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While the current situation has put us all in unfamiliar territory, one bright spot has been the willingness of so many people and organizations to offer advice and assistance. With hundreds of millions of us isolated in our homes, making especially intensive and important use of our phones and computers, it seems like an opportune moment to share four battery-specific recommendations that can help ensure your personal safety and extend the lifespans of all our devices as we adjust to this period of uncertainty, and WFH normalcy.

Is it true that electric vehicles (EV) need 800-V battery packs for ultrafast charging? Is it true that the Porsche Taycan uses 800-V packs to enable ultrafast charging? Why did GM announce that its new battery platform will support 800 V? Let’s find out.

Let’s start with two essential ingredients required for ultrafast charging:

1. A charging station that is capable of providing a lot of electric power;

2. The ability for the battery to accept the extra charging power without being damaged or degraded.

Whether related to the stock market, presidential elections or climate, December is the month to make predictions for the coming year and decade. So what battery trends should we expect for the upcoming 2020-2030 decade?

1.Lithium-ion batteries will power more applications — electrification of everything:  The 2019 Nobel Prize in Chemistry highlights the progress lithium-ion batteries achieved in the past four decades. From a laboratory experiment in the 1970s, they are now ubiquitous in consumer devices. Increasingly, they are making inroads in transportation and grid storage applications. 

I was beaming with delight when I read that John Goodenough, Stanley Wittingham and Akira Yoshino received the 2019 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the “development of lithium-ion batteries.”

Wittingham’s initial work on batteries dates back to the 1970s while at Exxon. Goodenough’s seminal work on LCO cathodes at Oxford was published in 1980. Yoshino’s contributions on the graphite anode came in 1980s at Asahi Kasei in Japan. Sony converted their ideas into the first commercial lithium-ion battery product in 1991.

New menu settings inside Apple’s iPhones display a warning sign if the device’s battery is not recognized as authentic. Other smartphone manufacturers are curbing users and unauthorized repair shops from replacing the battery.

Why it matters: Smartphone manufacturers and Apple say that their actions guarantee the integrity and safety of the batteries by preventing the possible use of counterfeit batteries. Some users have objected citing a right to repair.