Earlier his summer, Tesla founder Elon Musk once again played the futurist wizard and announced he had eclipsed the battery technology used in his all-electric Tesla Model S sedan. He told the media that the new technology he’s banking on, graphene, can nearly double the 265-mile-range of this breakthrough car.

Beyond powering a car that could drive between Chicago and Kansas City on a single charge, graphene batteries should take only a few minutes to charge at a solar charging station, which should make battery-powered vehicles finally practical for most drivers.

But Musk is not talking about putting graphene batteries in his cars years down the road. He says Tesla will add the technology “quite soon,” perhaps shortly after the upstart car company opens its new "gigafactory" in Nevada.

The technology Tesla is banking on to get a 500-plus range in its cars is a not a new idea. It’s a World War II-era concept that was recently actualized by two scientists in Great Britain, Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov, who were awarded a Nobel Prize for their work.