Reminds me of the air batteries used in hearing aids, except that these can be recharged.
Ain’t kidding that they’ll need something more practical than gold for an electrode. If they’re talking enough gold that they are starting to complain about the weight, forget it. You’d spend a million dollars on your batteries very quickly. Is gold required in this one for the sake of its electrochemical properties? Or because it is a corrosion proof, highly conductive metal? And the DMSO eats up the other electrode, and they’re saying it loses 5% of its capacity in 100 cycles, better than older batteries but still... given how often a car is used we have to do better here.
Still this could be a bark up a more practical tree, in time.
Batteries are all about using the best active materials configured for optimum ion transfer while preventing degradation of anode/cathode/electrolyte in the process —
simple. Oh, and it can’t “spontaneously dissociate” as we would say.
In practice, not so simple. Duracell spent in excess of $2.5million just to develop the “ultra” 9V coppertop. This gave you, the consumer, a big 14% more usable energy in that battery configuration alone.
Most battery technology change is incremental. Finding new materials that work together can be monumental. I applaud any steps forward in battery technology. The big boys - Duracell, Energizer, and Rayovac are too busy trying to survive cheap China/Korea product to put the $$$$’s into R&D like they used to.