Ray Kurzweil was the keynote at the 2015 SAE World Congress. His talk was a broad look at biotechnology and exponential growth.

Responding to a question on electric vehicles and hydrogen fuel cells, Kurzweil said that batteries have made modest progress, but have not seen the exponential growth that will bring radical transformation yet.

“Nanotech is 10-15 years away,” he said. And the big gains will be “when we can manipulate matter and energy at the atomic and molecular level. There are already  exciting designs for energy storage that will be transformative.”

Kurzweil imagines a new kind of fuel cell. “I know one company creating microscopic sized fuel cells. You can put millions of them in a very small space and create very inexpensive, very powerful energy storage with a very high energy to size ratio. Nanotech will transform all kinds of electrical devices, including electrical vehicles. Fuel cells that are actually microscopic in size will be a part of that picture.” […]

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Society of Automotive Engineers | Futurist Kurzweil discusses acceleration of intelligent technology