Around the world, researchers sought to emulate and, if they could, best Ford. Such talk created an excitement resembling the commercially inventive 19th century all over again. You would recharge for an hour, and then drive another 200 miles. As the new sulfur-sodium batteries came into use, cars would travel 200 miles at highway speeds, Ford claimed. In the initial stages, electric Fords using lead-acid batteries could travel 40 miles (64 km) at a top speed of 40 miles an hour. With its promise of clean electric cars, Ford captured the imagination of a 1960s population suddenly conscious of the smog engulfing its cities. Yet at first, both Ford and the public disregarded prudence. For decades, few seemed to think that things should be different. Then, a series of inventions, including the electric starter, gave combustion the advantage. But electrics were quiet and easy to maneuver compared with the noisy and dirty combustion engines, with their aggravating hand cranks. Lead-acid was not a new invention-it was created in 1859 by Gaston Planté. In the early twentieth century, electric cars powered by lead-acid batteries (lead for the electrodes, sulfuric acid for the electrolyte) seemed superior to rivals featuring gasoline-powered internal combustion engines. They determine how many ions the battery can store and how fast it can pump them out. If it’s a rechargeable battery, plugging the device into a socket-thus pumping electricity back into it-forces the ions to shuttle back to the anode, where they are stored until wanted again.Īlmost everything in battery design comes down to the materials of which the anode, cathode, and electrolyte are made. When the battery is discharging-i.e., when it’s connected to a device that draws power from it-positively charged ions shuttle from the anode to the cathode, creating a current. The other, positively charged, is the cathode. One electrode is negatively charged, and is called the anode. In the middle, you need a substance for them to travel through, called an electrolyte. To make a battery, therefore, you need two electrodes, between which the ions will do their traveling.
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