After cranking out a series of working fuel cell prototypes for digital cameras last year, one company says it's finally ready to start mass-producing the methanol-based cells. Indeed, if MTI Micro has its way, these diminutive cells will start showing up in laptops, cell phones and digital cameras by 2009.
CEO Peng Lim gives a pretty compelling case for why gadget addicts shouldn't shed any tears for lithium ion batteries, too.
"The main advantage of fuel cells is that they will last twice as long as a battery pack of the same size. ... And the recharge time is almost nonexistent," Lim told News.com. "Powering up a fuel cell-based phone only requires squirting in some new fuel or putting in a new cartridge."
Not bad...save the fuel squirting bit, which sounds kind of impractical. And what about stability? Yeah, that's where things also get a little dicey. Methanol, of course, is a flammable liquid and I'm guessing cellphones with methanol-based fuel cells aren't going be met with open arms by the TSA or U.S. regulators.
That being the case, you can probably expect stand-alone universal chargers with said fuel cells first. The built-in variety? I'm guessing that might take a little longer than a year to approve.
