Will a New Glass Battery Accelerate the End of Oil?

How will we get to an electric car that is competitive in cost and convenience with the internal combustion engine? The answer may come from the coinventor of the lithium-ion battery, the power plant in most cars that use electricity for propulsion.

John Goodenough, along with colleagues at the University of Texas, Austin, recently unveiled battery technology that features a form of glass, doped with reactive “alkali” metals like lithium or sodium, as the battery’s electrolyte.

Not only does the lithium- or sodium-glass battery have three times the energy storage capacity of a comparable lithium-ion battery, its electrolyte is neither flammable nor volatile, and it doesn’t build up the spiky “dendrites” that have led to fires in lithium-ion batteries.