The rise of electric vehicles and the quest to find solutions to energy storage for the renewables industry have created a breeding ground for tech experts to develop battery technologies.
Last week, Sun Microsystems co-founder Bill Joy and the company he currently backs, Ionic Materials, unveiled a solid-state alkaline battery design that they claim would be cheaper and safer than the lithium-ion battery.
"What people didn't really realize is that alkaline batteries could be made rechargeable," Joy told Bloomberg in a phone interview last week. "I think people had given up," Joy noted.