I find it confusing how the battery in my last pacemaker/defibrillator lasted almost 8 years and still had some life left in it, even after pacing me several times a day and shocking the crap out of me (saving my life) 3 times......yet my smartphone battery won't even make it through a whole day....
The issue isnt about longevity, power, or size. The real answer to your question, and those in this topic, is price. Your smart phone battery most likely costs about 30 dollars to replace. The battery in a pacemaker is part of a 40-90,000 dollar device. There are batteries like a CR2477 that is barely 2 inches around, and only about 5mm high that has the same capacity as my 5 inch long 1000mah Ego Twist. No one wants to replace a 5 dollar battery once a day however.
Thats one of the major problems. We can get WAY more power from the same size, or a MUCH smaller battery with the same power, but it isnt going to be rechargeable. I dont really see electric car batteries "trickling down" to other markets for a bunch of reasons. Namely, electric cars are getting to the tipping point of car companies giving up on the idea even with the very large subsidies given to them by the government. Chevy famously stated they lost something close to 40,000 dollars for every Volt they sold. Nissan has said that the Leaf not only loses money but that demand is much lower than expected. Electric cars arent new either. The streets of America were filled with electric cars in the very early 1900's and the problems then are the same problems we have 100+ years later... expensive, short range, and a need for an entire infrastructure that doesnt exist and no one is willing to build.
Another big issue with electric car batteries is their technology isnt very easy to scale down. You are talking about batteries that take up the space of a twin size mattress and weigh several hundred pounds when working together. Figuring out how to get that technology down to the size of something like a AAA battery is going to take decades and decades of research... research I am not convinced will continue on the major scale needed to accomplish in our kids lifetimes.
Much like "alternative energy" cars I would bet on a power source change rather than further development of the battery. For cars that is most likely going to be Hydrogen or Natural Gas. Who knows what that will be for something so small as an Ecig
I have thought of some designs. But like I said, I doubt anyone would be interested in creating them. And for whatever reason I feel funny sharing them.. just in case? lol
