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---------------------------------------------------------------- Dear battery technology claimant, Thank you for your submission of proposed new revolutionary
by TwoBit 6y ago
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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.
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- 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