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Monday, 16 March 2015

Dyson to put in $15m on firm Sakti3 that may double smartphone battery life


Dyson is investing $15m in a new type of battery that promises to double smartphone battery life and allow electric cars to drive over 600 miles per charge.
The British vacuum company was alerted to the University of Michigan spin-off called Sakti3, which has developed next generation solid-state technology that can store twice as much energy as traditional rechargeable batteries.
As part of the investment, Dyson has entered into a joint development agreement to commercialise Sakti3’s solid-state battery technology. The new batteries promise to store twice as much energy as today’s liquid-based lithium batteries, that are used in everything from smartphones and tablets to cars, robots, and renewable energy sources such as solar panels and wind turbines.
“Sakti3 has achieved leaps in performance, which current battery technology simply can’t,” said company founder James Dyson. “It’s these fundamental technologies – batteries, motors – that allow machines to work properly.”
The lithium-ion technologies used in today’s best batteries have barely progressed since their introduction in 1991 by Sony. There has been improvement in longevity and charging times, but not a great deal in terms of the amount of energy that batteries store.
Mobile electronics have been forced to choose: either be heavier and thicker, or else suffer from poor battery life, which is one of the reasons products like the iPhone rarely last longer than a day on a single charge.
Most batteries rely on a liquid mixture of reactive compounds, which store energy from the mains and release it when required through chemical reactions within the cell in the form of electricity.
Sakti3’s solid-state technology uses solid lithium electrodes instead of a liquid mix of chemicals, which doubles the amount of energy that can be stored within a battery.
The investment from Dyson guarantees that the new battery technology will appear first in Dyson products, including new versions of its cordless machines and robotic vacuum cleaners. But the applications for the technology go far beyond cleaning products.
Additional investors in Sakti3 include Khosla Ventures, General Motors and others.

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