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Explore the latest breakthroughs, expert insights, and upcoming battery tech industry events, along with resources and blogs where we are shaping the future of battery performance technology.

March 3, 2026

Software is the “Seoul” of the Battery Asset

Qnovo announces a strategic investment from Hyundai Motor Company and Kia Corporation to advance the deployment of battery software across electric mobility and future platforms.

Publications

WOULD 007 DRIVE AN ELECTRIC CAR?

Ah, we could talk for hours about James Bond’s 1964 Aston Martin DB5. Aston Martin remains an iconic luxury brand, one of the last vestiges of British automotive style. So fast forward to 2015, the age of electric cars and Teslas: Aston Martin just announced its...

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LET’S TALK ABOUT ENERGY DENSITY

Pause for a second and wonder why electric vehicles have frustratingly limited driving ranges? or why your smartphone lasts only for a few limited hours instead of an entire month? Yet, a good ol’ combustion-engine car can go for hundreds of miles without a...

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QNOVO QNS and QUALCOMM’S QUICK CHARGE 3.0

There were several releases in the last day covering fast charging, and in particular, Qualcomm’s evolution of its power delivery mechanism called Quick Charge 3.0. This is quite exciting because it elevates the power delivery — i.e., the circuitry that delivers the...

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LITHIUM PLATING IS IMMENSELY HAZARDOUS

One of the serious consequences of fast charging lithium-ion batteries is the formation of lithium metal on the surface of the anode (the negative electrode when the battery is being charged). While the battery industry has invested significant effort to ensure...

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LET’S TALK ABOUT THE WAIST

Not yours, of course….the smartphone’s waist. We see a race among the smartphone makers to go thin. The iPhone 6 Plus is 6.9 mm thick and it is already been outflanked by some new devices coming from China. In particular, the Oppo R5 boasts a thickness...

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IS THERE ENOUGH LITHIUM?

Elon Musks’ Gigafactory comes on line in 2017 to build some 35 GWh annually worth of batteries for Tesla. Thirty-five giga….that sounds like a big number. But wait, thirty-five gigabytes is a small capacity for your disk drive. So let’s put things in perspective...

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REVIVING A DEAD BATTERY, REALLY?

A statement of this devilish nature during the middle ages would have earned its author a burning at the stake. The mere notion of a “battery” would have probably been in the realm of druids and witches, and reviving anything dead would have been…well...

Publications

INSIDE THE BATTERY OF A NISSAN LEAF

One of the most recognizable electric vehicles on the road, the Nissan Leaf, has a battery capacity of 24 kWh. It has a rated driving range of nearly 80 miles, about ⅓ that of the Tesla Model S. It is therefore not surprising that its battery capacity is also nearly...

Publications

AND THE MAGIC NUMBER IS 3K

That is 3,000 mAh….this is the battery capacity that consumers will see in most mid-tier to high-end mobile smartphones for the foreseeable future. Why? It’s simple, this is the capacity that gives consumers an honest full day of operation. This begs a...

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THE INNER SANCTUM OF A BATTERY & FAST CHARGING

Kevin Gibb of TechInsights published recently an article in EE Times that shows a teardown of the lithium-ion battery used inside the iPhone 6 Plus. While the teardown and the article seemed motivated by determining the cost of this battery — somewhere...

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MARY MEEKER AND THE BATTERY

Mary Meeker is a venture capitalist at Kleiner Perkins who publishes annually a report on internet trends. Her 2015 report can be found here. One can find some interesting insight and subtle observations on how our new digital society is evolving and using...

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ON THE EFFICIENCY OF BATTERY-POWERED VEHICLES

Fact: I am able to ride a significantly longer distance on my bicycle than I can drive in my electric vehicle….it can be frustrating to see my electric vehicle run out of juice! So I began to wonder on a recent cycling trip to what extent my Ford Focus Electric vehicle was...

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ON MOORE’S LAW AND SNAIL’S LAW

It’s all over the media: Moore’s Law just turned 50! What is Moore’s Law? It’s more an observation than a law, but it has stuck around, now 50 years, that we think it is a law, like gravity. On 19 April 1965, Gordon Moore, at the time the head of R&D at Fairchild Semiconductor...

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WHY I WILL NOT BUY THE TESLA POWERWALL SOON

Tesla Motors announced a few days back its new battery pack for the residential market. Called the PowerWall, it will be offered through Tesla’s sister company, SolarCity, to residential customers. Tesla says that this home battery will allow consumers to charge...

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YOUR WATCH BATTERY IS REALLY CHALLENGED

Apple just released its Apple Watch joining a growing list of manufacturers of new smart watches, including Samsung, LG, Motorola and others. These watches include, in addition to timekeeping, features such as messaging, basic email, navigation, in some...

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LIAR, LIAR, PANTS ON ULTRAFIRE

Ultrafire is a China-based vendor of 18650 lithium-ion cells. One can buy their 18650 cells from eBay, Amazon and lots of other web-based stores. I was intrigued last week when I saw on eBay Ultrafire 18650 cells advertised with a charge capacity of 5,000 mAh...

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WHAT IS CELL BALANCING?

We have covered in prior blogs the operation of batteries in smartphones. The vast majority of such devices use single-cell batteries. In other words, there is one physical cell that is the battery. As such, it has a given charge capacity measured in mAh or...

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THE ANATOMY OF AN IPHONE 6

NASA landed in July 1969 the Apollo 11 on the surface of the moon. Along with the famed astronauts was the Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC), a 1960s-era computer to navigate the spaceship to the moon and back. A reliable machine for its time...

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SAMSUNG, BE HONEST IN YOUR MARKETING CLAIMS

Samsung announced in September 2014 its GALAXY Note 4, a giant but elegant 6-in screen smartphone with a specified battery capacity of 3,220 mAh. It also made a bold claim that it charges the smartphone to 50% in 30 minutes. The marketing snippet...

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UNDERSTANDING POWER USAGE IN A SMARTPHONE

You are shopping for a new smartphone and you are trying to understand how long the battery will last. But you can’t seem to get a straight answer. Apple says the iPhone 6 will last up to 14 hours of talk time on 3G but you are really not going to have your...

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SOLID-STATE THIN-FILM BATTERIES… WHAT ARE THEY?

Did you know that the European semiconductor giant ST Micro makes rechargeable lithium-ion batteries? Probably not. You don’t believe me; go ahead and google “ST Micro thin-film batteries.” It’s really tiny. It is a square that measures one inch (25.7 mm)...

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AT MWC 2015, BATTERIES & DESIGN ARE KINGS

This year’s Mobile World Congress show in Barcelona was buzzing with a number of announcements, with the much anticipated Samsung S6 and wearables taking front seat. All the major players in the mobile space, with the exception of Apple, proudly...

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MOBILE WORLD CONGRESS… WHAT IS THAT?

You have heard of the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, but MWC, what is that? Most consumers are not aware that it is one of the premier tradeshows where mobile devices OEMs announce and introduce their newest gadgets and devices...

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HOW YOUR BATTERY DETERMINES YOUR PHONE’S FASHION

Most of us recall the days of the flip phone, a mere decade ago, when the battery was small, a puny 800 mAh, yet it lasted days. Over these past several years, our phones got smarter, they got sophisticated, and the battery took the brunt of this evolution...

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YOUR MOBILE FAST CHARGING OFFICE AT YOUR FINGERTIPS

You are mobile. You travel. You own a smartphone, a tablet, and a laptop. You are always on the lookout for a power outlet that is not used by a competitor, i.e., another mobile traveler like you. You hate compromise. You need fast charging in each of your...