have many many sets of these batteries from about 2-3 years ago still working just as well as the brand-new ones I've recently bought. And I do use them long and often. I guarantee they have been recharged hundreds of times, very nearly 1000+.
  • If it is lead-acid, note that the Watt-Hour/Liter rating doesn't mean that much until you look at the Watt-Hour/kilogram -- lead-acid batteries are extremely dense.
  • That is not really true. It would be worth more then 2.5 times the money to have that much battery power. Allowing the use of a laptop for whole a workday without rechargin is worth quite a lot.

    A mobile phone is a good example, its worth alot not to have to carry the charger with you, thats why you pay quite a lot for 200hrs of standby, instead of buying a _cheap_ 10hr battery and a portable charger.

  • Don't post articles with the number '2.5' in them... I was already ftp'ed into kernel.org by the time I'd read the whole headline.
  • There used to be this company called Matsi that was working on the development and production of Zinc-Air batteries. Basically, they used the chemical reaction between the Zinc and Oxygen to produce long-lasting power. Most of the batteries they designed were somewhat bulky, but would have been ideal for some of the more power-hungry applications. I think they did actually work with another company (Panasonic?) to produce batteries for cell phones that had something like four times the capacity of a normal battery at similar weight.

    Anybody know where they went? The URL doesn't seem to work anymore.

  • While I'll argee with you that the crusoe chip suffers from a but of hype, and the presence of Linus does add a bit to the to the following of the transmeta chips, I can personally comment on the performance of the crusoe as I own one of the Fujitsu laptops (FMV-Biblo Loox S5/53W[ 533mhz crusoe / 10.8v 1800mAh Li-ION)

    1. Comparing it to my Libretto 1010ss (Pentium 233MMX / 10.8V 1350 mAh Li-ION) Crusoe has about an hour+ (3.5 vs 2.5) advantage while running a larger display (1024x512 vs 640x480) with a much brighter back light and and a slight loss
    (15min) when constantly running the internal wireless internet hardware. Nice but unimpressive.

    2. The battery pack itself is smaller and lighter but this may be attributed to better battery technologies.

    3. While being a 533mhz chip, it provides about the same performance as a PII 350. Very disappointing.

    4. While my libretto runs uncomfortably hot (you don't want it on your lap) and my PII 350 toshiba dynabook 3380SS is hot enough to leave black marks on my desk from the rubber feet, the crusoe drive fujitsu never gets uncomfortable to the touch (NO FAN!) and the hottest running part is the back light.

    While the performance is somewhat disappointing, the benefits in the human factor (a laptop I can actually use on my lap) are quite attractive. Not to mention the fact that the standard battery charges in 1 hour while using the the laptop and the large battery affords about 7.5 hours of use.

  • Now I'll have to take my laptop in for a smog check . . .
  • If you treat them right, they'll last years.
    I had a battery pack for an R/C race car that lasted through hundreds of fully charged/fully discharged cycles, never developing a memory effect. And an R/C car puts a battery pack through hell.
    Essentially it's a set of 6 C-cell NiCD's which are matched in terms of output curves (to summarize). To charge them, you basically dump about 10 times their rated output current into them. From complete discharge, they reach a full charge in about 10 or 15 minutes. NiCD's can take it, but you have to be real careful when charging-- modern chargers can detect when the current dropoff occurs during charging and immediately switch over to trickle. On mine, you have to watch the ammeter-- the charge current will rise slightly at the top and then fall off, which is when you should disconnect the battery. Any more "fast charge" beyond that and the cells heat up quickly and barf their internals through the vent holes.

    Then you put it in your car and run it for 4 minutes at extremely high output. In fact if the pack isn't dead slightly after 4 minutes, you're not getting the most out of your batteries (for racing at least). That's the advantage of NiCD batteries: relatively constant output until WHAM it's dead, and the low internal resistance of NiCD means that you can almost short them out and they won't complain. Most other batteries just decline steadily from a full charge.

    But they're not as good for low-draw devices that need to run for a long time, like electronics. So far Lithium Ion seems to be the best for that.
  • Yes, and with 790 patents issued or pending, I'm sure Valence will sue their competition out of business!
  • I hope this isn't off-topic, but rather than a mini-Wankel fueled by hydrogen (combining the worst of both worlds... a noisy fuel-to-electricity system and a hard to handle fuel), why not a have fuel cell with butane as the fuel? It's liquid at room temperature, vaporizes easily, the technology to deliver it in compact, durable, disposable containers is fully developed (cigarette lighters), and has a respectable energy density.

    At 26 kJ/cc, to get the amount of energy in these big batteries (160 W-hr), you'd need about 22cc of liquid butane. Figure a 30% efficiency for the reformer to remove the carbon, and that's 73cc, figure 80% efficiency for the fuel cell and that's about 91cc, or 3.1 fluid ounces of liquid butane. The heat from the reformer will help to vaporize the fuel and the rest can be dissipated though the case. Running low on fuel? Pop in another cartridge, or refill your laptop's tank from the handy coin-operated dispensers in every airport, located right near the Internet kiosks. One day soon, one day soon....

    http://www.millennial.org/mail/talk/fmf-eng/hype r/ 3403.html
  • Installing RH while on the bus... that is too cool.
  • Electric Fuel [electricfuel.com] is a company which makes extremely long-lived disposable zinc-air battries. Currently it's only for cellphones (lasts for weeks) but they have plans for laptop batteries, too. Would you buy a battery that will last for two transatlantic flights plus a few days of normal work at you destination for something like $20-$40? Compare that to the price of the tickets.

    It's disposable, but supposed to be pretty benign environmentally.

    -
  • See this chart [fivestaradvantage.com] showing energy/volume and energy/mass. It's an improvement, but it's basically a better packaging system for lithium-ion chemistry. The "2.5x" claim is because the battery is bigger.

    This is probably as dense as lithium-ion technology is going to get. Next, maybe small fuel cells. So far, though, fuel cells that actually work well need plumbing and pumps and tend to be at least vehicle-sized.

  • While they might be using the latest state-of-the-industry battery technology, their external battery pack idea is nothing new.

    I used to see the same thing advertised on 1800batteries.com [1800batteries.com] (though admittedly a little thicker and heavier then).

    If runtime alone was important, you could have just gotten a sealed lead-acid battery [interstate...yofdet.com]. (Or a car battery for even more power, but they ain't quite so safe.)

  • Costco sells 6 packs of 1.25v AA size Panasonic Ni-Cad batteries. Nothing special right? No. These are 1100mAh high-capacity batteries! In case you don't know... That puts it at the same power point as Alkaline batteries, and since they are Ni-Cad, they're incredibly light. These store more power, are lighter, and can be rechared more times than any other rechargeables I've ever seen! We certainly don't need NEW battery technology, we need manufactures to use the CURRENT technology.

    By now you should be reading the mAh rating on your laptop or handheld battery and just think how many 1100mAh AA batteries could fit in that area... I bet you'd get at least 2x the life and the battery would be lighter and cheaper!
  • Have you seen the size of the things?

    I'm sure an ordinary battery of that size would do a good job of powering my laptop for over 12 hours, too.

  • Hardly new (Score:4)

    by Arlet ( 29997 ) on Wednesday April 18, 2001 @12:04AM (#283433)
    This [ebnonline.com] story from more than a year ago already mentions this technology. Apparently it's Lithium based.
  • What kind of battery is it? NiCd or other? The story doesn't really tell you anything about it, will it be envirementally safe or not? Seems cool, but it lacks a lot of details before i will believe their claims.
  • > will low-power chips like the Crusoe extend those hours,
    I understand how keen on Linusseries you are but please, just consider the VAIO's autonomy (with or without a Transmeta chip) and please, acknowledge that the only (full-featured) laptop that actually has autonomy are [i|Power]Books.
    --
  • Unless the cost is much less than 2.5x current batteries, is this really worth it? Sure, current batteries occupy more space and weigh more, but what is the cost factor of smaller, longer-lasting cells, especially when they don't have a market hold yet?
  • I stumbled across this [berkeley.edu] link today; micro engines to replace batteries.
    quote:
    An important asset of the internal combustion engine is the high energy density of liquid hydrocarbon fuels - approximately 30 times greater than that of the best batteries.
    and
    The "mini"-rotary has a generating radius of 5.5mm and a depth of 3.63mm, which gives the engine a displacement of 77.5mm3, or about 1/64th the displacement of the smallest commercially available rotary engine. A second-generation "mini"-rotary engine has been fabricated and tested, and it has produced approximately 0.5W at 3000rpm.
    Imagine an engine scaled at battery size. What can I say? Power to the people! :-)

  • Seldomly you see an article containing so little information.

    From their FAQ:

    How is the PowerPad different from conventional rechargeable batteries?
    We believe that electrofuel's Lithium Ion SuperPolymer technology is unique in that it is able to deliver higher energy density in smaller and more lightweight forms than any other commercially available battery technologies

    What run time can I expect to achieve with my notebook?
    Electrofuel has tested the PowerPad 160 with Ziff-Davis BatteryMark 3.0 simulation software and has achieved 16 hours of run-time, with the notebook's Windows 95 Power Management set to its most efficient battery use. Our internal tests indicate that the PowerPad160 has approximately 160 watt-hours of energy capacity and enables users to run most laptops for 12 to 16 hours, compared to single batteries typically installed in portable computers, which generally have between 30-40 watt hours and 2 to 4 hour run-times. This simulation package runs through various software programs to simulate "regular use." The actual run-time will vary depending on the type of software used, the type of screen, etc. For instance, continuous running of the DVD will reduce the run-time achieved due to the greater consumption of energy by this application.

  • Oops, I better add that you need to click on the MEMS link - or just click here [berkeley.edu] :-)

  • Why doesn't someone just create a light-weight hand crank that builds up energy into a spring-like steel coil that powers a dynamo

    Because then IBM couldn't sell me a new $100 battery every year for my Think Pad ...

  • "long-term damage is very likely. This is not "true" memory because the cell is not subjected to repeated charge/discharge cycles that the cell eventually remembers. It's simply a decrease in capacity due to overcharging."

    Uh huh. Call it what you want, but when my NiCad laptop gives up 10 minute into a presentation after reporting 100% full, the effect is much the same. NiCads have to be nursemaided to keep them in a usable state; I have to run my laptop on a constant charge/discharge cycle to keep the NiCad usable, and often it'll flatten just enough overnight (after reporting 100% full) that the laptop hibernates immediately after boot in the morning. Next time I'll be going for LiIon rather than arse about with a spare NiCad and a deep discharger.

  • It's a led acid battery, that's why it's more powerfull. It is indeed in some sort of polymer so that it doesn't leak led acid all over you. Led acid batteries have always been the best sort of battery (we use them to start cars) it's just the fact they they're so dangerous (will burn big holes in clothes and stings if it touches your skin. ) that has limited their use in consumer electronics.
  • Some of the batteries I've seen are about as wide/long as a laptop and about 1" thick and those last about 12 hours as well. They cost about 150% of a normal lithium battery so have a good cost/benifit ratio, especially for airplanes where the battery size doesn't matter all that much.

    DanH
    Cav Pilot's Reference Page [cavalrypilot.com]
  • How long can you run a laptop if you hook it to a lead car battery with a voltage converter of some sort? And how does the portability of this setup compare to the solution suggested by this company?
  • Check out their Web site. It uses Lithium-Ion Polymer technology, and does have a much higher Wh/L then that of all of the other rechargeable battery technologies out there. Click "Company" and "Superpolymer Technology" from their front page to get to the techical info.
  • Adding to the other comments, it also will most likely use hydrogen canisters to combust, leading to "clean" combusion with an output of water vapour only, so there won't be any bad smelling (not to mention dangerous) odours.
  • These folks were at Comdex in Chicago, in early 2000, demonstrating these things. They said that they would be available any day. Apparently it took them a while to get them out. Apparently they also misjudged what they were going to charge, since at Comdex they were estimating about half of what they are asking now. What I want is one of these that is actually the size of a laptop battery, rather than the size of a laptop.
  • External batteries for laptop computers are nothing new - places like Lind [lindelectronics.com] have been selling them for years. Not only does the Electrofuel product look like it's nearly half the size of the laptop itself, their "SuperPolymer battery" appears to be the same lithium polymer material that's been powering my girlfriend's laptop for a year. Furthermore, it's not at all clear how their "proprietary control electronics that provide information to the user on remaining battery power and improve the efficiency of the battery" differs from standard SBS [sbs-forum.org] IC's that have been available for years. Looks like another "me-too" tech.
  • The story doesn't really tell you anything about it ...

    It's not really a story, it's a slightly re-written press release. Sad to see that the CBC seems to be following US corporate media in this kind of lameness.

    There's a link to the electrofuel web site [electrofuel.com], but it doesn't help much.

  • I found a reseller that is selling one for just under $500 with the adapter here [dartek.com].
  • They are spammers. Search deja.com for the word "ValuedFiveStarCustomer" - Five star is their retail arm, and you'll reach that site of you click on "end-user sales".

    Or paste this link:

    http://groups.google.com/groups?q=valuedfivestar cu stomer&hl=en&lr=&safe=off&rnum=1&seld=903343713&ic =1

    Or, if you like to support spammers, go buy one. But you'll do better with a 12V gel cell, and pay less.

    I tried to post the article for y'all, but it appears the "lameness filter" is set to prevent that sort of thing.
  • This could be a great thing for the mobile computing industry. But I remain skeptical of anyone releasing these types of performance metrics this advanced. It smells like they want an investing boost, so they released some very optimistic numbers based on optimistic trends. Don't get me wrong, I love optimism, but this just smells fishy. Think about it, it is unusually to hear this type of metric released before the factory has even been built. It isn't just for the protection of the consumer, but for the protection the companyy making the product. If they fail to meet targets, they will quickly loose value, which has a huge cost to the company.

    That skepticism aside, I hope these batteries meet their promises!
  • Riiiigggghhhttt... I'm sure that would be well liked on cramped airplanes. Here's a better idea [wired.com](http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.05/flywh eel.html). Now I don't know the viability of converting such a storage unit to a smaller size, but the way I see it, we should be able to fit a fairly good size wheel in the space of most battery packs today (only now they must be square, not rectangular). The best part is that the battery lasts almost indefinitly and cannot be overcharged. Plus, since it is aligned with elctromagnets, it can possibily be made highly shock resistent. Probably not perfect, but a much cleaner idea than a MEM.
  • Lithium ion batteries are nothing new.. as many of the more informed posts have already stated. However, here [nec.co.jp] is something real.

    This is not lithium, but rather quinoxaline in sulfuric acid. This proton polymer technology promises quite a bit higher energy density than conventional Also, before people start worrying about heat, remember that for such high charge and discharge rates, the internal resistance (what produces heat in Ni-Cd and NiMH cells) is exceptionally low.

  • > Wankels also tend be very smooth when running at hig


    hey, then we could use it to directly spin the hard drive . . . :)

  • Um, it sounds to me like that particular article is supporting the memory effect as much as anything.

    Also their testing was with extremely high-end batteries, like aerospace batteries. The effect is much more pronounced when you start using $1.50 cells from Costco.

    Go with NiMH; much superior technology. NiCad is dead.
  • > BTW, we already make internal combustion
    > engines almost that small - model aircraft
    > engines are tiny.

    Model aircraft engines can be much *smaller*
    than that; the smallest are about the size
    of your thumb. The problem with miniature
    internal combustion engines isn't size, it's
    *noise*. Those things scream like mini
    banshees.

    Chris Mattern
  • Lithium ion polymer based battery rather than the standard lithium ion. The most impressive features is the $500 for the price tag. Ouch. At that price I can get a couple of "normal" batteries that fit right inside my laptop rather than underneath. Still cool to see new battery technology come out, though.

  • IMHO, their current stuff is a little too expensive right now for widespread use. For that price, you'd expect another "0" or something added onto the expected hours. They're more of novelty items right now. Lower the price or up the time, and I think you'd have a winner.

    Granted, you could get one for emergency use or something, but you'd really be better off getting an extra normal battery and keeping it charged. You could actively use it, and you wouldn't be spending much money past the initial purchase.
  • ...before microsoft buys them. MS has gotten into some peripherals, and such, why not batteries? It's about time batteries had GPF's and need reboots.

  • "Any available charger" - Nah. Go see Maxim [maxim-ic.com] for cheap silicon that controls the charge curve and shuts off the current when the battery is charged. These cost about $1. If you crack open your laptop or laptop charger, you'll find one there.

    For all practical purposes, NiCd "memory effect" is a myth. Unless you're into RC car racing and can only afford the kind of charger that only has a timer.
  • Not to mention they are really picky. If you're talking about 049s (as I think you are) those little 2 stroke engines need a lot of TLC just to get started, and then you have to be really careful with them or you'll just kill them right out. You're right about the noise though, those suckers are just as loud and a lot shriller than you average car, especially considering most people don't put any sort of exaust system on them (they need all the power they can get).

    The only think I can see this used for is as something you can plug into the side if your laptop if you are traveling through the congo or something and want to carry a compact power source.

    Down that path lies madness. On the other hand, the road to hell is paved with melting snowballs.
  • These batteries have a weight of 1kg (2.2lbs) for a 160 Whr model, which makes them better than standard Li-ion batteries (they would have about 90Whr/kg as specific energy), but this is known technology that is nothing dramatic, or indeed newsworthy.

    Valence [valence.com] are another company that make Li-polymer batteries - the link is their FAQ, which is good, especially the graph halfway down.

  • What the article doesn't point out is that the new batteries are an adaptation of modern Japanese internal combustion engine design. The new batteries are a hybrid approach and have an internal gassoline generator which kicks in to drive the charge the batteries when the laptop is unusually busy.

    The batteries are expected to sell very well in California due to the recent power crisis.

    ... at least that is what John C. Dvorak's sources have pointed out :)
  • .. first, I have to flame the guys with the "first cocks"... stupid mofos..

    I like the idea of 2.5 times the battery life, after all, it is rather painful for me with my laptop, wheras I was attempting to upgrade my Laptops system to RH7.1 last night while riding the bus home, and the frikkin' machine died on me.. vaporware some say, but frankly: I don't care if it's vaporware as long as it works!

    Hurray for lithium! ;)

  • Nothing new (Score:3)

    by Argy ( 95352 ) on Wednesday April 18, 2001 @12:39AM (#283466)
    This is just a puff PR piece. The basic trick is that it's a BIG honkin' external battery (2.5-3 pounds, more than some laptops), shaped so it "matches the footprint of most portable computers."

    While their site doesn't say for sure, this sounds like a recent trend, using a lithium ion battery with some polymer technique to make solid leak-proof batteries in extremely irregular shapes, like plastic. It is a cool thing, and can help designers squeeze extra use out of a device's space, but I don't see what these guys have added other than making it the size of a laptop.

    They aren't claiming better energy densities than other lithium ion batteries, they just compare their battery's life (watt hours) against "ordinary" (presumably old nicad) laptop (presumably internal) batteries.

    Maybe not a bad product, but this is a marketing effort, not a scientific breakthrough.
  • I didn't say this : Crusoe are powerful, they are actually delivering as many BogoMips under Linux as a PII speedstep.
    I tried both so I can tell.
    My concern is just about what Timothy called a low-consumption processor :
    After reading the specs of the VaioC1VE and its predecessor's specs, I can't tell there is more than a 20% consumption improvement.
    --

  • Smells very vapourware - at this stage, anyway. I'd love to see the day though that this stuff appears as a drop-in replacement for my Palm (maybe not, it's one of those internal ones, I smell a hack :) here) or laptop.

    (Which as it happens, battery technology for cellphones on any of the carriers in .nz (Telecom [telecom.co.nz] or Vodafone [vodafone.co.nz] are pretty bad at the moment. Could be useful.)

  • Well they got 530W/h /litre.

    Energy Density (watt hours per liter)
    Nickel cadmium 150
    Nickel metal hydride 190
    Lithium ion 250
    Lithium ion polymer 250

    Well Polyplus. Says it must develope new manufacturing methods for these... -> long way before you could get one.

    Moltech...
    200Wh/kg Well does anyone know their density?
    They clame 50% lighter than standard notebook battery. And if thats true then this tech too is inferior. except perhaps cost wise... But when you buy 3000$ laptop do you want to put 50$more for longer battery time, so that you wouldn't need to worry about batteries for whole day or something like that...

  • Re:Great batteries already unused (Score:5)

    by Technician ( 215283 ) on Wednesday April 18, 2001 @03:39AM (#283470)
    Most laptops do not run on 1.25 volts. Adding batteries in series does not increase the AH rating. It only increases the voltage. 5 1.25 volt 1100mAH batteries connected in series makes one 6.25 volt 1100mAH battery pack. Don't compare penlight batteries with computer battery packs and expect the Ampere Hour rating to indicate the Watt Hours avaliable. Volts X Ampere Hours = Watt Hours. Use this math to compare how much power you need to replace your battery pack. You may discover you neet 5 to 10 times as many as you thought you needed to reach 6 - 12 volts of most battery packs. Soon the huge space in the battery pack starts to look very cramped.

  • Re:What about cost? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    You don't have to have a PhD to know it's worth it. That's the number one complaint about portable computers: They run out of power too fast. People have to stop working to change the battery and for many companies it will be worth 3x the price for 2.5x the runtime, easily. (I sure hope they don't price it that way, this sounds cool and I'd like one for my now-bitchy motorola GSM phone)
  • well of course it is nothing new.

    How long do you /think/ it takes t set up & open a new factory?

    about a year perhaps?
  • Costco sells 6 packs of 1.25v AA size Panasonic Ni-Cad batteries. [...]
    Um. My ThinkPad battery is 3200mAh, 10.8V. It'd take about 25 of those 1100mAh 1.25V AA's to satisfy the same power requirements. 25 AA's would not fit in the same space, and would be much heavier.
  • Yeah, they used to run trains on vaporware.

  • You need about 150 of those to get the effect of single battery this story was about. And 190 for more expensive model.
    If ever get laptop with these AA batteries.... I'll recommend you try to change the batteries, on the road. The battery change becomes, a nice experience with 160 AA size batteries on the bottom of laptop.... Especially, if you compare it for change of mobile phone batteries. Just a two small moves, and its over. Its not nice at all, too short experience.

  • I'm willing to pedal my bicycle. What I really want are a set of batteries for my digital camera that last more than two days.
  • The new feature now is that they are going to high volume production. I hope to see another slashdot story in 6 months about hundred dollar laptop batteries.

    I don't actually expect to see prices that low this year.

  • As a former employee of electrofuel , l know the company and its history.Worked in the reseach of advanced ceramics with them. There are some very smart people there.They have been working on the battery for about 10 years only problem with it is the heat it generates.Was developed for the use in submarines
  • Lithium Ion batteries are quite common on higher end components. They are lighter than NiMH for similar performance.

    Lithium Polymer batteries are completely different. They are even lighter, but way expensive, and have fewer recharge cycles (I think about 250, half compared to the other types).


    ---
  • I use NiMH AAs rated at 1500mAh. Open up any electronics cattledog and you'll find 1100 and 1300 no sweat. They're pricey, but hardly worthy of your hype.

    --

  • hey, then we could use it to directly spin the hard drive . . . :)

    Well, it might work. I could see the ads now. On the down side, I could see all hell breaking loose if some overclocker gets hurt from running nitrous on their hard drive.
  • On electrofuels website they show their "powerpad" external power solutions...they seem to be about the same size as a regular laptop battery, and allegedly give out either 160 or 210 (depending on model) watt-hours. Assuming a 40 watt laptop (im not sure about the number here...but it should be somewhere in the ballpark) the 210 would run it for about 5 1/2 hours. The laptop would need to take up a measly 17.5 watts for the 210 to run it for 12 hours...thats not enough power to run the cpu alone on almost any laptop (crusoe-based aside). Maybe with the help of an internal battery, these could extend life to about 8 hours.
  • I have tried this actually. And to tell you the truth, i havent run out of juice when doing it(although we really didnt use them for prolonged periods of time). We used them to run laptops which collected ocean data on small expeditions in small boats. Most car batteries are around 23 AH at 12v (so 276 watt-hours) Hooked up to inverters, which can be had for an insignificant amount of money, the laptops were able to run for a good 4-5 hours in addition to the time they ran with their internal batteries. Not highly effective, but easily done and useful for those without money and in need of a long-life mobile computer.
  • Your calculations? How did you derive those figures? :-)

    Ahhh, community college math. :-)
  • There can be a problem with low-cost batteries. For instance, the Kirkland AA cells sold by Costco are very inexpensive, but their instantaneous discharge capacity is much lower than that of the higher-priced Duracells and Energizers. This means devices like Digital Cameras may turn themselves off due to low battery voltage once they take a picture and the flash needs to recharge. Short cuts in battery manufacture may not be evident, but they are there. Lithium Ion batteries (and Nickel Metal Hydride for that matter) have very good discharge current capacity. Some of the less expensive NiCd's do not.

  • Crusoe (Score:3)

    by roguerez ( 319598 ) on Wednesday April 18, 2001 @12:58AM (#283488) Homepage
    Although the Crusoe is a low-power chip, a device carrying one might not have a longer battery life than a normal notebook. This is because the Crusoe is usually used in very small devices with a small battery.

    For example, I own a Crusoe-powered picturebook which has a battery life of about 2 - 2.5 hours with a standard battery. The older picturebook with PII/400 had about 1 - 1.5 hours life if I'm not mistaken.

    So the net result is a gain in battery life due to use of the Crusoe, but it's still not that long a time. Because the picturebook, including standard battery, weighs only 1 kg.

    So the advantages of using a low-power chip can also be used for lightness/smallness instead of long use.

  • This product was announced last June/July in "Laptop" magazine. Couldn't buy one then. Can you buy one now?
  • Ni-Cad? Terrible batteries. They can be recharged about twice before that memory effect kicks in. Lithium Ion or Lithium Polymer batteries are the best on the market so far. Light, easily and quickly rechargeable, and cheap.
  • BTW, we already make internal combustion engines almost that small - model aircraft engines are tiny. These things are undoubtedly smaller and simpler again, and I can think of a large variety of applications, but . . .
    • How do you dissipate the heat? Laptops already have heat problems.
    • Won't the exhaust fumes smell kinda bad - not to mention be a safety risk in enclosed environments?
    • What's the total mass when you throw in a generator?
    • How much would a model big enough to power a laptop weigh?
    • How much space and weight does the total system (generator, engine, and fuel) take up?

    This might be a goer in certain applications (a portable drill, particularly if combined with a small high-current battery or capacitor, for instance), but I can't see it replacing a laptop battery. A micro-sized fuel cell might be a different story, though :)

    Go you big red fire engine!

  • What the heck is up with the /. love of Crusoe? The power savings just aren't there in reality. That's why IBM dropped it!

    Seriously, if the Great Linus didn't work at Transmeta, would anyone on /. even care about Crusoe?

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