Electric Wheelchair Future Technology

We attended Toshiba's "New Technologies event" end of March… Among other things shown was also 1 minute recharge battery technology. This is ready to go technology. Toshiba has several working beyond-prototypes units and patent in place!

Amazing technology basically works with any battery type (Li-Ion, Li-Poly, Ni-MH…) but requires higher segmentation of battery cells, each coupled with intelligence (hear sensors, electronics for optimum charging)… Toshiba estimates that 1-minute battery price will be 25-35% higher compared to same capacity plain technology.

Lifetime of this battery should be same or LONGER compared to other today's batteries. The same charger should work, as new might be even cheaper as since it needs no intelligence.

The demo showed recharging a iPOD type digital music player (from completely dead to completely full battery) in 5 seconds, and a 8-cell laptop battery (4800 mAh) recharged in 58 seconds! Typical electric wheelchair battery (35 Ah) used for Powerchairs, SegWays and even electric cars should be completely charged in around 1-5 minutes, depending on number of "cells" on which the main battery is segmented! Probbably we will see various "speeds" batteries, cheaper with just few cells (and take 5-10 minutes to recharge), and more expensive ones that will do it in 1 minute or so… Imagine stopping at McDonald's having a snack, and completely rejuvenating your wheelchair battery in between…

Sadly Toshiba is not yet announcing any own products with new battery technology embedded. Although we expected to hear about technical problems, but rather Toshiba revealed political ones, as many of companies customers are large oil-related companies, which are not too happy about this technology emerging…

Keywords: electric wheelchair battery, 1-minute battery recharge, fast recharge