Sanyo Electric is the world’s largest Li-ion secondary battery maker. At Eco-Products 2008, Sanyo introduced a street lamp that operates on solar power. The lamp stores power generated when the sun is up, then uses a built in capacitor for illuminating at night. This strategy along with low-power white LEDs is becoming the trend. Sanyo hopes to replace the lead batteries in use with current solar-powered lamps with Li-ion secondary batteries win 2-3 years.

Meanwhile, Fuji Heavy displayed a rechargeable lawn mower that also uses a Li-ion secondary battery module. The lawn mower (disguised as a weed cutter) can be charged in about 60 minutes. It used to take me about six minutes to cut my lawn with a pair of scissors. Seriously! My lawn was that small.

Now we can mow our grass at night and not use any fossil fuels, eh?