Battery breakthrough: Part one

As ‘Electric Saint’, Stuart Copeland and Jonathan Moore’s new opera about the life of electrical pioneers Nikola Tesla and Thomas Edison, premieres at Kunstfest Weimar, aspiring composers and librettists looking for an equally electrifying subject matter might turn their minds to the race for a better battery.

And, like the skulduggery and sharp practice that marked the 1880s ‘War of the Currents’, you need to be very careful just who and what you believe in the ‘current’ current war. Most people have a dog in the race, whether that’s car companies looking to push the industry in a particular direction, battery start-ups seeking funding, people looking to enrich themselves with a valuable Initial Public Offering (IPO), or those with valuable consultancies. Journalists eager to cover the Next Great Breakthrough aren’t helping, either, and seem all too willing to suspend their disbelief.