Hope reigns eternal for those tracking battery developments. But for once, or even twice, there may be a glimmer of hope with two cutting edge batteries. Researchers at Zhejiang University in China and Harvard University in America report promising numbers for very approaches, as divergent as their geographical locations. Ultrafast All-climate Aluminum-graphene Battery with Quarter-million Cycle Life Researchers at the verbosely named MOE Key Laboratory of Macromolecular Synthesis and Functionalization, Department of Polymer Science and Engineering, Key Laboratory of Adsorption and Separation Materials and Technologies of Zhejiang Province, Zhejiang University, announced their extreme long-life battery under the almost equally verbose title shown above. The journal Science Advances published the research team’s paper in its December 15, 2017 issue, making one wonder why it’s only now being noted in publications here. The abstract for the paper reports remarkably high charge retention after a quarter million cycles and what would seem abusive “folding.” “Rechargeable aluminum-ion batteries are promising in high-power density but …