You surely wouldn’t have seen any of these yet: A slim “007” Swiss watch with a built-in phone, GPS, push email and video. Or a 3G smartphone with GPS, camera, push email, instant messaging and video, which runs a week on a single charge. There’s more. A luxury electric roadster that does 0-100 kmph in 4 seconds, recharges in 15 minutes and runs 500km on a single charge. Or a 100-seater airliner that uses no fossil fuel, is electric, recharges on the ground and flies 5 hours on a single charge.
All these are still in the realms of fiction for now. So why are we talking about them? Well, because the technology exists. We have super smartphones, watches with cellphones, electric cars, solar power and even electric aeroplanes.
BMW’s Mini E does 150 kmph and runs 240km on a single charge. But it needs a 23-hour charge for its 5,088-cell battery. The right battery could take a car 500km on an hour’s charge.
The missing link is the battery. The batteries you’d need for all this technology don’t yet exist. A slim wristwatch-phone’s battery would last 10 minutes on a call. The Reva electric car takes hours to charge, drives sedately and runs 100km on a charge. Electric planes, so far, are only limited to toys or light National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa) test aircraft. The batteries needed to power commercial planes would be too heavy for the aircraft to lift.
In Europe, you can buy BMW’s Mini E electric car. It does 0-100 kmph in 8 seconds and crosses 150 kmph. It goes 240km on a charge and packs an amazing 204bhp in its 150kW electric motors. But to power all this, its huge 5,088-cell lithium-ion battery replaces the rear seats, making the car a two-seater. It can charge in 4 hours through a high-voltage charger, but as buyers discovered, topping up through household electric outlets meant a 23-hour charge time.
Battery technology is advancing, but not as quickly as other electronics. Five years ago, my Nokia 6310 ran a week on a charge. But then came the always-on 3G data, push email and GPS.
So all the tech news here belongs to the future—waiting for the batteries to be invented. I’d put the one-week smartphone at 2011, the watch-phone at 2013, the 15-minute/24-hour car at 2015 and the electric plane at 2025.
All charged up