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Disrupting lithium for batteries is like disrupting silicon for transistors - sure there are niches and areas where other things, like silicon carbide or galliu
by Torkel 3y ago
Disrupting lithium for batteries is like disrupting silicon for transistors - sure there are niches and areas where other things, like silicon carbide or gallium can be used! But to any one trying to pour money into something competing with the trillions of dollars invested into the existing techniques I say: good luck with that.
- philipkglass 3y agoThe article actually says that lithium batteries aren't going away any time soon. The "disruptions" the inventor calls for are more about how lithium ion batteries are made, in particular: - Reducing energy inputs for manufacturing - Eliminating cobalt from cathodes (largely achieved already, depending on what performance characteristics the application can live with) - Using clean energy while mining for battery materials, and ensuring that there are regional supply chains around the world - Expanding battery recycling These sound more incremental than truly disruptive to me, but mining and heavy manufacturing change on a much slower cadence than microchips and software. So maybe these changes would be disruptive in context.
- acyou 3y agoLithium is great, the low atomic mass of 4 is close to as good as you can get. They haven't invested trillions, the lithium ion technology is in a relatively young and poorly optimized state and is similar to the state of the art 40 years ago. You are right, disruption isn't the correct word. Investment, incremental improvement and niche applications are where we see most progress. Other chemistries are not seeming particularly promising for mobile, lightweight applications.
- _hypx 3y agoQuoting what I said elsewhere: > It's bizarre how people refuse to accept that hydrogen fuel cells are technically batteries and have absurdly high energy densities. And if pressed, you usually hear some excuse like poor efficiencies, as if that isn't a powerful justification for pouring billions of dollars into the problem.
- stetrain 3y agoThey've had billions poured in, and have been in development for longer than the modern li-ion + AC motor electric car. And yet the cars are more expensive, the refilling stations are expensive to build and only exist in limited geographic regions, the cost to refuel is high, and we don't have infrastructure to provide clean hydrogen in volume to filling stations. Sure these are solvable problems. But at some point if we want it to actually exist it has to actually be built instead of being a California and Japan toy project.
- _hypx 3y agoThen why not pour billions more? We are talking about the potential end of the world, and yet we also proclaim that this cannot motivate us to spend an amount of money that is a tiny fraction of what we spend on military hardware.
- stetrain 3y agoHow much should we spend on Hydrogen vs EVs? How many years and how many billions to create a device the size of a refrigerator that can connect to grid power and refill Hydrogen cars all day long? We have had this for EVs for a decade. Toyota, Hyundai, GM, and others have been putting money in since at least the 90s. Why haven’t they been able to create a compelling product and bring it to market? If hydrogen is just a battery, and someone wants to create an EV that happens to use Hydrogen as the battery, and finds a way to charge that battery off of an AC or DC grid connection, then it can use any of the EV infrastructure we are building today. None of that infrastructure is li-ion specific. It’s for batteries that charge from grid power.
- _hypx 3y ago> How much should we spend on Hydrogen vs EVs? You are aware of what is at stake here? Not even multiple trillions of dollar is a number too high to be unjustified. Anything less than $1 trillion should not even qualify as a serious argument against it.