This will probably take decades to develop, but then again, hype about a shortage of lithium is just plain silly.
That's true. They call it a "rare earth" because it sounds cool.
For the purpose of this discussion I ignore the the elephant in the room call Global Warming which is the bases for this search for better batteries.
But the real problem with these alternative metals that they are suggesting for lithium (Zink, Calcium, Magnesium and Aluminum) is that they are heavier than Lithium.
Better storage capacity is great. Less combustibility is great.
But the real hurdle to overcome is Energy Density.
Power storage to weight is the major problem.
15 gallons of gas weighs 90 pound and will take my car 420 miles.
Another advantage to gasoline is that as the gasoline burns the car gets lighter, the better the fuel milage.
With a battery, as the charge on the battery lessens, the battery weight stays the same.
As far as the issues with battery fires, I don't see many advantages with these other metals. They are still vary flammable and difficult to extinguish.
I will probably be proven wrong, but the technical issues with batteries may make it impossible to overcome the advantages of gasoline.
What to do with the battery when it is at the end of its life is still a problem yet to solve. Burned gasoline is recycled by nature.
This will probably take decades to develop.
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Next year’s AI is going to be several orders of magnitude more powerful than this year’s AI. Same goes for the next coupe years.
That suggests a shorter timeline to development.