The midas touch: Electric cars could finally become useful thanks to breakthrough that uses GOLD to boost batteries

A golden boost could help electric cars increase their range dramatically.Scottish researchers say the precious metal could help radical new air breathing batteries store up to ten time more energy than today’s batteries.This could give electric vehicles huge ranges and boost their popularity dramatically – but make the batteries hugely expensive.Researchers at the University of Saint Andrews in Scotland admit an electric car battery made of gold would not be practical. However, they hope that by using gold in key areas of the battery they can dramatically increase the car’s range.The Saint Andrews chemists, in a paper published in the journal Science, describe how an experimental lithium–air battery featuring an organic electrolyte and a porous gold electrode maintained 95 percent capacity after 100 charge–discharge–recharge cycles.Lithium ion batteries currently used in electric vehicles can only be recharged a set number of times. However, researchers are working on new ‘air breathing’ batteries that do not suffer the same problem.