4 ms·

JB Straubel, cofounder and former CTO of Tesla, and someone who knows a thing or two about this, has set up a company to solve this problem. Unfortunately I’m

by natch 5y ago

JB Straubel, cofounder and former CTO of Tesla, and someone who knows a thing or two about this, has set up a company to solve this problem. Unfortunately I’m not surprised the article fails to mention him.

DoingIsLearning 5y ago
> has set up a company to solve this problem. It's not a problem, it's in fact a huge business. The negative tone of the comments feels like a an old car salesman trying to sell you a diesel engine instead of an EV. An old EV battery pack is still incredibly valuable both for second hand usage in renewables (An old EV battery is not 'dead' just not performant enough for vehicle use) and recycling materials (Lithium is incredibly difficult to mine).
- npsimons 5y ago
  > The negative tone of the comments feels like a an old car salesman trying to sell you a diesel engine instead of an EV. Considering the top comment when I got here was almost exactly that, I'm not surprised one bit. There's a lot of money to be lost by the FF and ICE industries.
- wolfi1 5y ago
  > Lithium is incredibly difficult to mine Do you have any source for that? My impression was that it is relatively easy to mine but not economical enoguh
  - DoingIsLearning 5y ago
    It is not difficult in the sense of being technically challenging but in the sense that it has very low yields. It doesn't exist naturally in huge concentrations (you can't just get a chunk of Lithium) you either extract it from a huge volume of evaporated salt brine, or you filter through huge amounts of ore to yield something rich in lithium.
- natch 5y ago
  >It's not a problem, it's in fact a huge business Thanks for pointing this out. Pretty important point!
npsimons 5y ago
> Unfortunately I’m not surprised the article fails to mention him. It's a bad article; I'm wondering how it made it to the front page of HN, and I'd be very interested in finding out who funded it (FF and legacy automakers would be my bet).
- natch 5y ago
  Yes I think with the sheer financial scale of the transition to EVs and the resistance from legacy auto and big oil… we are in for an era of manipulative media pieces, agenda-driven science studies, and astroturfing the likes of which the world has never seen. I just wish people were not so gullible.
- dang 5y ago
  Please don't post insinuations of sinister manipulation unless you have evidence. People having different tastes in articles, or different views on electric cars, does not count as evidence. This is a big community with a lot of variance. This is so important that there's an HN guideline specifically about it: "Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix=true&page=0&query=by:dang%20astroturf https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
  - natch 5y ago
    What would your stance be on having HN discussions of such topics as the comments that were submitted to the FCC about net neutrality, which were later found to be fraudulent? I’m trying to make a distinction here between insinuating that sinister manipulation is happening here, and discussing, here, the actual sinister manipulation that, let’s not beat around the bush with insinuations, I’ll just state it directly and factually, does in fact, happen in the world? Is that also off limits? I’m not trying to question your authority here, just wondering about your thoughts on how the internet community can navigate this. You could also take this question as rhetorical… I don’t want to drill into this in the sense of putting you on the spot to reply. It’s just an interesting topic I think that cannot be swept under the rug. And I don’t know that you’re doing that, but I would hate to see this topic be a third rail.

by natch 5y ago

DoingIsLearning 5y ago

> has set up a company to solve this problem. It's not a problem, it's in fact a huge business. The negative tone of the comments feels like a an old car salesman trying to sell you a diesel engine instead of an EV. An old EV battery pack is still incredibly valuable both for second hand usage in renewables (An old EV battery is not 'dead' just not performant enough for vehicle use) and recycling materials (Lithium is incredibly difficult to mine).

npsimons 5y ago
> The negative tone of the comments feels like a an old car salesman trying to sell you a diesel engine instead of an EV. Considering the top comment when I got here was almost exactly that, I'm not surprised one bit. There's a lot of money to be lost by the FF and ICE industries.
wolfi1 5y ago
> Lithium is incredibly difficult to mine Do you have any source for that? My impression was that it is relatively easy to mine but not economical enoguh
- DoingIsLearning 5y ago
  It is not difficult in the sense of being technically challenging but in the sense that it has very low yields. It doesn't exist naturally in huge concentrations (you can't just get a chunk of Lithium) you either extract it from a huge volume of evaporated salt brine, or you filter through huge amounts of ore to yield something rich in lithium.
natch 5y ago
>It's not a problem, it's in fact a huge business Thanks for pointing this out. Pretty important point!

npsimons 5y ago

> Unfortunately I’m not surprised the article fails to mention him. It's a bad article; I'm wondering how it made it to the front page of HN, and I'd be very interested in finding out who funded it (FF and legacy automakers would be my bet).

natch 5y ago
Yes I think with the sheer financial scale of the transition to EVs and the resistance from legacy auto and big oil… we are in for an era of manipulative media pieces, agenda-driven science studies, and astroturfing the likes of which the world has never seen. I just wish people were not so gullible.
dang 5y ago
Please don't post insinuations of sinister manipulation unless you have evidence. People having different tastes in articles, or different views on electric cars, does not count as evidence. This is a big community with a lot of variance. This is so important that there's an HN guideline specifically about it: "Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix=true&page=0&query=by:dang%20astroturf https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
- natch 5y ago
  What would your stance be on having HN discussions of such topics as the comments that were submitted to the FCC about net neutrality, which were later found to be fraudulent? I’m trying to make a distinction here between insinuating that sinister manipulation is happening here, and discussing, here, the actual sinister manipulation that, let’s not beat around the bush with insinuations, I’ll just state it directly and factually, does in fact, happen in the world? Is that also off limits? I’m not trying to question your authority here, just wondering about your thoughts on how the internet community can navigate this. You could also take this question as rhetorical… I don’t want to drill into this in the sense of putting you on the spot to reply. It’s just an interesting topic I think that cannot be swept under the rug. And I don’t know that you’re doing that, but I would hate to see this topic be a third rail.