Energy · 1991

Lithium-ion battery

Sony ships a safe rechargeable lithium cell with a carbon anode.

Akira Yoshino's 1985 prototype paired a carbon anode with Goodenough's cathode, and Sony commercialized it in 1991. Pack prices fell from over $1,000 per kWh around 2010 to about $115 in 2024, enabling phones, electric cars and grid storage.

See it in the living tree Wikipedia

Arcs above join it to what it stood on, arcs below to what it led to. The bar places this stretch on the tree's whole timeline.

What it built on 1

Intercalation cathodes 1976

What it led to 11

Smartphone 2007
Tesla Roadster 2008
Consumer quadcopter 2013
Grid-scale battery storage 2017
Ingenuity Mars helicopter 2021
Tesla Optimus 2022
Certified passenger eVTOL 2023
Low-cost humanoid (Unitree G1) 2024
Cheap long-duration grid storage ~2032
Electric regional airliners ~2034
Humanoid robots in homes ~2036

Related measurements

The dashed line marks when it first worked.

Lithium-ion battery cell price Latest: 78 $/kWh (2024 USD) (2024) Source: Our World in Data

Electric share of new car sales Latest: Battery electric: 16.5 % of new cars (2025) Source: Our World in Data

World lithium production Latest: 292k tonnes (2025) Source: Our World in Data