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"World's highest-capacity" solid-state battery developed in Japan
- TwoBit 6y ago---------------------------------------------------------------- Dear battery technology claimant, Thank you for your submission of proposed new revolutionary battery technology. Your new technology claims to be superior to existing lithium-ion technology is is just around the corner from taking over the world. Unfortunately your technology will likely fail, because: [ ] it is impractical to manufacture at scale. [x] it will be too expensive for users. [ ] it suffers from too few recharge cycles. [ ] it is incapable of delivering current at sufficient levels. [ ] it lacks thermal stability at low or high temperatures. [x] it lacks the energy density to make it sufficiently portable. [ ] it has too short of a lifetime. [ ] its charge rate is too slow. [ ] its materials are too toxic. [ ] it is too likely to catch fire or explode. [ ] it is too minimal of a step forward for anybody to care. [ ] this was already done 20 years ago and didn't work then. [x] by this time it ships li-ion advances will match it. [ ] your claims are lies. ----------------------------------------------------------------
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- Escapado 6y agoThis made me chuckle. Is there a table anywhere with a lot of promising contenders as columns and those criteria as rows (or that transposed)?
- raverbashing 6y agoAs history has shown w.r.t spam, the stuff eventually gets sorted out I'm sure people could have come with similar criticism for li-ion batteries, before them took over
- evgen 6y agoNot only that, if this battery had been available first then the attack on someone pushing Li-ion would have been: [x] it lacks thermal stability at low or high temperatures. [x] it is too likely to catch fire or explode. Too many people think Li-ion is magic, when it just happens to occupy a particular niche of characteristics that let it get a good early jump in the race for portable power. Nothing about the chemistry involved mandates it remain in a position of primacy.
- sambe 6y agoYes but Li-ion was first, so that's what you now have to beat (including the ways in which world has adapted/overcome its shortfalls).
- evgen 6y agoAre you kidding me? The 'first' was the Voltaic pile, copper and zinc. The first practical rechargeable was lead-acid. Li-ion is a relative newcomer, but had a sufficient power density to lead to a lot of applications which in turn led to a lot of research on improving Li-ion in a virtuous circle. We are pushing the limits of Li-ion and know that is sucks for some environments or application requirements, which is why people research alternatives. This particular alternative is useful in some very specific niches in which Li-ion will _never_ be competitive.
- gnatman 6y agoI believe sambe was using “first” in the same way you did, i.e. first of the two
- rasz 6y agoCould it tho? First commercial liion batteries were developed by Sony in 1991 according to Wiki. By 1996 Toshiba was already shipping Libretto palmtops with 1200mAh 17670 cells. Today, in 2021 you cant go better than 3x this capacity in same/similar form factor.
- evgen 6y agoYet another example of a glib response ignoring the actual facts in the article and ironic to boot given that lithium-ion suffers from several of the flaws listed. The funny thing is, none of the claims you make are correct and you miss the point where this tech is specifically designed to cover areas where Li-ion fails (like high temp and places where having a battery explode into flaming debris is a bad thing.)
- kemiller2002 6y agoI’m just curious, is there any time when having a battery explode into flaming debris a good thing? :)
- hackerbabz 6y agoA little extra kick during staging for Rocketlab :)
- m_mueller 6y agoNot if they wanna reuse though. ;)
- notretarded 6y agoIt was funny tho.
- the_duke 6y agoHumour is rarely appreciated here, but I found this funny and on point. Battery technology announcements are always extremely over hyped. Mostly by media and PR departments rather than actual scientific or domain specific outlets. Advancements happen, but even if they are technically and commercially viable, it takes years until anything becomes actually useful.
- tonyedgecombe 6y agoI found it tedious. Pretty much every post about advancements in battery technology on HN have a similarly cynical post at the top. I wondered what this one would be before I clicked on the comments link.
- elihu 6y agoalso, dear technology journalist: [x] your description uses milliamp hours and milliamps per hour interchangeably [x] milliamp hours is a useless metric when we don't know how big/heavy said battery is [x] milliamp hours is a useless metric when we don't know the battery's voltage
- jsight 6y agoAt least it doesn't use milliamp hours per hour as a unit. I'm pretty sure one of the cars actually does that with KW (Kwh/hr).
- djrogers 6y agoThat seems like a reasonable unit to use when measuring charge rate though…
- NobodyNada 6y agoA kilowatt-hour is the total amount of energy transferred over the course of an hour at a rate of one kilowatt, so "kilowatt-hours per hour" is just "kilowatts".
- elihu 6y agoI can sort of see how that's justified when advertising to people who don't really understand electrical units. The battery capacity is listed in kilowatt hours. If you don't really understand what a kilowatt is but you know the battery has a capacity of 60 kilowatt hours, and the charger charges at 10 kilowatt hours per hour, then it'll charge in about 6 hours. Still, it does make me cringe a little.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- buran77 6y agoSure it's a funny checklist but not very useful since it can be used to dismiss anything. Coal can generate a lot of electricity even in the dark or in the gentlest of breezes yet we still develop tech for solar or wind power.
- ThomPete 6y agoas it should be. Energy is about hard sciences, not technology, and so progress is very unlikely and thus slow, much slower than the claims about breakthroughs.
- asah 6y agothis is amazing, thank you.
- piettes 6y agoFrom the title > ... applications in industrial machinery and space In the first line > ... making it a candidate for use in satellites and industrial machinery. So 2/3 of your points don't really make sense
- hackeraccount 6y agoNice. It's a common enough joke that could have been a dog but enough effort was put in to make it a real winner. Thanks.
- kazinator 6y agoIs that hosted somewhere, or did you make it up just for this comment? It seems inspired by this classic: https://craphound.com/spamsolutions.txt https://craphound.com/spamsolutions.txt
- waterhouse 6y agoLooks to have come from here (Dec 08 2020, apparently): https://pedriana.wordpress.com/2020/12/08/new-battery-technology-rejection-form/ https://pedriana.wordpress.com/2020/12/08/new-battery-techno...
- Dirlewanger 6y agoLi-ion batteries have been the same for like 40 years, they've just gotten smaller.
- ffggvv 6y ago[x] it lacks the energy density to make it sufficiently portable. that only matters if you want a portable battery. there are alot of uses where it doesnt need to be portable at all. thats only for electric cars. same with crash resistance etc, and even affordability for average users. it literally says "satellites and industrial machinery." in the article, neither of which needs to be very cheap or portable. especially because other batteries arent good under extreme temps
- 1000mA 6y agoWhy in the article do they state the capacity as 1,000mA instead of just 1A?
- skrebbel 6y agoI'm curious why you made a new HN account just to write that comment.
- dagw 6y agoSome people seem to create a new account for each story they comment on so they or their comments can't be 'tracked' between stories.
- lightgreen 6y agoOr not to get their karma trashed because of naive questions.
- Daho0n 6y agoWhat does karma buy?
- lightgreen 6y agoAbility to downvote others
- Daho0n 6y agoSo, the ability to do work for free for YC?
- rswail 6y agoA better reincarnation next time around...
- 1000mA 6y ago
- tromp 6y ago> Those used in smartphones offer a capacity of thousands of milliampere per hour. Capacity is measured as a product of current and time, not current per time.
- unishark 6y agoI guess the inclusion of "per" there was a typo? They used the correct units earlier in the article.
- mathfailure 6y agoWhich probably means that the journalist doesn't which one is correct. Why even bother writing an article of such quality?
- jsight 6y agoIf the mistake only happened once, its just as likely to be an "improvement" from the editor who actually doesn't know why one is correct.
- harg 6y agoOr, even better, the product of Watts and time (Watt-hours). mA-hours doesn't mean much if you don't know the battery's voltage.
- ginko 6y agoOr just use the actual SI unit Joule
- adtac 6y agoIt's not practical. Just like how you won't measure the distance between two cities in metres.
- mathfailure 6y ago
- leoedin 6y agoWithout talking in terms of energy (Watt.hours) it's impossible to compare with existing batteries. mAh is only useful when comparing the same battery cell chemistry, as the voltage is the same. This battery could be lower or higher voltage - making 1000mAh more or less energy than an equivalent existing 1000mAh battery.
- smiley1437 6y agoA photo in the press release shows a battery with 3.65v stamped on it, if that helps
- mastax 6y agoThe voltage changes over the discharge cycle so watts are still the preferred unit.
- twhb 6y agoDoes anybody know the voltage, size, and weight? Without those numbers, “1,000 mAh” is meaningless. A single AAA battery is rated the same, and if you managed to find an even smaller battery, you could “invent” a 1,000 mAh battery out of it by duct taping a few together.
- smiley1437 6y agoLooks like it's 3.65 volts, there's a picture of the battery with the voltage stamped on it. But no indication of size and weight.
- jarenmf 6y agoFrom the company website: "Hitachi Zosen is promoting development into an all-solid-state lithium ion battery that is anticipated as a post-lithium ion battery applicable to next-generation cars. We have developed an original manufacturing method that has successfully created an all-solid-state battery without the mechanical pressure conventionally used during charging and discharging. Our battery maintains a high level of safety and has a wide operating temperature range of -40℃ to 100℃. It can work under environments where current lithium ion batteries cannot, and its application to new fields and markets is expected." https://www.hitachizosen.co.jp/english/technology/hitz-report/2018h30_11/index.html#report08 https://www.hitachizosen.co.jp/english/technology/hitz-repor...
- Tade0 6y agoWe have developed an original manufacturing method that has successfully created an all-solid-state battery without the mechanical pressure conventionally used during charging and discharging. This is my litmus test for new battery technology. If they have a manufacturing process and it's already implemented then their proposition can(but doesn't necessarily have to ) be treated seriously. Let's see how much capacity can be squeezed out of this. I don't suppose it's too impressive though - solid state batteries only recently started visibly improving in all the interesting parameters.
- noworld 6y agoIn other news: Elon Musk buys Japan.
- G3rn0ti 6y agoBTW: Whatever happened to those fuel cell proposals promising to replace laptop batteries altogether? I remember pictures of laptops running on working prototypes claiming to achieve 10 hours run time on a single "charge" 10 years ago. EDIT: Actually that's 17 years ago: https://www.techradar.com/news/world-of-tech/whatever-happened-to-mobile-fuel-cells-718317 https://www.techradar.com/news/world-of-tech/whatever-happen...
- dale_glass 6y agoLinus Tech Tips looked at a fuel cell USB supply a few years ago. It sucked horribly, and barely produced any power: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-yLqwGS2dA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-yLqwGS2dA Besides that, we can have 10 hours from a battery quite easily right now. If you need more, there are external batteries powerful enough to power a laptop over USB-PD. And after that you just charge it from any power outlet. It's a known technology, very mature, and doesn't run into any trouble at airports. Hydrogen also either requires constantly buying new cartridges, or acquiring special hardware to fill them. It's just late to the market. At this point the batteries are actually very good and a lot more convenient. There's probably some use case in which one can't have enough batteries, set up a solar panel, or use a generator, but it's got to be a niche.
- mastax 6y agoThat reminds me of mikeselectricstuff's teardown of a Hydrogen fuel cell power bank: https://youtu.be/y48wCuC3KcA https://youtu.be/y48wCuC3KcA An extremely well engineered piece of technology that may have been selling at a loss at $150. Only 26wh at up to 500ma, can't recharge it at home, have to drive to specific stores to pay £6 to swap the cartridge. Just completely impractical.
- dale_glass 6y agoThe one LTT was looking at did have a charger, which seems to have cost somewhere around $420. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vidpQ8jHlI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vidpQ8jHlI But now you're paying a good chunk of cash... for what exactly? The system is bigger than a battery, a lot more expensive, a lot harder to charge, much less powerful, and a lot more complex and delicate.
- tohmasu 6y agoImho it would be nice if this type of article didn't always assume that everyone knows that The One True Voltage™ for battery cells is (just about) 3.7V (in this case 3.65V according to the picture).
- nicoburns 6y agoThis probably isn't the company to produce it, but it does look to me like solid-state lithium batteries are the next step forward in battery technology. Probably hitting mass-market production in at earliest in 2022 as far as I can see. Longer term, my read is that fluorine-ion batteries are the most promising potential generational leap. But that these are only likely to be viable in solid-state form, as fluorine is more dangerous than lithium.
- antattack 6y agoWhat is interesting in this announcement is that Hitachi's solid state battery is so far behind Toyota's solid state batteries to be mass produced in 2021 :) For those who do not know, Toyota and it's battery partners have been announcing solid state batteries 'soon' since ~2010 [1]. [1] https://www.greencarcongress.com/2011/10/toyota-20111019.html https://www.greencarcongress.com/2011/10/toyota-20111019.htm...
- LaserToy 6y agoSend it to Texas
- juancn 6y agoWhat's the capacity per gram, what about by volume? It's too light on details.