George Crabtree has a familiar problem. His phone is charged in the morning, but by 4 p.m. it’s out of juice. “I find it really annoying to see that it’s off and wonder how many calls I’ve missed,” he says. Unlike most of us, though, Mr. Crabtree might be able to do something about it. He directs the Joint Center for Energy Storage Research at Argonne National Laboratory. Argonne is part of a group of labs, universities and companies tasked by a Department of Energy program to design a battery that lasts five times as long and costs one-fifth as much as current batteries—in five years or less. In truth, few people give the Argonne program—or similar quests by other researchers and startups around the world—much chance of succeeding within a few years. Electric-car makers, to cite one example, take four or five years just to evaluate a new […]