3 ms·

Research Vs Reality are quite often decades behind in physical world.

• jillesvangurp 4y ago
  Easy to forget that most car enthusiasts thought that Elon Musk was a lunatic that was obviously going to fail about a decade ago. And now he's basically dominating the car industry. Lithium batteries did not exist until the nineties and did not get practical for use in cars until about 15 years ago. Research on solid state batteries has been ongoing since then. E.g. Quantumscape founded in 2010. and is planning to start small scale production next year. We'll see how successful they are of course. You are right that it takes quite long to take technology into production. But the counter argument is that there are a few decades behind us with stuff that is now slowly trickling into the market. Double the energy sounds amazing. Until you ask the question "double of what". Double of what's available in the market right now (450 wh/kg, Amprius sells these in low volumes) would be 900 wh/kg. That's perhaps not what they mean. The article is infuriatingly hand wavy on what is being compared to what. Or maybe they do. Hard to tell.
  • solarkraft 4y ago
    You're not wrong, but these articles keep selling it like the market introduction is just around the corner. It never is. They never mention that the battery almost always a huge downside making it inviable for most applications. So I (and probably many others) have grown disillusioned of news around battery technology. Wake me up when pre-production units reach independent testers. I don't care enough about this stuff to follow the dozens of leads that appear what feels like every week but never go anywhere.
  • panick21_ 4y ago
    Solid state (actually we talking about lithium metal anodes) have been researched literally since 70s.