Power of a Li-ion: Oxford's battery story

Added: 2026-05-18

[00:00:00]The world's longest running battery has been continuously functioning in a lab in Oxford since 1840. From its shelf, it's seen nearly two centuries of innovation. But the Oxford battery story really gets going around its 135th birthday with an American genius and his distinctive laugh. [laughter] Everyone knew that lithium, the world's lightest metal, could hold a lot of energy. The challenge was controlling it, a job some thought was impossible.

[00:00:28]Professor Good Enough, a metalology expert, didn't think that was good enough. And at Oxford, he found the chemical underpinnings of lithium ion batteries, which went into camcorders and soon every mobile phone on the planet.

[00:00:40]>> It's from Oxford.

[00:00:42]>> It won him a Nobel Prize.

[00:00:43]>> Said the oldest laurate ever eventually.

[00:00:46]Meanwhile, an Oxford lab tweaked the chemistry of those little batteries to make cheap, sturdy, bigger ones, which now power electric cars everywhere. And someone from that lab thought we needed a whole dedicated center to make more discoveries like this becoming the UK center for battery research the Faraday Institution just down the road at Harwell filled with brilliant minds like this person.

[00:01:06]>> I'm professor of inorganic chemistry. I turn carbon dioxide into materials for batteries.

[00:01:11]>> Or this person.

[00:01:12]>> I'm professor materials modeling and I'm the current Guinness World Record holder for the highest voltage lemon battery.

[00:01:18]In an increasingly electric world, from manufacturing to green cities to clean motorsport, the future of batteries is likely to have come an Oxford Spark.