Free Republic

The supply chain for electric-vehicle batteries is uncomfortably dependent on China—for now, at least Competing with a much better-established Chinese industry isn’t an obvious proposition for investors, even with subsidies thrown in. That leaves U.S. car makers tentatively leading even the upstream supply-chain push, in alliance with the Energy Department. The future of EVs is often assumed to depend on solving consumer problems such as slow charging infrastructure and range anxiety. Instead, they could be slowed down more by the conundrum of building the foundations of a battery industry.

Normally, one would associate the word virus with something negative, whether it is a malfunctioning desktop computer or a sickness. However, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have "trained" viruses in a lab to create a miniature battery. By manipulating a few genes within the virus, researchers were able to get the organism to grow and then assemble itself into a functional electronic device. They hope to be able to build a battery that could be as small as a grain of rice. Two opposite electrodes -- or conductors -- form the structure of a battery, called an anode...