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> that commercial cells are <5 years away. More likely 10+ years That has been the conclusion of hundreds of these battery technology stories. We still haven't

> that commercial cells are <5 years away. More likely 10+ years That has been the conclusion of hundreds of these battery technology stories. We still haven't seen one these to work out yet in the past 20 years.

hwillis 9y ago
I assure you, they do regularly. A123 is the most well known example, but the vast majority of new developments don't involve a new company being formed. Making batteries is hard and few researchers want to build companies. Instead these developments quietly slip into commercial formulations as continuous, incremental improvements. There's certainly an unending flood of hyped up articles about new experiments, but all of those have some kind of caveat that's glossed over. Cost, manufacturability, or performance. One is always missing. They're usually pop articles or university releases that misunderstand, misquote and play up the papers involved. This is a release from a private company that hits all three of the important targets. Those are pretty reliable, normally. Flow batteries are an exception, but that's because the professor behind that is way overenthusiastic about them and needs large-scale funding. He's kind of notorious for overpromising; I remember a story by a student under him who used his calculations to derive the scale at which flow batteries became economical and found it was an order of magnitude bigger than a power plant. The professor himself had set up those equations but never actually done them to figure out how big the battery needed to be. Leydenjar comes off as very conservative in this release. They're announcing an insane improvement, literally decades ahead of when it was expected. Most people would have announced this in coin cells but they waited until they had developed a mass production machine and tested it, and they seem to have replicated those results. Even if this costs 3x more than normal batteries there will be huge demand for it. The battery in an iphone costs $3. Apple wouldn't even blink if a 50% better battery cost $60. These guys are saying that they pretty much have a product already. Pouch cells make up the majority of batteries that aren't in laptops, teslas or power tools. They've got a manufacturing machine BUILT already and appear to expect a high cycle life. I'm pretty inclined to believe them if they say they can make these affordably.
- hamandcheese 9y ago
  > Apple wouldn't even blink if a 50% better battery cost $60. Apple seems content to merely maintain the status quo of barely a days battery life. I would not expect them to lead the way on this front.
  - hwillis 9y ago
    Justification: Apple would very much like to avoid a Samsung-level PR catastrophe. That's a pretty good reason to avoid pushing the envelope right there. They also have their battery life tuned to where they like it wrt the rest of the internals, but if you get a free upgrade in capacity, I doubt there's too much more they could do with the extra space. You're right that they would probably try to figure something out though.
    - user5994461 9y ago
      They also need high volume guaranteed before they can put any part in an iPhone and they probably want it to be tested enough to not explode in the user pocket. It's challenging to achieve for a new part. It's like there is money for much better and much more expensive... but it doesn't come for free.
  - mikeash 9y ago
    Apple loves to make their devices as thin and light as possible. That's why they maintain that status quo: they make their batteries only as big as they need to be to last a day. If this technology improved capacity by 50%, that means Apple could shrink their batteries by a third while still hitting that target, which they'd jump on. (Personally I really wish they'd have a model with a much larger battery, because "lasts one day" really means "usually lasts one day but it depends on how you use it so you can't really count on it." But they won't.)
- dzhiurgis 9y ago
  Aren't Redflow (awful name, btw) batteries commercially available for home storage?
- 9y ago

hwillis 9y ago

I assure you, they do regularly. A123 is the most well known example, but the vast majority of new developments don't involve a new company being formed. Making batteries is hard and few researchers want to build companies. Instead these developments quietly slip into commercial formulations as continuous, incremental improvements. There's certainly an unending flood of hyped up articles about new experiments, but all of those have some kind of caveat that's glossed over. Cost, manufacturability, or performance. One is always missing. They're usually pop articles or university releases that misunderstand, misquote and play up the papers involved. This is a release from a private company that hits all three of the important targets. Those are pretty reliable, normally. Flow batteries are an exception, but that's because the professor behind that is way overenthusiastic about them and needs large-scale funding. He's kind of notorious for overpromising; I remember a story by a student under him who used his calculations to derive the scale at which flow batteries became economical and found it was an order of magnitude bigger than a power plant. The professor himself had set up those equations but never actually done them to figure out how big the battery needed to be. Leydenjar comes off as very conservative in this release. They're announcing an insane improvement, literally decades ahead of when it was expected. Most people would have announced this in coin cells but they waited until they had developed a mass production machine and tested it, and they seem to have replicated those results. Even if this costs 3x more than normal batteries there will be huge demand for it. The battery in an iphone costs $3. Apple wouldn't even blink if a 50% better battery cost $60. These guys are saying that they pretty much have a product already. Pouch cells make up the majority of batteries that aren't in laptops, teslas or power tools. They've got a manufacturing machine BUILT already and appear to expect a high cycle life. I'm pretty inclined to believe them if they say they can make these affordably.

hamandcheese 9y ago
> Apple wouldn't even blink if a 50% better battery cost $60. Apple seems content to merely maintain the status quo of barely a days battery life. I would not expect them to lead the way on this front.
- hwillis 9y ago
  Justification: Apple would very much like to avoid a Samsung-level PR catastrophe. That's a pretty good reason to avoid pushing the envelope right there. They also have their battery life tuned to where they like it wrt the rest of the internals, but if you get a free upgrade in capacity, I doubt there's too much more they could do with the extra space. You're right that they would probably try to figure something out though.
  - user5994461 9y ago
    They also need high volume guaranteed before they can put any part in an iPhone and they probably want it to be tested enough to not explode in the user pocket. It's challenging to achieve for a new part. It's like there is money for much better and much more expensive... but it doesn't come for free.
- mikeash 9y ago
  Apple loves to make their devices as thin and light as possible. That's why they maintain that status quo: they make their batteries only as big as they need to be to last a day. If this technology improved capacity by 50%, that means Apple could shrink their batteries by a third while still hitting that target, which they'd jump on. (Personally I really wish they'd have a model with a much larger battery, because "lasts one day" really means "usually lasts one day but it depends on how you use it so you can't really count on it." But they won't.)
dzhiurgis 9y ago
Aren't Redflow (awful name, btw) batteries commercially available for home storage?
9y ago