Bryan Chaffin Sony Corporation announced Tuesday a new type of lithium-ion battery that it said will maintain more than 80% of its capacity after 2,000 charge-discharge cycles, and, better yet, feature rapid-charging with a 99% charge in just 30 minutes.
For battery nerds, the batteries as announced boast a power density of 1800W/kg (20A continuous discharge). Sony is using olivine-type lithium iron phosphate as the cathode material, which Sony characterized as being "extremely suited for use as a cathode material due to its robust crystal structure and stable performance, even at high temperatures."
The company said that this new battery technology will first appear in...power tools, with shipments having already started in June of 2009. "Mobile electronic devices" will soon follow, however, though no time table was offered.
In other words, these batteries could come an iPod, iPhone, iPad, iPod Extreme, MacBook Air, or similar device near you, at some point in the future.
Macsales.com
Mac RAM Upgrades:
Loading...
11” MacBook Air 1.6GHz dual-core Intel Core i5: $829.00 Delivered
Samsung S22B300B 21.5” LED Backlit LCD Monitor: $129.99 Delivered
NeatDesk Desktop Scanner: $249.99 - Today Only
Canon imageCLASS Monochrome Multifunction Laser Printer: $129.99 Delivered
It would be great if Sony published some numbers that are more useful for computer users. 1800W / kg means that you can build a 250 gram battery that will give 450 Watt to some power tool, without saying for how long. I think a MacBook battery weighs more.
But I don’t care how many watt it can deliver, apparently far more than I would ever need. The question is: How many Watt _hours_ per kilogram of battery weight? I guess a battery driven drill that can be charged in 30 minutes and works for 10 minutes of continuous drilling would be fine for the casual DIY person, but as a laptop user I am looking for something completely different.