Cringely was Right!
Robert X. Cringely (host of PBS's NerdTV) wrote an interesting op-ed
piece in today's New York Times. In it he argues that when it comes to
designing rechargable batteries, consumer safety takes a back seat to
battery power. He explains how Sony (the manufacturer of the
lithium-ion batteries that have recently been recalled) knew about the
exploding potential, but charged ahead anyway. He shows how safety
standard used by industry, the M.T.B.F. (mean time between failure) is
a sham measurement that tells you nothing about the likelyhood that
your battery will explode.
However, industry is not the lone, uncaring villian here. They are
merely responding to market forces.
One might think that we'd be working on safer technologies, and we
are, up to a
point. Safer lithium-ion batteries are available, but computer and
mobile phone
manufacturers, now duking it out in a market based on talk time and
battery
life, have decided that we don't really need them. And judging from
the reckless
way we use these devices while driving cars, the manufacturers are
probably
correct about our risk tolerance.
This, to me, is just another example of why the libertarian think
tanks are wrong when they say that market forces will eventually lead
to better safety.
After reading that, I saw this little article over at ScienceDaily. It
talks all about a new advance in electrode technology for lithium-ion
batteries. It reviews the basic science of how a li-ion battery works
and then explains what the new technology does differently. It hypes
how the new technology will lead to batteries that hold more charge
and last longer.
And then at the very end, almost as an afterthought, it says:
There's an added bonus in that replacing a proportion of the cobalt
used in the
traditional lithium-cobalt-oxide electrodes with manganese improves
safety by
reducing the risk of overheating.
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