This New Battery Could Make The Toyota Prius The Ultimate Plug-In Hybrid

Well if your goal was to get your readers to look up Trevor Jackson and his battery, then you succeeded, at least with me. You teased some potential uses and big benefits of this new battery technology without mentioning anything specific about the technology, or it's capabilities, or cost. On the good side, it appears that this air-aluminum battery/fuel cell technology seems to be tested and real, as opposed to a pipe-dream or scam. But because they have not built any production batteries based on Jackson's electrolyte technology yet, and they are keeping the details of the technology a secret, much is still unknown. But apparently he was able to convince Austin Electric to invest millions into the technology, which comprises an existing aluminum-air battery with his special (and secret) non-toxic electrolyte fluid that will supposedly power a large automobile battery for 1500 miles. The biggest part of this design that would get some push-back is that this battery design is NOT rechargeable. Now the battery companies would just love this sales model, where they can sell replacement batteries at any retail store. And potentially any battery swap would be simple for your average consumer to perform in seconds/minutes. The good side of this model is that the batteries are recycled and there are no toxic or expensive materials that have been plaguing batteries for decades. The downsides for me is that even though I have a much smaller storage capacity in my car's Lithium battery, I can easily recharge it daily, and I plan to add solar soon, so I will be running on renewable energy, as opposed to being beholden to the pricing of a single supplier and retailers who can control future battery prices. It sounds like the proposed pricing of this design would be a very good fit for electric bikes, scooters, and other small devices. But for cars the guess on pricing would put it at about half of Britain's current gasoline costs, but that means that it's about the same price to buy the recycled batteries as it costs for gas in the U.S. And that price is about 4X the cost of recharging car batteries at home (when done off-peak hours). So it sounds like they are right on target building the first batteries for tuk-tuk vehicles, bikes, scooters, etc.. and once they show that the technology works well on smaller vehicles (and is cost effective) then they could move forward to larger automotive uses. I hope that the business and technology pans out as planned, but I will reserve judgement until I see real batteries, running small vehicles, and perhaps retrofit kits installed. So, as with other cool EV technology rumors that I read about daily, I am both excited and skeptical, awaiting more news on future developments.

Aluminum Air batteries are not rechargable, so not at all a good replacement

Aluminum-air batteries are primary batteries and cannot be recharged. How do you turn a hybrid into a plug-in if you can't recharge the battery?

Yeah, that's not going to happen. You missed a big detail about aluminum-air batteries. They are Not Rechargeable. The original article in the Daily Mail is confusing on this point, but if you read the last 3 paragraphs it becomes clear. I quote:

"Instead of a vast network of charging points, all that is necessary are stores where cells can be swapped, just as people already swap propane gas bottles.

Swapping a battery, says Jackson, takes about 90 seconds.

He and Corcoran say they are in 'advanced discussions' with two major supermarket chains to provide this facility."

um, but an aluminum air battery cannot be recharged, so......

I am glad you are trying to help us with the batter. I would be glad if you explain to me how much it costs and the way it works out. Thank you

Put me down for purchasing the first one

There are currently no rechargeable aluminium air batteries, but they're working on that. Right now, though, the recharging process leads to both degradation of the metals as well as by-product accumulation of other components on the metal plates. Also, aluminium air batteries lose their charge super quickly when stored in an active state. The means once you put that battery in and start using it, you need to keep using it or you're wasting power. People have been working on ways around this (oil and water flushes to deactivate/activate the battery during stop times and try and limit its power loss), but those very same methods for reducing power loss hamper rechargeability. It will be a while before these become efficient long-term energy storage devices, I think.