Professor Blythe, who's studying consumer reaction to battery-powered vehicles, reckons 5-10% of British cars will be electric within 10 years.
Also, frequent power outages have eroded consumer confidence in battery-powered vehicles.
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In addition to charging standard batteries, the Battery Engineer also charges rechargeable batteries and includes a battery tester to inform the consumer of the charge level of any battery.
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In October, LG Chem workers told a local television reporter they play games and watch movies because the factory has yet to produce a single battery for consumer use.
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Although heaters are minimized to conserve battery range, Consumer Reports rated a Volt test car at a paltry average 25 miles of electric-only running before the gasoline engine kicked in under cold Connecticut winter conditions.
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As battery range (i.e. the distance your battery fully charged will get you) becomes more of a consumer focus, increasingly compact power will become tantamount to battery choice for hybrids and electric cars.
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Following the introduction of the IdeaPad U350, the 14-inch U450p offers Intel consumer ultra low voltage processors, long battery life and a wide range of entertainment and productivity features.
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Motor companies insist that the reason the original battery cars failed was lack of consumer interest, but that view is turned on its head here.
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Consumer Reports did an experiment in which it put a battery from a greeting card between two slices of ham.
So you probably remember yesterday's scary report which quoted a Consumer Product Safety Commission spokesperson predicting that Sony's upcoming US battery recall will expand beyond just laptops, and might include portable DVD players and videogame consoles too.
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"From the consumer's point of view it's going to mean better battery life and higher image quality, " said Steve Steele, product manager of ARM's media processing division.
The company has recently significantly expanded its product offering to include a wide variety of consumer-focused digital entertainment products, PC and netbook accessory items, and the ReZap line of battery and portable power solutions.
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The batteries themselves make use of the same zinc air technology used in hearing aid batteries, and apparently have the highest energy density of any portable consumer power solution, which translates to about three times the runtime of a similarly sized alkaline or lithium ion battery.
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