Imagine you are manufacturing a new electric car. But you don’t want to use current lithium-ion battery technology because they are too heavy, have inefficient energy density and as we all know weight is a big killer in the electric car game. Then you hear of a breakthrough, what if the battery forms part of the structure. It will save a lot of weight. And why not use a battery made from a sheet layer of carbon fibre. What you have is a massless battery.

However, it is currently at the conceptual stage of development it could be theoretically available in 2-5 years time. Equally, it could be yet another dead-end scientific breakthrough. Scientists from the Chalmers University of Technology have developed a carbon fiber-based battery that is said to be 10-times more efficient than current lithium-ion battery technology. But it’s a lab-based breakthrough. The hardest part is to go from the safety of a lab-based environment to production reality.

Breakthroughs in battery technology aren’t new. Remember the Graphene-based battery? Again a significant lab-based breakthrough that is yet to be scaled up into production. Expect to hear many battery breakthrough announcements over the next few years. Often, news such as the massless battery is motivated by University researchers looking for funding.