As we close 2021 and look forward to 2022, the biggest stories of our time are full of hope and promise. Just as we were able to apply a 20-year-old technology to rapidly create vaccines to save humanity, innovations in battery technology promise to make the world greener. This is the essence of engineering: not to settle, to keep innovating, to adapt proven principles to new situations, and to keep pursuing new methods.
"We got very lucky. The two most effective vaccines against the coronavirus are based on messenger RNA, a technology that has been in the works for 20 years. When the covid-19 pandemic began last January, scientists at several biotech companies were quick to turn to mRNA as a way to create potential vaccines; in late December 2020, at a time when more than 1.5 million had died from covid-19 worldwide, the vaccines were approved in the US, marking the beginning of the end of the pandemic."
"Electric vehicles come with a tough sales pitch; they’re relatively expensive, and you can drive them only a few hundred miles before they need to recharge—which takes far longer than stopping for gas. All these drawbacks have to do with the limitations of lithium-ion batteries. A well-funded Silicon Valley startup now says it has a battery that will make electric vehicles far more palatable for the mass consumer."