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FWIW Sony sued BYD for patent infringement in Japanese courts and lost. Sanyo sued BYD in US courts and settled mostly on the side of BYD. BYD also managed to i

FWIW Sony sued BYD for patent infringement in Japanese courts and lost. Sanyo sued BYD in US courts and settled mostly on the side of BYD. BYD also managed to invalidate a Panasonic patents. It seems to me that China bet on LFP, the West bet on Li-ion, and China's bet is pretty successful. You'd be right to say that patents limited LFP in the West, but generally Japanese/Korean firms seemed relatively uninterested in the tech. LFP was very much under-developped until recently and there was a lot of path-dependence and a lot of bets on Li-ion outside of China.

xxs 5y ago
LiFePO4 has lower energy density and it's way more durable. Both properties go against the throw-away culture. (Hand held) Tool industry thrives on selling battery packs - every single brand has its own battery lock-in to boot as well. Phones often get disposed once their battery capacity diminishes.
- jacquesm 5y ago
  High time for some regulation here, if we can standardize charger plugs then we can standardize battery packs, the amount of waste on account of all this purposeful incompatibility is staggering. All it would take is an agreed upon form factor, charger and available voltages (say: 18, 36, 48 or the nearest equivalent) and we'd save many, many tons of hard to recycle materials every year. Bonus points if there would be a mandatory way to replace the individual cells so that only they and not the pack would have to be replaced when and if the cells wear out.
  - hyperpallium2 5y ago
    The only reason I've stopped using a phone is the battery. I agree regulation is the answer - and becoming an easier argument as phone improvements slow. Meanwhile, it seems it shouldn't be too hard to make a universal adapter (provided you can access the battery).
- gruez 5y ago
  You're implying that there's some sort of conspiracy to keep LiFePO4 out, because it goes against "throw-away culture". If that's true, why aren't we stuck using NiCd batteries today? Surely a battery with memory effects[1] would be even better for "throw-away culture" than lithium batteries than can be arbitrarily charged/discharged for a few hundred cycles? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nickel%E2%80%93cadmium_battery#Memory_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nickel%E2%80%93cadmium_battery...
  - xxs 5y ago
    You dismissed the part where the energy density/capacity/current draw is way better of Li-Ion compared to NiCd or even NiMh. Needless to say that cadmium is toxic and the use of NiCd battery is heavily restricted in the EU.
RNCTX 5y ago
> You'd be right to say that patents limited LFP in the West, but generally Japanese/Korean firms seemed relatively uninterested in the tech. Because of the patents. Japan and South Korea are US colonies basically.
- sudosysgen 5y ago
  Eh, not really. It's complicated. For example, one of the major IP holders for LiFePO4 batteries is Hydro-Québec, which actually had it's own EV program in the 90s, but for political reasons mostly it was dropped (can't have a public company compete against the private sector without businesses getting unhappy). So there was actually interest to mass manufacture these batteries, and just like China it was by state companies, it's just that we shied away from that economic model. Meanwhile private companies had a choice, either they would go with Li-ion which was also patent encumbered but was very mature, or LiFePO4 which was patent encumbered and very immature, so private industry largely went with Li-ion, with the exception of A123, but even without paying any royalties (they sold them without paying royalties for a fair while) they are 10x more expensive than the Chinese ones.

xxs 5y ago

LiFePO4 has lower energy density and it's way more durable. Both properties go against the throw-away culture. (Hand held) Tool industry thrives on selling battery packs - every single brand has its own battery lock-in to boot as well. Phones often get disposed once their battery capacity diminishes.

jacquesm 5y ago
High time for some regulation here, if we can standardize charger plugs then we can standardize battery packs, the amount of waste on account of all this purposeful incompatibility is staggering. All it would take is an agreed upon form factor, charger and available voltages (say: 18, 36, 48 or the nearest equivalent) and we'd save many, many tons of hard to recycle materials every year. Bonus points if there would be a mandatory way to replace the individual cells so that only they and not the pack would have to be replaced when and if the cells wear out.
- hyperpallium2 5y ago
  The only reason I've stopped using a phone is the battery. I agree regulation is the answer - and becoming an easier argument as phone improvements slow. Meanwhile, it seems it shouldn't be too hard to make a universal adapter (provided you can access the battery).
gruez 5y ago
You're implying that there's some sort of conspiracy to keep LiFePO4 out, because it goes against "throw-away culture". If that's true, why aren't we stuck using NiCd batteries today? Surely a battery with memory effects[1] would be even better for "throw-away culture" than lithium batteries than can be arbitrarily charged/discharged for a few hundred cycles? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nickel%E2%80%93cadmium_battery#Memory_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nickel%E2%80%93cadmium_battery...
- xxs 5y ago
  You dismissed the part where the energy density/capacity/current draw is way better of Li-Ion compared to NiCd or even NiMh. Needless to say that cadmium is toxic and the use of NiCd battery is heavily restricted in the EU.

RNCTX 5y ago

> You'd be right to say that patents limited LFP in the West, but generally Japanese/Korean firms seemed relatively uninterested in the tech. Because of the patents. Japan and South Korea are US colonies basically.

sudosysgen 5y ago
Eh, not really. It's complicated. For example, one of the major IP holders for LiFePO4 batteries is Hydro-Québec, which actually had it's own EV program in the 90s, but for political reasons mostly it was dropped (can't have a public company compete against the private sector without businesses getting unhappy). So there was actually interest to mass manufacture these batteries, and just like China it was by state companies, it's just that we shied away from that economic model. Meanwhile private companies had a choice, either they would go with Li-ion which was also patent encumbered but was very mature, or LiFePO4 which was patent encumbered and very immature, so private industry largely went with Li-ion, with the exception of A123, but even without paying any royalties (they sold them without paying royalties for a fair while) they are 10x more expensive than the Chinese ones.