Collaborating with the military, University of Maryland researchers made a 4-volt lithium-ion battery that runs on an aqueous-based electrolyte. With no organic solvents in its composition, the battery can’t possibly ignite or explode like the typical non-aqueous lithium-ion variety.
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HENRY FORD may have brought motoring to the masses with the Model T, but his wife preferred to drive an electric car. Combustion engines were noisy, dirty and in their early years required hand-cranking.
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A NEW phrase, “range anxiety”—the fear that an electric vehicle (EV) will run out of power before it reaches a charging-point—entered the Oxford English Dictionary in 2013. At the time a Nissan LEAF, the world’s best-selling EV, could travel only 120km between charges.
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At night, there are few better places to be without electricity in America than Borrego Springs, California. The desert town, about 90 miles east of San Diego, is a star-gazer’s delight. It is dimly lit, with little street lighting and no traffic lights.
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Electric vehicles are now a reality, but boiling a kettle at the same time as charging your car may not be, according to insights published by the National Grid.
In July, the government announced that all sales of new petrol and diesel cars in the UK will cease by 2040.
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Implantable medical devices powered by batteries only exist in a few spheres of clinical practice. It is partly because most batteries are made of nasty things that have to be safely contained inside a strong metal case, making impractical a lot of what is actually possible.
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When I heard the government’s announcement that petrol and diesel cars are to be banned from 2040, I resorted, as I often do, to the British Pathé news archive. I found a 1967 film showing trials of a prototype electric Mini, as well as a similar experiment from Ford.
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Electric vehicles (EVs) are all the rage. But they’re also fast becoming the sacred cows you can’t criticise for fear of being shredded by the EV, renewable, and tech lobbies.
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ABOUT three-quarters of the way along one of the snaking production lines in Nissan’s Sunderland plant, a worker bolts fuel tanks into the chassis of countless Qashqais—the “urban crossover” SUVs which are the bulk of the factory’s output.
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ELON MUSK IS the closest thing this world has to a real-life Tony Stark. He builds cool cars and rockets and tunneling machines. He wants to fire people through pneumatic tubes.
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A new statistical tool can predict how the price of energy storage tech will drop. Given current trends, the price for batteries could lower enough to make electric cars rival gasoline and diesel vehicles as early as 2022 under the most optimist scenario.
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