The lithium-ion battery isn’t going anywhere soon. That’s what M. Stanley Whittingham, the Nobel laureate who created the first rechargeable lithium-ion battery some 50 years ago, told attendees of the SLAC-Stanford Battery Research Center Launch Symposium on Thursday. The new organization aims to bridge gaps between organizations that research, manufacture, and deploy large-scale energy storage systems.

M. Stanley Whittingham

It’s going to be at least five-to-ten years before any alternative technologies can compete on cost with lithium-ion technology, Whittingham predicted.

Granted that this technology remains the incumbent for some time to come, Whittingham has concerns—big concerns—about how the world makes and uses these energy storage devices. Here are the big issues he worries about:

Manufacturing

It’s ridiculous that manufacturing technologies haven’t changed in 30 years, Whittingham says. “We need to reduce the 60 to 80 kilowatt hours) of electricity it takes to produce a one kWh b