Dual Carbon Batteries, what next?

The announcement of the Dual Carbon battery got me thinking about power storage in electric cars.  There are two lines of thinking in this area, (1) faster charging (2) greater range.  At the moment most people are concerned about the range, but charging or refueling is also a concern.

The dual carbon battery promises much and, at least supposedly, can deliver.  It should be noted here that the dual carbon battery is not all new.  Many battery chemistry types have been, in theory, possible for decades, but there was not much time spend on research.  A company called Power Japan Plus is the one to announce a functional dual carbon battery last week, that is making headlines.

Current battery technologies like Nickel-Metal Hydride (NiMH) and Lithium Iron Phosphate (LiFePHO4) have provided a solid example of what is possible with battery technology.  But there is always room for improvement.

Gasoline has ruled the automobile industry for 100 years because of it's energy capacity.  Although gasoline requires that it be burned to harness the energy, that has not slowed its use. We could have been using nuclear power to the same end, creating massive quantities of radioactive waste rather than pouring carbon monoxide into the atmosphere, but gasoline was available first.

We don't use nuclear energy as much because of its toxic waste products.  Even batteries have some toxic materials in them, until now.  However, the dual carbon battery is made of 90% recyclable materials and offers many other features that are not found in Lithium Ion batteries.   By comparison the LiFe battery does the following better than any of its predecessors...

• It doesn't get hot or explode when in operation (lithium is volatile)
• It's made of carbon, which is quite plentiful (compared to lithium which is not)
• It charges much faster than lithium, about 20x faster
• It can be recharged more times that any other battery chemistry

So Dual Carbon solves problem number one, and by chance resolves a few other issues.  It might just be the solution that arrives sooner than lithium air and in the long-run is cleaner. 

But the revelation of Lithium Air and now Dual Carbon, leads me to wonder, what's next?  Is there some super material out there that we've yet to find that will be more energy dense than gasoline, clean, fast to recharge, and recyclable?  Based on these two recent technologies, it's my guess that there is something better.