Tesla’s investment in its Gigafactory, which will produce lithium-ion batteries, will total around $5 billion.
Lux Research found that beyond lithium-ion batteries had $40 million per year in funding over eight years.
Batteries are about a $40 billion global market and will be about $133 billion by 2024
This estimate could be low if electric cars achieve the growth rates projected by Tesla.
Batteries are critical to cars and devices and improved batteries could enable vastly improved airplanes and drones and other applications.
Sulfur represents a natural cathode partner for metallic Li and, in contrast with conventional lithium-ion cells, the chemicals processes include dissolution from the anode surface during discharge and reverse lithium plating to the anode while charging. As a consequence, Lithium-Sulfur allows for a theoretical specific energy in excess of 2700Wh per kg, which is nearly 5 times higher than that of Li-ion.
Lithium Air and other battery technologies could have several times the energy density beyond lithium ion or lithium sulfur.
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
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