Lifehacker: Cordless tools have been making strides over the past few years, as batteries become more advanced, smaller, and lighter. Lithium ion batteries have been slowly increasing their capacity and run time while shrinking in size and weight. But there’s a new material on the market for cordless tools: graphene, a lightweight material that has changed the battery game.
2 comments:
I remember watching a Youtube video on graphene (the material) a few years ago, when it was getting a lot of discussion and research, and the video talked about how it would change the future and be so beneficial for so many things. I found the chemistry of it and the potential use cases for it fascinating and was excited to see what would come of it. I haven't seen any updates on its uses until now, and I find it interesting that it is being used for consumer products already. It definitely does seem like it will really improve battery technology, however, calling them graphene batteries is a bit misleading. The article does explain this, but they are lithium-ion batteries with a graphene coating. Looking at the original article comments, I could see a lot of people confused by this, so I think the name should be changed to be more specific. At first, when I read this, I was really excited because I thought it would remove the harms that lithium mining causes, but I now see this is not the case, but it is still cool technology.
This is a pretty interesting article, although I feel like it’s blowing it a little out of proportion – one manufacturer has started using graphene batteries, so I’m not sure yet if I would say that graphene is going to ‘revolutionize’ the industry. It also says “We may earn a commission from links on this page”, so it looks like it’s probably a little biased for CAT. Note also, the top comment on the website says that CAT’s battery isn’t a true graphene battery. Honestly, I’d be a little surprised if we see graphene batteries come around. It looks like they’ll be expensive, and it’s probably more economical for most people to just buy more lithium batteries for the versatility – if you need to run one tool all day, swap the batteries out; if you need to run multiple tools, you’re not limited by one graphene battery. Still, it’s interesting to read about how they work. I’ve never heard of a graphene battery before and at the end of the day it would be a considerable option when buying cordless tools.
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