[/img]Ioxus Inc. is an up and comer in the energy storage industry
that has plans this Monday to announce a new hybrid storage device
that it hopes will radically alter batteries used in the auto,
medical, and consumer electronics industries. The teased product is
said to be roughly the size of a typical C-cell battery and combines
the fast charge / discharge benefits of ultracapacitors with the
impressive energy-to-weight ratio of a lithium-ion electrode. As a
result, Ioxus says the hybrid devices can store more than double the
energy of traditional ultracapacitors and charge in a matter of
seconds. The catch is that the hybrids have shorter life spans of
20,000 cycles compared to millions of cycles for typical
ultracapacitors. We're also taking this with a grain of skepticism
until these claims are proven in the field. Some brief digging though
did unearth an article written by MIT researchers and published in
Scientific American last year that discusses the possible benefits of
supercharging lithium-ion cells -- which is encouraging.
The first iteration could be used to power a host of devices like off-
the-grid lighting or power tools. Use in larger systems like the
regenerative breaks of electric cars however won't be possible until
the second generation arrives -- which the CEO pegged as sometime in
the first quarter of next year.
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