Ultra-fast charging aluminum battery offers safe alternative to conventional batteries

Short form: these seem to be similar to lithium ion batteries, but with aluminum ions. Performance, on a joules-per-gram basis, isn’t an improvement… but there are a few points in its favor (theoretically):

1) A lot cheaper

2) Faster charging

3) Won’t burst into flames

4) More charging cycles

Even if an aluminum battery isn’t quite as good as a lithium one, the lack of risk of bursting into flames is a definite plus… especially if you are an airline and you don’t want onboard fires at 35,000 feet. The charging time for a smart-phone-class battery was tested and found to be about one minute. Lithium ion batteries turn to garbage in 1,000 charging  cycles or less; these were tested to 7,500 cycles without loss of capacity.

Sadly, these aluminum ion batteries only produce about half the voltage of lithium ion batteries, so they’d stink for electric car use. But for laptops and the like? If they are much cheaper than lithium, and charge as quickly as the tests suggest, you could easily swap out dirt-cheap quickly-charged spares. Heck, if they are as rugged as suggested, you could have a built-in backup battery that keeps your laptop running while you swap dead main batteries on an airplane, without access to a charger.

And while they’re no good for cars, they might be just fine for houses. With recent improvements on PV arrays, batteries like these might plug into the system to finally start making off-the-grid electrical systems affordable.