Day Brown wrote in a message to Eddie Sheldrake:
 DB> You all might wanna delay huge battery investment... some 
 DB> techie has made lead plates @2 mils appearantly chemically 
 DB> doped w/ computer chip technology and with very thing fbgls 
 DB> separators for incredibly thin layers, and very low plate to 
 DB> plate resistance.  The result is a lead acid battery that 
 DB> weighs one pound, but will still start a truck engine. 
I've got a bunch of experience with regard to batteries,  having run a 
battery store for about three years.  There are always tradeoffs with regard 
to anything of this sort,  and batteries are no exception!  In the case of 
the big trucks,  you'll most often find three or four "group 31" batteries in 
there,  which I have *one* of in my pickup.  This is a 13" long box (I don't 
remember the other dimensions offhand).  The ones I sold were available in 
two different types.  One,  that I chose,  was rated at 700 CCA (Cold 
Cranking Amps) and 180 minutes reserve.  The other was rated at 950 CCA and 
160 min reserve.  The latter had more plates,  but thinner ones.
The guy who owned the company told a story one time,  about the trucker who 
looked at the price of these and didn't care for it too much.  So he goes out 
and buys four "group 26" (small!) batteries which also happened to be rated 
at 675 CCA each,  and put them in his rig.  Which *did* start,  for a while.  
At one point there he was,  sitting on the side of the road,  and these 
batteries had been cooked dry.
 DB> we can look forward to electric cars that can go several 
 DB> hundred miles on a charge.
Since the lead is what stores the charge,  you can only store so much charge 
in a given amount of lead,  there's no way to get around that.  The more 
lead, the more charge you can store.  I don't believe that it's possible to 
get that much more out of a battery by variations in the manufacturing 
process,  the big mfr's that are making them now have at least some 
competetive pressures to give more if at all possible in their product.
 DB> Bolder Technologies [Wheat Ridge CO, (303) 422-8200 fax 
 DB> 422-8180 PORTABLE DESIGN's jan 97 issue says they've begun 
 DB> construction on a 120K ft automated manufacturing facilty to 
 DB> hit full production in 6 months for sub-C cells used in 
 DB> portable computers.
Sub-C refers only to a size,  typically nicads though.
 DB> Over the long haul, the design would need far less lead, be 
 DB> much cheaper to ship and handle, and still be easy to recycle.
I believe that remains to be seen.
 DB> Chrysler has powered a dodge with 600 sub-c cells, and no doubt 
 DB> all the automakers would love to abandon the structure 
 DB> necessary to hold a 40 lb conventional starting battery. 
I could power a Dodge with 600 flashlight batteries!  Alkaline types,  at 
that!  Whether it'd be a practical matter to do so and to continue to do so 
is another story,  though.  What structure are they wanting to abandon?  The 
biggest single problem with this is the fact that you have vehicles out there 
that have to be started by a fairly non-trivial electric starting motor,  
which can pull up to several hundred amps to do so,  especially in low 
temperatures when they have to fight the increased viscosity of engine 
lubricants.
Yeah,  you could build a system that consists of a whole lot of very small 
cells,  rather than a small number of very large ones.  This has the problem 
of many more parts,  much more in the way of interconnections and power 
distribution,  and so forth.  Yes,  it might be possible to overcome some of 
this by the sort of technology that's being used to make chips and similar 
stuff,  though I don't offhand see how.  I will remain skeptical about it 
until I see something happening,  though. 
 DB> This loss of market share is going to drive down the price of 
 DB> conventional new lead batteries.
Not necessarily,  though competition is always nice.  It should be very 
interesting to watch some startup company take on outfits like Panasonic 
(large in Gels),  Exide (around for 100+ years),  and others and gain any 
significant market share.
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