A group of young MIT students has developed a new type of battery that runs on a rechargeable liquid fuel. The inventors call the fuel “Cambridge Crude,” and if the technology makes it to market, refueling an electric car could be as easy as pulling up to a pump. The batteries are powered by semi-solid flow cells, an innovative architecture that uses charged particles floating in a liquid electrolyte between two containers–one for storing energy and one for discharging energy. Separating out the functions and other innovations make the new battteries ten times as efficient as similar existing technology and cheaper to manufacture than lithium-ion batteries. In short, the new batteries make irrelevant the size and cost limitations that have kept this kind of technology out of electric cars to date.

via The Atlantic Wire.