The End of Rare-Earth Batteries Nearing an End?

I have said before that batteries for things like the Prius and the energy it takes to produce those Eco-Cars is actually more wasteful than it is worth in the long run. The batteries require ghastly amounts of Nickel from Canada, rare-earth heavy metals from China, assembly in Japan, then shipped trans-Pacific to the United States for final assembly. This, coupled with the fact that you have to drive it for ten years to realize any fuel savings is just maddening. Plus those batteries are insanely heavy, nullifying much of the fuel savings in dead weight to be dragged around. Finally, you can’t throw these gigantic batteries in a landfill due to the heavy metal toxins.

But now there is a new, surprising, and accidental source of energy that is cheap, plentiful, common-earth and completely disposable that might revolutionize the way we store energy.

But even in this movie they are talking about “charging” your car at a filling station. This supposes that the supercapicator is still in a battery configuration. Why not make this new super-strong material of graphene the body of the car itself? Durable, strong, safe and it could also store the electrical charge.

As readers of my blog know I’m not an eco-freak. Eco-religionists live in a world of constant environmental pennance, wanting to eliminate any source of energy that they don’t approve of. I’ve been a chronic skeptic because of how they advocate for these lifestyle changes. For the first time in a while I like what the future of clean energy holds. Now if only I can get a backyard-sized contained nuclear reactor, I’d power my whole neighborhood cleanly for fifty years.