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[JaimeC]

Very interesting reading:
https://www.theregister.com/2020/12/30/beyond_lithium_ion_batteries/

[T.S. Zarathustra]

Interesting read but nothing really new there.
You cannot drastically improve on methods battery manufacturers have spent decades streamlining to improve energy density, increase number of charge cycles, cut down manufacturing costs, and speed up manufacturing. Even Lithium Ion used similar technology as the predecessors, Ni-Cad and NiMH. Come to think of it, that is in some ways similar to the 2000 year old Baghdad battery technology.
Lithium Ion is relatively non polluting, safe and robust technology, with most of the major bugs ironed out.
There are still improvements to be made, but any competing technology/chemistry will have to make huge investments for small gains.

[caza]

There's a new article about future-batteries every week, but despite claims of possibly huge changes in the battery space, year to year we see the same incremental improvements.

At this point I think battery tech is really good. We have high-range vehicles that can charge fast. The incremental rate at which things are progressing are honestly more than good enough. We can build cars and motorcycles with great range. We can charge them in 20 minutes, and the charging network is growing rapidly.

IMO we have 2 big things to conquer.
One is cost. The cost of batteries is still the biggest issue with mass adoption. BEV's are competing in a market of millions of new and used gas cars that cost a fraction of an EVs asking cost. We still have to do mental gymnastics to justify buying an EV for cost-saving reasons, and until that changes we will not see the growth we want from EVs. As stated in the article, cost of LI-ION has drastically reduced and it will continue to with scale, new tech will start out decades behind.

The second is recycling. We need to both be building up recycling centers to deal with the waste-product of 10-year old batteries and to make sure we re-use their precious minerals. And ideally new batteries built will take recycling into consideration, and have methods of being broken down that are not as labor intensive. This is important on multiple fronts. We need to conserve these finite precious materials, but we also need to minimize mining of them as much as possible as there are huge environmental and ethical issues when it comes to mining these materials. The more efficiently we can recycle what we have, the less damage needs to be done at the mining end of the battery pipeline.

[Richard230]

I too am concerned about recycling and the supply of raw materials once most of the world switches to electric power. There is going to be a really huge demand for all of the components that go into batteries. But, at least in the U.S., we don't have a very good track record for recycling consumer products. If it doesn't make money, once government seed grants dry up, so does the recycling industry. I think maybe only recycling aluminum, steel and copper are the only things that make enough money to be profitable here. 

[caza]

Yeah unfortunately we tend to think of what should be public services as purely private, market driven businesses, so as you say recycling efforts diminish rapidly when they become unprofitable. Not the most sustainable model.

[ESokoloff]

.........
The second is recycling. We need to both be building up recycling centers to deal with the waste-product of 10-year old batteries and to make sure we re-use their precious minerals.
.......

JB Straubel (Formaly of Tesla) is working on that since 2019. 

Fast forward to about the 7min Mark & watch the next 10 min or so (if in a hurry).

[caza]

Straubel is doing phenomenal work, I only hope more facilities like his pop up and this part of the EV ecosystem continues to grow and advance.