[ASSURAS] Range anxiety, that fear of EV batteries running out of juice while you're on the road. Well, there's one well-known company you might not expect to be involved in electric vehicles and it's developing new battery technology that could eliminate range anxiety. That innovation is the first in a new segment we're introducing on innovations and innovators in clean energy technology. So here's Josh Zepps on the development of a super-long-range car battery and the company leading the charge.

[ZEPPS] It tells you something about how fast electric vehicle technology is moving that I'm driving to report on the future of electric cars and this is the first time I've ever even driven one. It also tells you something about how fast electric vehicle technology is moving that to get from my hotel to the interview 45 miles away and back, I need to get a ride with my camera operator, because the fully charged battery won't make it.

To gaze into the future of a battery that won't quit, I drove to IBM and its Almaden Research Center in San Jose, California, to meet nuclear physicist Winfried Wilcke.

[WILCKE] There's been a long history of IBM doing completely new things, like building computers was very far away from the original things they did, like punch cards, cheese slicers, and...

[ZEPPS] The famed IBM cheese slicer.

[WILCKE] Precisely.

[ZEPPS] In addition to the cheese slicer, IBM invented the floppy disk, the personal computer, the barcode, and... world's first hard drive. It's impressive. You should have seen the size of the laptop. IBM has created a lot of things in its time. And now...

[WILCKE] Most people on the planet want to own a car. I think that's not going to change.

[ZEPPS] Can they?

[WILCKE] [Laughs] Not if we continue with oil.

[ZEPPS] So Wilcke is working on a battery he hopes could be 10 times more energy dense than the best batteries today and could power a car for 500 miles on a single charge. Let's put that in perspective. According to the EPA, Nissan's all-electric car, the LEAF, has a range of 73 miles. So if you live, say, in Detroit, a single charge will get you... to Flint. But a 500-mile battery would get you to Toledo, Ohio, and on to Cleveland, then Pittsburgh, and just about to Washington, D.C., without having to stop once to plug it in.

Using electricity instead of gasoline could cut U.S. oil consumption and make America less dependent on imported energy. So if the 500-mile battery succeeds -- and that is still a big "if" -- how would the technology actually work? Let's start with conventional lithium-ion batteries, the kind used in cell phones, laptops, and today's electric cars. These batteries contain lithium and include heavy metal oxides like cobalt oxide or manganese oxide, which makes them bulky and heavy. Lithium shuttles between a graphite anode and a metal oxide cathode as the battery is charged or discharged.

A lithium air battery is different because it doesn't carry around all the chemicals it needs to work. Instead, when it releases electricity, the battery borrows oxygen from the surrounding air to form lithium oxide. And when the battery is plugged in for recharging, it gives that oxygen back. That saves both space and mass, meaning a lighter battery that can store much more energy per pound.

[SALLY SWANSON] The reason we're using lithium -- it's a metal that is very, very light.

[ZEPPS] Sally Swanson is a researcher on the IBM 500 team. One of the project's big challenges is working with a metal as volatile as lithium.

[SWANSON] It reacts with the nitrogen in the air in the presence of water. It reacts with CO2 in the air. And, of course, it reacts with oxygen, which is what we're going to use.

[ZEPPS] And the air is pretty much CO2 and oxygen and nitrogen. Are you saying it reacts with everything?

[SWANSON] Yeah, we have a challenge, and we're going to have to figure out a way to get those things away from our batteries.

[ZEPPS] Swanson demonstrates what happens to lithium when it gets wet.

So this is just water?

[SWANSON] This is just water.

[ZEPPS] Whoa! What gas is that coming off?

[SWANSON] That is hydrogen.

[ZEPPS] And it's just gone.

[SWANSON] And it's gone.

[ZEPPS] Okay, so you don't want that happening.

[SWANSON] No. Well, you notice, there wasn't a flame, so that's good.

[ZEPPS] So your car won't explode, it just won't work.

The second way in which the lithium air gets its weight down is by ditching something that other batteries have -- heavy metal oxide cathodes. Instead, the IBM team is trying to nanoengineer a super-lightweight carbon cathode.

Now it's time for the IBM Cookie Bake-off.

Luckily for the team, when it comes to designing microscopic things, there's more than a little institutional experience at the company that developed the microchip.

Why is it necessary to nanoengineer the carbon?

[SWANSON] Well, surface area, we've found, has been critical. We've look at a lot of different carbons, and one of the things that we've found is that if we have a high-surface-area carbon, then we can get much more capacity.

[ZEPPS] Winfried Wilcke is the first to admit the lithium air project is a complicated gamble, but the prospect of an electric car engine with the same size, weight, price, range, and performance of a gasoline engine is a prize too big to resist.

[WILCKE] So a high-tech company really should, has an obligation, really, to help the environment and the world.

[ZEPPS] So do you see what you're doing as a larger mission than just a job?

[WILCKE] Absolutely, yes.

[ZEPPS] If Wilcke's bet pays off, then in 50 years' time, the idea of IBM as a computer company might be just as out-of-date as the idea of IBM as a cheese slicer company is today. In San Jose, California, Josh Zepps, "energyNOW!"

[ASSURAS] IBM hopes to start commercial production of the long-range battery by 2020, and Big Blue just gained another title. Newsweek named it the greenest company in America. Rounding out the top five... Hewlett-Packard, Sprint Nextel, Baxter Healthcare, and Dell.