It might sound like a gimmick. But the logic behind a recent patent application looks sound. And even if the technology doesn’t work, the very existence of the patent application illustrates one thing: Tesla and its enigmatic CEO Elon Musk are masters of generating buzz.

Take the launch of Tesla’s Cybertruck. The November event in Los Angeles certainly had people talking about the pickup’s avant-garde, geometric design, towing capacity, and features such as bulletproof glass. Barron’s itself has written almost two dozen articles referencing Cybertruck since its launch.

It seems people can’t get enough of Tesla. Now there are lasers to write about. (The company also got some negative headlines, however, on Monday: A Tesla on Autopilot crashed into a police car over the weekend.)

The patent filing came to light—pardon the pun—in late November. The electric vehicle pioneer is seeking to protect technology it is developing for “pulsed laser cleaning of debris accumulated on glass articles in vehicles and photovoltaic assemblies.”

Translation: Tesla wants to zap debris off its windshields. Think of it as the most high-tech window defroster ever conceived.

It isn’t as odd as it sounds. The patent application makes some interesting points. For starters, vehicle electrification can mean solar panels on cars in the future. That’s a lot of glass surface area. And as autonomous driving technology adds more cameras and sensors to cars, its important to keep them all clean. The lasers offer a way to keep critical equipment clean without having to manually intervene—such as with an ice scrapper.

(Tesla understands solar panel technology better than most—the company owns SolarCity.)

Barron’s isn’t going to pretend to understand lasers enough to evaluate technical feasibility. All we really know is that a laser is a focused beam of light. What is clear, however, is that Tesla has a knack for generating free advertising—to the benefit of its shareholders.

The benefit isn’t small. Other car companies spend large sums on advertising. General Motors (GM) and Ford Motor (F), for instance, spend more than $8 billion each year on a combined basis on advertising and promotion. That works out to about 2.7% of combined sales, or about 30% of combined estimated 2019 earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization, or Ebitda. Traditional, mainstream car companies have to spend on brand awareness.

Tesla disclosed $70 million in marketing spending in 2018. That’s only about 0.3% of sales.

Some day, Tesla might have to spend way more money on advertising, but investors don’t seem to be worried about that now. The company is riding a hot streak. Shares are up about 47% over the past three months. That’s far better than the 4.9%, 6.2% and 8.2% respective gains of the Dow Jones Industrial Average, S&P 500 and Russell 3000 Auto & Auto Parts Index over the same span.

Tesla didn’t return a request for comment about when the laser technology could be ready for production and what models it might be first implemented on.

Maybe the company plans to launch them on the Cybertruck—marrying the futuristic design with futuristic debris removal

Graphene and salt water offer promising advances

A prototype of the Blue Battery by Aqua Battery © AquaBattery

Nic Fildes JANUARY 8 2018

As the world’s power needs grow, the search is on for better battery technology — not just to keep smartphones charged for longer, but to run electric cars and to store energy produced by solar and wind power.

For the last 25 years, the lithium-ion battery, has held sway. Packing a large amount of energy into a relatively small space and weight, these are in greater demand than ever for mobile phones and electric cars. In fact, 2017 has been, in the words of HSBC’s Paul Bloxham, a nirvana for lithium. The price of the commodity has been driven 240 per cent higher. Batteries accounted for 35 per cent of lithium use in 2015, up from 25 per cent in 2007, with electric vehicles, phones and personal computers accounting for 60 per cent of that market.

Lithium-ion’s limitations are apparent, however, to anyone who has seen their mobile phone battery draining suddenly. There is a growing interest in finding alternative technologies.

“There’s a sense that existing lithium-ion batteries and related charging technologies are reaching their limitations,” said CCS Insight, the research company.

Samsung in November revealed that it had developed a technology based on a “ graphene ball” that could potentially boost its battery capacity by 45 per cent and increase charging speed five-fold. Keen to put behind it the memories of the exploding batteries in its Galaxy Note 7 phone, Samsung has been putting a lot of effort into battery research, and news that the graphene-based power unit would take just 12 minutes to be fully charged was welcomed by many.

Graphene ball image © Samsung

Yet the technology, similar to Qualcomm’s Quick Charge system, really only represents an enhancement, rather than a replacement, for lithium-ion.

Graphene has long been seen as a vital ingredient for future energy needs. Other alternatives being researched include fuel cells, photosynthesis, solid state technologies, sodium-ion, solar, foam, aluminium graphite, sand and even human skin. Many of these have the advantage of being either safer or more abundant than lithium, the production of which is dominated by a handful of companies.

However, research in these technologies largely remains in the labs with little sign of a full commercialisation on the horizon. Hydrogen fuel cells, first invented in the 1830s, have long been seen as the most viable alternative to lithium batteries. Yet the technology has been held back by high material costs since the 1990s heyday of hydrogen development. There has been some headway in harnessing hydrogen as an alternative power source but the ultimate aim is to use fuel cells to overhaul the transport market. Japan is leading the way with Toyota and Honda both pushing to develop the technology.

Yet it remains a tough task. Intelligent Energy, a UK fuel cell company linked with developing the technology for use in smartphones, was quietly sold in October to one of its investors after admitting that a sales collapse risked leaving shareholders with little, or no, value.

50 ideas to change the world

We asked readers, researchers and FT journalists to submit ideas with the potential to change the world. A panel of judges selected the 50 ideas worth looking at in more detail. This second tranche of 10 ideas (listed below) is about meeting growing needs for energy and resources. The next 10 ideas, looking at ways to change education and information management, will be published on February 5, 2018.

One area where there is a pressing need for battery innovation is in the emerging market for wearable technology. A rigid battery would not work in emerging areas such as smart clothing so academics have been developing more flexible models. Researchers at the University of Manchester in August revealed that they had developed technology using graphene-oxide to create an ink-like substance that can be printed on to fabrics. The ink, which is as flexible as cotton, acts as a solid-state flexible supercapacitor that can rapidly charge electronic components.

Dr Nazmul Karim, a fellow at the National Graphene Institute, said the breakthrough was a significant step in the development of new types of charging. “It will open up possibilities of making an environmental friendly and cost-effective smart e-textile that can store energy and monitor human activity and physiological condition at the same time,” he said.

One Dutch company, meanwhile, has created a sustainable battery using only water and salt. AquaBattery has developed a system that involves brackish water flowing through a stack of membranes to store energy. The first ‘Blue Battery’ pilot project began in November in the Dutch city of Delft to prove that the system, which converts electrical energy into chemical energy, is as scalable as AquaBattery argues.

Mei Nelissen, part of the team that initially worked on the Blue Battery concept, said in a Ted X talk that she was “dancing like we had discovered fire” when it proved the system could work, as it opened up the possibility of solving one of the main conundrums facing the renewable energy industry — storing energy for use when the wind does not blow and the sun does not shine.

That remains the challenge for the battery market. Demand is growing exponentially in the here and now, particularly in the smartphone market where consumers are familiar with ‘red zone panic’ when their handset runs out of power.

The Blue Battery won the ‘circular economy’ award from Accenture in October but the system remains a long way off commercialisation.

Paul Lee, head of technology, media and telecoms research at Deloitte, says he does not expect change any time soon. “Over the next five years, lithium-ion is likely to remain the basis of almost all batteries used in smartphones. At present there appear to be no battery technologies on the horizon that have evolved sufficiently to be tested and factored into supply chains that could displace lithium ion.”

Apple has acquired a technology startup named Spectral Edge, and in doing so, has given us a hint at what it may be working on for future versions of the iPhone’s camera. Apple is known for being secretive regarding its company acquisitions, and this only became known when Apple’s corporate lawyer was named as a director of the company, and that Apple had taken control of the firm.

What does Spectral Edge offer Apple? The company’s website is no longer accessible, but information about the firm can still be found on the website of the business park where its offices are located. It states Spectral Edge is a “cutting edge image-processing” company, which uses artificial intelligence and deep learning to enhance photos.

“We can reveal more of the color, detail, and clarity in a scene,” the blurb says, saying, “The smarter the processing the more the image reveals the richness of the moment. It is embedded real-time technology.”

In other words, Spectral Edge’s technology makes photos look brighter, more colorful, and with more detail when you take them, not after adding a filter. However, the company’s technology can be added into a device through software or hardware, according to Bloomberg, in its story revealing the acquisition.

While this doesn’t tell us much about Apple’s future plans for the iPhone’s camera — all manufacturers are using computational photography to improve shots, after all — an interview with Spectral Edge in 2016 tells us a little more. The technique involves using data collected from multiple images along with an infrared photo to generate its final photo, because infrared can penetrate through misty, or hazy conditions more effectively than visible light.

Spectral Edge then uses its special blend of A.I. and deep learning to put it all together into a great-looking final photo. It’s likely something you won’t need to activate in the camera itself. As we have come to expect from Apple, it will “just work,” at the right time. Apple may also be able to quickly integrate the enhancements into the 2020 or 2021 iPhone. While Bloomberg’s report says the feature doesn’t need new hardware, Spectral Edge has said the camera will require an infrared sensor in the past.

Apple has been experimenting with HDR-style enhancements for some time, and Spectral Edge’s tech seems to be a continuation of this. Most iPhone owners will be familiar with Smart HDR, but in the iPhone 11 and iOS 13.2, you can also try out Apple’s Deep Fusion feature, which kicks into action automatically when conditions are right. Spectral Edge’s tech, or whatever Apple ends up calling it, may next be seen when it’s introduced as a new feature inside the iPhone 12 or iPhone 13’s camera.