After a decade of rapidly falling costs, the rechargeable lithium-ion battery is poised to disrupt industries
Rechargeable lithium-ion batteries were first commercially used in hand-held camcorders in 1991.
Laptops soon followed.
A decade later, batteries enabled the rise of tech titans such as Apple Inc. by powering smartphones and wearable devices, then made their way into electric vehicles.
The basic technology throughout remained pretty much the same: Lithium ions move through a liquid from the cathode to the anode, and back again.
This, however, was just the beginning.
After a decade of rapidly falling costs, the battery has reached a tipping point.
No longer just for consumer products, it is poised to transform the way the world uses power.
In the energy sector, affordable batteries are making it possible for companies to store electricity and harvest renewable power.
In the auto industry, they are set to challenge the gas-powered engine’s century long domination.
Costs have come down so far and so fast that most car makers expect that electric vehicles, which are currently more expensive than their gas-powered counterparts, will cost the same amount to build within the next five years.
The gains are likely to continue.
Electric vehicles are currently the main source of demand for battery cells.
As demand grows and costs fall further, batteries will become even more disruptive across industries.
The battery boom could erode demand for crude oil and byproducts such as gasoline—as well as for natural gas, which is primarily used in power plants.
While mining materials and manufacturing batteries produce some greenhouse gas emissions, analysts believe shifting to batteries in the auto and energy sectors would reduce emissions overall, boosting efforts to tackle climate change.
The internal combustion engine, or ICE, has been engineered to near-perfection over a century, said Sandy Munro, an auto-industry consultant who takes apart about two dozen cars a year, stripping them to their parts to study the materials, technology and assembly.
The innovation of the battery-powered EV, by contrast, has barely begun.
“Right now, we’re basically scratching the surface,” he said.
