The Future of Batteries

With the ever-increasing demand for rechargeable portable energy there has been an increasing push for new technology to improve conventional batteries. Conventional batteries take a relatively long time to charge and can be charged only relatively small number of times. Ultra capacitors could be the battery of the future. Capacitors, by their nature, charge in seconds and do not suffer any of the longevity issues that conventional batteries suffer from (they can be charged hundreds of thousands of times). There is, however, still research that needs to be done. These ultra capacitors currently provide only 1/25^th of the power that conventional batteries provide. New manufacturing techniques show promise in closing this gap within the next few years. One of the main applications for this type of battery would be electric cars. Electric cars never became very popular; one reason was that on long trips when the car needed to be recharged it took hours to do so. With these batteries that problem is solved. The car could be charged at a filling station in the same amount of time, and in the same fashion, as a car being filled with gasoline.