Super Batteries

Mamma was right!

     Remember when you were a youngster and you would wish for something really great like a four day school week or a date with the head cheerleader, and your mother would come back at you with that tired old cliche, “be careful what you wish for, you might just get it.”  Well as I get older I realize that Mamma might just of had something there.  Oh, I don’t mean the thing about the cheerleader, okay, so a date with that cheerleader wouldn’t have been so bad, but I’m actually alluding to the fact that everything that looks like a win win at the start, might not turn out so great in the long run.  To make a long story short (might be too late for that) I am referring to the search for the “Super Battery.”

     A day never goes by that I don’t hear someone wish for a longer lasting cell phone battery, or an electric car that can go five-hundred miles on a charge, or a laptop that works all day long without being plugged into a wall outlet.  The fact is we have become a society of battery  charging junkies, I know from my own experience I charge at least ten different devices during the normal workweek, and the list seems to be growing.  So when is science going to come to our rescue with a “Super Battery” that will last for eons, charge in an instant, and be able to be recharged in a matter of minutes without even requiring it to be plugged in?
      Around the world there are thousands of chemists, engineers, and programers working their little butts off trying to do just that, and the fact is that some of those “wishes” are already in the works.  Cell phones will soon be able to operate for multiple days and will recharge in about one tenth the time.  As far as being able to transmit energy without wires that technology is already being phased in, consider the charging stand for your electric toothbrush, and the fact is nearly every cell phone maker is now offering wireless charging, look Ma no wires.  Elon Musk says we will all be driving Tesla like automobiles for endless distances on a single charge in the near future, and all the auto makers are developing new and better electric vehicles.

     So!  What could be bad about all this?  Well, let’s just imagine that science develops a calcium, aluminum, or magnesium ion battery (lithium is too volatile and rare to continue as a reliable battery component) and it has ten times the capacity of current lithium ion models and can be recharged 3000 times without degrading.  That’ll give those robber baron oil companies what they deserve, right?  Wrong, petroleum is still key in the manufacture of tires, plastic, greases, lubricants, fabrics and a myriad of other products, in actuality the oil companies would probably have to downsize, but they would adjust.  So who would be hurt?

     The answer is you, or the general public that is.  Prior to the American Civil War they used to say “Cotton is King”, today that would be “Oil is King” at least as far as our economy goes.  Oil and oil related business, which include Mini Mart Gas Stops, Lube and Go’s, Rail and Truck transporters, Auto Parts Makers, Ocean going Tankers, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.  Literally millions of jobs would be wiped out with no new job opportunities to take their place, in other words total economic collapse.  You see almost all of the high tech batteries we use today are made in Asia and they can clobber us with cheap labor so it’s not going to change, and we lost automobile manufacturing long ago.

     But all this is far from the scariest part.  A leap in battery technology such as we have been discussing will all but assure the ushering in of an arms race that will be of unparalleled proportions.  Being able to provide nearly unlimited electric power to flying attack drones, low cost manned and unmanned stealthy electric submarines (North Korea operates about 70 electric subs and Iran 24) remote controlled armed combat vehicles, battery powered laser weapons, and possibly even robot warriors isn’t a very pretty picture.

WOW!  50 Zombies on one charge!

     So the next time you wish for that all day sucker of a battery, maybe you better remember what Mom had to say about the bad side of getting what you wish for.