The approach only requires simple changes to the production process of a well-known material.

Even though it is cheap, lithium iron phosphate has until now received little attention because lithium cobalt batteries can store slightly more charge for a given weight.

However, the researchers found that their new material does not lose its capacity to charge over time in the way that standard lithium ion batteries do.

That means that the excess material put into standard batteries to compensate for this loss over time is not necessary, leading to smaller, lighter batteries with phenomenal charging rates.

There are issues with exchanging the batteries too. For safety/hazard reasons hybrid/electric batteries are usually not put in easily-accessible locations, instead they are hidden behind the rear seats (Civic Hybrid), chassis/floorboards (Chevrolet Volt), or boot (Toyota Prius). It's not a click-remove-slide-back-in affair like with laptop batteries.

Solid state batteries? Just fill her up instead.

A new way to charge electric cars: Fill ‘er up with electrolytes

This looks more like a fuel cell to me, and would perpetuate the need to go to a "fueling" station. No thanks.

A Swiss company says it has developed rechargeable zinc-air batteries that can store three times the energy of lithium ion batteries, by volume, while costing only half as much. ReVolt, of Staefa, Switzerland, plans to sell small "button cell" batteries for hearing aids starting next year and to incorporate its technology into ever larger batteries, introducing cell-phone and electric bicycle batteries in the next few years. It is also starting to develop large-format batteries for electric vehicles.

The new cell has already obtained a “practical energy density” of about 194 watt hours per pound of battery material, or 3.5 times the density of a typical Li-ion battery (at about 55 watt hours of energy per pound of battery).

Using the Tesla Roadster for comparison purposes, the car's current Li-Ion battery which weighs 1000 pounds and contains 53 KWh of energy, can propel the car about 200 miles in normal use. By contrast the same weight of Ni-Li battery would hold 194 KWh of energy for a range of approximately 700 miles!

The company aims to build a Metal-Air Ionic Liquid battery that has up to 11 times the energy density of the top lithium-ion technologies for less than one-third the cost. Cody Friesen, a professor of materials science at Arizona State and founder of Fluidic Energy, says the use of ionic liquids overcomes many of the problems that have held back metal-air batteries in the past. "I'm not claiming we have it yet, but if we do succeed, it really does change the way we think about storage," says Friesen, who was named one of Technology Review's top innovators under 35 in 2009.