"Green Cell" Standardized Battery Idea Almost Practical
The "Green Cell" proposal by the design clique "Rich, Brilliant, and Willing" is almost a great idea, and fortunately its main sin is an easily remedied one of omission. Their concept is a a vending machine full of rechargeable batteries of uniform size. All gadgets would use this single battery profile, making it possible to toss an old, worn out battery into the hopper for recycling while easily picking up replacements on the go.
The glaring flaw, of course, is that for their Green Cell idea to work, all gadget manufacturers would have to adopt a standardized rechargeable battery size. It'll never happen, not just for the typical reasons attempts to align corporate manufacturers of disparate interests into a monolithic platform rarely work, but because we as gadgets owners don't actually want one large battery to become a default size.
The designers of the iPhone and Macbook Air, for example, gain a lot of leeway in flattening device chassis by not having to account for a removable battery. Leaving aside whether all products even need a replaceable battery, one relatively large battery like the Green Cell really limits the shape and sizes of future gear.
So let's take it a step out if possible and crib from the disposable batteries of yore, offering a few standard battery sizes. One of the Green Cell concepts show two cells placed in sequence to power a laptop. By offering a few smaller sizes, gadget manufacturers might be afforded sufficient flexibility to create the thinner and smaller devices we all crave while still realizing the convenience offered by the Green Cell vending machines.
Even through it's likely that batteries will shrink some as they increase efficiency over the next few years, there will be a realistic minimum size for a while. That smallest size can be the most tiny modular cell offered.
In short, we just need a new set of standard battery sizes that are flat and rectangular, not cylindrical.
Or we could just not worry about it until supercapacitors prove themselves as a viable power storage system.
GREEN CELL Universal Battery Sold in Vending Machines [Inhabitat]
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You could probably do quite well with something the size of two or four AAAs. Particularly if there was a way to use two or four AAAs if you had to (like the battery 'cage' that the old Newton Messagepads used).
Varta Microbattery GmbH has a line very similar to this idea; PoLiFlex EasyPack line.
http://www.varta-microbattery.com/en/oempages/sales_literature/sales_literature.php
and scroll down towards the bottom.
Five sizes of prismatic lithium polymer from 610 to 2520 mA-h in a standardized flat, rectangular plastic housing. However they're only available to businesses, partly due to safety concerns.
That said, speaking as someone who has designed products using rechargeable batteries, one reason companies often use unique battery packs is to help combat counterfeiting, which is a major safety issue. There's a big market in cheap LiIon batteries made by companies with sub par safety features. With a technology where even batteries from reputable manufacturers demonstrate thermal events and are subject to vast recalls, gray market batteries pose a real risk.
The bigger the market segment for a particular form factor, the greater the chance it will be copied. Security chips can help here...it's not ALL about locking the customer into buying more expensive batteries. (Saving $20 on a cheap battery after buying a camera or cam-corder for hundreds or thousands of dollars may not be much of a bargain.)
Another issue is that when I work with a cell manufacturer I can specify the exact chemistry, capacity and such, for the lifetime of a product, and with the energy density of lithium batteries these days, it's much more of an issue than with other chemistries. If the manufacturer behind Green Cells comes out with a newer, higher capacity cell, it could be more prone to flaming, and I might not want that risk associated with my product. (Polymer batteries are generally safer than regular lithium ion batteries, so they may be okay, but they'll also be more expensive. A123 System batteries may also be interesting.)
And if whoever re-stocks the vending machine thinks he found a real bargain somewhere, I don't want to be the one to find out the hard way.
I'd also be wary of packaging LiIon to replace pairs of AA or AAA batteries. Since there are already NiMH batteries in those sizes, and products that charge the batteries in situ, it would be dangerous to be able to swap chemistries as the charging profile is drastically different. Flamingly different. A couple of years ago HP recalled almost 700k digital cameras because they incorrectly detected the battery type and tried to charge alkaline batteries.
I also recently got a few Black & Decker VPX cordless tools. I like them, the lithium batteries don't discharge when they're sitting on my tool bin, and they're much lighter than the old NiCad power tools they replace. The batteries are physically bigger than what this article is proposing, but it'll be interesting to see if Black & Decker licenses their use to other manfacturers.
JimKirk,
Funny that you should mention the Black & Decker tools. Among electric-powered RC airplane builders and pilots, it's becoming an increasingly popular practice to buy spare battery B&D lithium packs, open them and divide the cells into packs that are sized for their particular requirements. Of course, the people doing this have a much greater knowledge of battery chemistries and methods than your average consumer. They also take more safety precautions; nearly every flier in the club I'm in that uses lithium batteries charges them in specially modified air-tight ammo cans to contain them should they "catastrophically fail."
I think the iPhone/iPod non removable batteries have a lot more to do with planned obsolescence than design.
Stop the tinfoil hats, removable batteries take more space than non-user serviceable ones, that's a fact. You can shave a mm here and there when you don't have to take into account wear & tear, and a millimeter is what makes or break a gizmo such as the iPod.