Have lost track of all these battery advances that never see the light of day. What works in the lab often doesn't work in the real world. Time will tell with this one I expect...

"A new battery pack design could see electric vehicles better compete with the gasoline-powered cousins in terms of range." The key word here is "could" this is pure vaporware, pie in the sky. I guess it gives Atlas something to write about. Another key were here is Dresden.... you know Dresden Germany. Like the U.S. the oil industry, except in Germany its the importers of oil, have a strangle hold on the population via the political system. A political system, like the U.S., where lobbyist pay off politicians to keep the status quo. Until this system is broken, you won't see 1000 km or even 500km anytime soon.

It's not the range that needs to be competed with, it's the time to refill that's causing the issue. I'd have no problem with a 200 mile range if I could charge my EV in 3 minutes.

Your average range of latest EV cars is bit low. Have you seen how many kilometres the latest Renault Zoe can do?

Promising. We are already at 500 km with TESLA's highest capacity car and if this tech can double it without adding extra cost that would throw open the whole industry. But, all these gigafactories are setup to make tech that is a couple of years older... so this may be a while.

Even if 1000km is possible it still won't compete with the ICE vehicles unless you can recharge in a couple of minutes. It certainly is better than the current vehicles and most people will not do more than 1000km in a day so the battery can be recharged overnight - so long as it doesn't take more than about 8 hours. I still think the best solution is a hybrid. Not one where the ICE takes over the motive power but one where the motor or fuel cell produces enough electricity to power the electric motors and recharge the batteries. That way the ICE does not have to have fancy valve timings or accelerator complications because it can be a simple motor that runs at constant speed.

This is not a real "breakthrough" in battery tech, just innovating in the packaging (which has been worked on for a long time now, BTW). However, no mention was made as to the challenges this kind of close packaging presents, such as increased difficulty in cooling, thus preventing overheating and exploding, as lithium-based batteries are inclined to do. It would behoove them to consider incorporating a liquid-cooling matrix into the packaging (which, of course, immediately negates the space and weight advantages that they were going for in the first place, depending on how they integrate it... but does make it safer!) I would wonder, since it may offer some advantage to combine battery and supercap tech, if layering these two different storage types in alternating slices could keep neighboring lithium cells separated enough to avoid critical heat buildup? Thots?

Lance: You lost track because so many more Billions are being spent on research and there are so many alternative ways and some will end up with energy densities up to 50 times that of LiON and cars will have ranges measured in TENS of thousands of miles. Not hundreds of miles but honestly tens of thousands. Not a joke. It's already proving viable with plastic supercapacitors.

Part of the question is how long this battery may last (number of potential charging cycles) and what kind of deterioration of capacity will the battery experience as it reaches end of life. Recyclable I assume.