New lithium packs?

[Navck]

http://www.a123systems.com/
Anyone think IBM will introduce them like this

[christopher_wolf]

I think they already do...Well, not quite *those*; but I have seen the inside of an IBM Thinkpad Battery Case (IBM 760). It looked like a bunch of AA Batteries, which are called the "Cells."

[AlphaKilo470]

I dissected a dead 760 LiION battery pack once and just as the person above said, it's a bunch ofindividual battery cells packed together. In fact, most notebook batteries are like this. By using standard cells inside of the battery case, manufacturers are able to be more efficent by eliminating the number of separate parts and they are able to keep costs down. On top of that, it's more practical to use standard cells as opposed to designing new cells with each laptop model.

As far as being able to bring the ThinkPad's battery up to 100% charge in 5 minutes at 100 degrees celcius, I don't think we'll be doing that anytime soon. 2 hours has pretty much been standard charge time for the past two decades. Hopefully that can change in the next decade though.

[Navck]

Those cells you see inside the pack as known as "18650"s. 18 = Width in MM, 65 = Length in MM, 0 = "O", cylinderical cell.

Yes, but the 5 minute charge/no degradiation over multiple cycles is the attraction point of those batterys, you can recharge rapidly and cycle again and again.

[GomJabbar]

I recently bought some I-C3 AA NiMH batteries at Radio Shack that charge in 15 minutes with a special charger. The charger sounds like a jet plane because of the cooling fan needed while charging these batteries. It will charge regular NiMH overnight without the cooling fan.

I imagine these 5-minute batteries you are looking at would really need some serious cooling while charging. The fan would probably sound like a hair dryer.

[Navck]

I would refer you all to the batterys subsection of Candlepowerforums, but its down
Lithium doesn't get really hot when its recharged. It may climb a few degrees (Farenhiet)

NIMH + 15 min charge = Hot
And that charger works like this
At first, it will check if the battery has that littile circut (Usually on the postive terminal). After that, it will rapidly charge it (Imagine 10C. C = Cell capacity. 100MAH cell being charged at 10C = 1000MAH charge. 20C = 2000MAH charge). Gradually near the end of the charge, it will reduce the charging rate (So from 10C to something more managable for the cells like .7C and that will contiune to go down). After that the charge will terminate.