A surprising breakthrough could help sodium-ion batteries rival lithium—and even turn seawater into drinking water. Scientists discovered that keeping water inside a key battery material, instead of removing it as traditionally done, dramatically boosts performance. The “wet” version stores nearly twice as much charge, charges faster, and remains stable for hundreds of cycles, placing it among the top-performing sodium battery materials ever reported.
No but I’d prefer if journalists didn’t take the results of one experiment in the lab and write headlines about how cars will now have a 10,000 mile range and charge in 4.2 seconds and last for 75 million cycles
I don’t think any of the mistrust from other comments in this thread is directed at researchers - it’s directed at the usually-sensationalised reporting. The “I’ll believe it when I see it” comments are because journalists have cried wolf too many times so now the headlines are just background noise.
ok but this specific source is quite sober
well maybe, but that’s exactly what crying wolf does. You hear “twice the enrgy density” so many times that you stop believing it, even if one day it really is true.
If my car battery’s energy density had doubled every time I read a headline saying that a new battery tech will double energy density, it’d now have more energy storage than the sun.
spoiler
edit: assuming 6x10^43j energy capactiy in the sun and 3.6x10^8j (100kwh) in my car, it’d take 116 energy-doubling articles :)