71
votes
Do 1.5% of lithium-ion batteries overheat, explode, or catch fire each year?
On the face of it, this is worrying ...
On the face of it, this statistic is ridiculous, and it does not jibe with other statistics on the same page. The web page also claims
In 2020, the US ...
- 15.4k
65
votes
Does China control 85% of the supply of rare metals used in lithium batteries?
...but China only has 37% of the world's reserves
Michael Karnerfors has provided evidence that China produces 95% of the world's rare earth elements. However, China does not hold that much of the ...
- 1,103
49
votes
Can human body heat cause a mobile phone's battery to "run down at a faster rate"?
This diagram from this research paper shows that the self discharge rate of lithium ion batteries (such as used in phones) depends on the storage temperature:
20°C is about room temperature (just ...
- 5,912
20
votes
Has an engineer called Trevor Jackson invented a revolutionary battery allowing for a car range of 1500 miles?
While I don't know if this particular company is doing something useful or not, I can talk about what an aluminum battery could be used for in electric cars.
In general, electric cars use lithium ion ...
- 401
18
votes
Do all the Li-ion batteries in the world have just enough power to meet peak demand in the U.S.?
According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the peak hourly consumption of power in the US occurred on July 15th 2024 with ~745 GigaWatt-hours (GWh).
That number is indeed lower than the ...
- 281
15
votes
Can human body heat cause a mobile phone's battery to "run down at a faster rate"?
Effects of temperature on batteries are complex:
Higher temperatures will cause a higher self-discharge rate. However, for a battery in a phone which is turned on, self-discharge is negligible ...
- 896
13
votes
Has an engineer called Trevor Jackson invented a revolutionary battery allowing for a car range of 1500 miles?
This is not intended as a complete answer, but we do know the inventor does exist and has made these claims. But the articles are misleading, especially the Daily Mail one using language like this:
...
- 2,637
12
votes
Can human body heat cause a mobile phone's battery to "run down at a faster rate"?
The opposite is possible in some situations, even likely.
In many batteries, the internal resistance (Wikipedia for further reading) decreases with increasing temperature. This is effectively a ...
- 411
11
votes
Does China control 85% of the supply of rare metals used in lithium batteries?
Based on an CNBC piece with similar claims, the Guardian letter seems to be talking about cobalt:
For example, China controls 80 percent of the market in chemical cobalt, a crucial ingredient in ...
9
votes
Do all the Li-ion batteries in the world have just enough power to meet peak demand in the U.S.?
I'll be using the same 745GWh peak hourly energy consumption abestrange did.
According to Bloomberg, yearly Li-Ion production capacity is around 2600GWh:
BloombergNEF estimates that lithium-ion ...
- 191
6
votes
Does China control 85% of the supply of rare metals used in lithium batteries?
As you can read in this article, the main metals used in the common design of Li-ion battery are Lithium and Cobalt; lithium is quite abundant, but cobalt is a bit harder to find. It is usually ...
- 351
4
votes
Accepted
Does fully discharging a Lithium-based battery reduce its lifespan?
For a TLDR version, jump to the last paragraph.
Since AccuBattery links to another paper than the one they actually cited, I felt like double checking if they represented the paper correctly... and ...
2
votes
Does China control 85% of the supply of rare metals used in lithium batteries?
Some of the answers are referring to "rare earth" elements. There is nothing in the claim or lithium ion batteries related to rare earth elements.
Lithium is the only metal ubiquitous to lithium ...
- 109k
1
vote
Are nano diamond batteries a breakthrough in battery technology?
Already from the draft article appearing on Wikipedia you can spot the issue:
Its power density will be far lower than that of conventional chemical batteries
If they get to the market as they are ...
- 921
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