Battery technology runs into a serious limitation - the thermodynamics of quick-charging discharged cells.
Enough energy to push a quick charge into any kind of storage battery generates so much heat, that if it is not somehow dispersed very quickly, ends up frying the electrical connections and/or the cell itself.
Battery fires and even explosions are not all that uncommon, both from the heat that cannot be dissipated and from some of the side products of the charging process itself, particularly hydrogen gas in aquatic-based batteries.
Lord knows the very best theoretical minds have been working on this conundrum for decades if not centuries now, and yet the solution eludes them.
Batteries are a dead end.
might be true.
However, researchers have tools these days that even 20 years ago were pure pure science fiction.
for example while gene splicing and assembly is the big sexy science these day—what’s going on in materials research is just as amazing.
These days researchers can simulate the creation and interaction of thousands of compounds per day and millions per year to find one that behaves with the characteristics they’re looking for.
Then once the compound is found, they create it and test it. So that what might have taken 1000 bench chemists 100 years to synthesize and test, can now be done on one machine in a year.
The national labs are trying to make an end run around lithium because of its limitations. however, you’ll hear musk say from time to time that he already has a battery that can do 500 miles on a charge. Its just that its too expensive.
That being the case the scientists already know the characteristics they’re looking for as they sift through cheaper materials than lithium.