Fast-charging, safe lithium batteries now (Score 1)

Altair Nanotechnologies (partnered with Boshart Engineering, an auto proving firm) is now testing an electric vehicle powered by its safe and fast-charging lithium batteries. From a corporate release this summer: "Altairnano NanoSafe battery cells have now achieved over 9,000 charge and discharge cycles at charge and discharge rates up to 40 times greater than are typical of common batteries, and they still retain up to 85% charge capacity. As an example of the application significance of this feature if a conventional lithium battery is charged and discharged every day then it would typically last for about 2 years. Under the same scenario, an Altairnano battery would be projected to last 25 years. This durability is critical in a high value application like electric vehicles." These batteries are expensive now. After the first ten thousand electric vehicles (EVs) powered with them are sold (the $100,000 Tesla Roadster sold its first hundred in three weeks in August,) volume production will begin reducing battery costs. Sometime in the next few years, the EV equivalent of the Model T will go on the market; then we can stop funding terror and begin to breathe free.