

The Automobile Storage Battery – Its Care and Repair (1922) - gnu8
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/29718/29718-h/29718-h.htm

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gnu8
I thought this was interesting in light of the article about Tesla expanding
into home batteries. Large energy storage is going to become ubiquitous in the
near future, and it will be interesting to see if the batteries will be as
maintainable and hackable as they were in 1922. Already we hear of Prius
owners rebuilding their battery packs instead of paying Toyota to replace
them. In this case, all that was needed was to clean some corroded bus bars:
[http://imgur.com/gallery/j8Bcp](http://imgur.com/gallery/j8Bcp)

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agumonkey
Batteries are the new ink cartridge ?

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flyinghamster
To some extent, they already are. IMO, one of the most unfortunate side
effects of today's tech is the proliferation of incompatible battery packs as
a vendor lock-in tactic. Even when the cells inside are a standard design like
the ubiquitous 18650, they're almost always in a proprietary pack. Forget
about using a Canon battery pack in a Nikon camera, or a Makita pack in a
Black & Decker drill.

Don't get me started on the whole "design a non-replaceable battery into that
expensive device so we can make it 0.5 mm thinner" nonsense.

Unfortunately, I think the problem is only going to get worse as time goes on.

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agumonkey
Erf, sad fact indeed. The cynical me is not even hoping that the Ara project
will catch on, somehow the 0.5mm has more public appeal than component reuse
(either for planet or their own wallet ecology).

