Trough battery spaces between the plates (the troughs) were filled with dilute sulfuric acid. So long as the box was not knocked about, there was no risk of electrolyte spillage. Trough battery The trough battery was a variant of Alessandro Volta's Voltaic Pile and was invented by William Cruickshank c. 1800. Volta's battery consisted of brine-soaked pieces of cloth sandwiched between zinc and copper discs, piled in a stack. This resulted in electrolyte leakage as the weight of the discs squeezed the electrolyte out of the cloth. Cruickshank solved this problem by laying the battery on its side in a rectangular box.
Electric vehicle battery The study concludes that battery costs are on a trajectory to make electric vehicles without government subsidies as affordable as internal combustion engine cars in most countries by 2022. BNEF projects that by 2040, long-range electric cars will cost less than expressed in 2016 dollars. BNEF expects electric car battery costs to be well below per kWh by 2030, and to fall further thereafter as new chemistries become available. In 2010, battery professor Poul Norby stated that he believed that lithium batteries will need to double their specific energy and bring down the price from $500 (2010) to $100 per