It’s a good week when at least three battery developments show promise for electric vehicle use in the near future. One advanced lithium-ion battery from France, a dual-carbon battery from Japan, and a supercapacitor that one can wrap around one’s finger comprise the trio. French Lithium-Tin Dioxide “Synthesizing nanoparticles of tin dioxide (SnO2) in the pores of a carbonaceous material,” researchers at the Institute of Materials Science of Mulhouse and Charles Gerhardt Institute of Montpellier, part of an electrochemical energy storage consortium called RS2E, have found the material to have “remarkable properties.” Their work is the subject of a patent and published in the journal, Advanced Energy Materials. Researchers, hoping to obtain better performance that that achieved with carbon electrodes, tested combinations of nickel (Ni), iron (Fe), cobalt (Co), and other materials before hitting on tin dioxide as a material of choice. All have (theretically) far greater electrochemical storage capacity than graphite, but expand and contract during charging and discharging of the battery, …