E-car chargers are great! Let's all ask our municipal councils for them, in all cities. Otherwise, electric cars won't happen much, imho.

There is much missing info about batteries, but much MISinformation about them. For example, here's one:

Scientific American got it wrong on Lithium Batteries, Dec 2006 issue

Dear Editors,

Thanks for the colored cutaway diagrams of lithium ion and single-use lithium coin batteries in your December '06 issue, although I'm writing you to respectfully dispute the Scientific American article and the "Battery University" website.

Several years ago, an energetic scientific Canadian named Larry who runs a photo shop in Vancouver once drowned a non-rechargeable (so-called "primary") lithium battery, to test the urban legend that they would explode when wet. Well, it didn't, and one toilet bowl was thankfully spared.

We were shocked by that initial discovery. Electrified, I continued Larry's playful experiment, and tossed (grenade-like) batteries in varying depths of water, this time in a weapons-testing grounds, otherwise known as a summer camp. Again, contrary to the manufacturers' dire warnings, they did not turn into a Fourth of July spectacle that most SA readers would have expected. Thus, I, too became a disbeliever of commandments of fear handed down by the Battery Church.

Seems like heresy directed at Battery Church, doesn't it?

So, being more Densa than Mensa, I and my colleagues proceeded to discount the warnings on batteries totally. Some of us waded into the uncharted waters, real depths of electrolytic solutions and successfully revived every kind of primary batteries, including coin cells.

By now, the heresy has gone far and wide against the "It'll explode" orthodoxy, and hundreds of people (not including the viewers of a community TV newscast, that videotaped and showed it) have been shown, by gifted kids, how to revive primary batteries.

Thousands of dollars of free batteries have already been given away in greater Vancouver, too. Where? Revived primary batteries have also been given away at Perpetual-Motion Inventors and Gadgeteers meetings, as well as other events. Contrary to the Battery Pope's infallible edict (historically called "Papal Bull"), these recycled batteries didn't explode or leak.
http://daycampworkshops.blogspot.com/2006/08/photos-of-perpetual-motion-inventors.html

Was your writer aware that solar-powered (lithium) coin cell chargers have been sold for many years? I recall a model sold by Real Goods at one time. (That's a center of energetic heretics, too.)

Why am I telling you all this? Your article, imho, does a disservice to the battery revivalists around the world (the heretics) engaged in a cottage industry aimed at reducing metals in landfills by allowing the ReUse of batteries, including the just-released Oxyrides. How nasty are small batteries? Mountain Equipment Coop alleges that 50%-70% of all heavy metals in landfills comes from small household batteries.

And, there's even a heresy currently aimed at the Battery Church's papal bull (another infallible edict, eh?) that NiMH batteries are just "deplete" after so many hundred cycles, but that's another story, one that Battery University got right, since its dean is the manufacturer of one battery-revival machine.

Thank god, there's a separation of state-of-charge and the battery church, eh?

Bottom line is this: Every type of used battery, except lithium ion, has been successfully revived to full power. You'll likely be Goggling this subject, so here's a start:
http://watershed-sentinel.blogspot.com/

Cheers,
Rob Matthies
Vancouver, BC

Most batteries are sealed, of course just throwing them in water will not do anything. But I know lithium will react strongly with water, not sure how lithium batteries are made, but there is potential for them to explode. Ask Sony.

And the leopard print EV in the picture really does nothing to help our cause - am I the only one who _sees_ this?

People! We cannot make ourselves the victim of ridicule if we want to change the world!