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CATL has announced a new “condensed” battery with 500 Wh/kg
- simonCGN 3y agoYes yes yes. Another day, another claim of a revolutionary battery.
- stellar563 3y ago[dead]
- AtlasBarfed 3y agoCycles? Operating temp range? Charge speed? Exciting press release, gpt level details
- it_citizen 3y agoI have the same questions. Hopefully gpt-level progress over existing tech :)
- arketyp 3y ago> gpt level details I like this meme.
- rippercushions 3y agoHere's the official press release, but it doesn't have much more info: https://www.catl.com/en/news/6015.html https://www.catl.com/en/news/6015.html
- danans 3y agoAlso, $/Wh
- bagels 3y ago"CATL has announced a new “condensed” battery with 500 Wh/kg which it says will go into mass production this year" This is a lot more credible than most of the battery stories, because CATL is already producing a ton of batteries, lending them some credibility. This is a little under 2x the density of current batteries.
- gibolt 3y agoCurrent mass produced batteries, which tend to hover around 260-300 Wh/kg. Higher density (but still under 500) are available, but in far smaller quantities for a very high cost. The exciting part of this announcement is that if anyone can scale manufacturing, it is them.
- oriel 3y agoReally it is encouraging for advancement areas like this. Reminds me of the "revolutionary battery checklist": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28025930 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28025930 edit: removed the paste of the checklist because of spam.
- dzhiurgis 3y ago“No week goes by without a revolutionary battery technology” - Engadget, circa 2010
- gibolt 3y agoWhile this is true, a tiny start-up with big claims is different from the world's largest battery manufacturer (CATL) already spooling up production with the intent to scale.
- jackmott42 3y agoAnd that is why batteries have become so much better now than they were 20 years ago.
- magila 3y agoEh, not really. Most "battery breakthrough!" press releases are about some new exotic chemistry while most mass produced battery improvements in the last 20 years have come from incremental improvements to existing chemistries and better packaging.
- tppiotrowski 3y ago> offering excellent charge and discharge performance as well as good safety performance. Hopefully not more than 2x the cost...
- SamBam 3y agoMore than 2x the cost might still be worth it for doubling car ranges and potentially making electric flight possible.
- idontwantthis 3y agoWhy does 500wh/kg make electric aircraft possible? 6x less than kerosene. Is that the break even on cost if you can source very cheap electricity? Seems like it would still annihilate the payload/range.
- ralusek 3y agoI assume it's a limit motivated more by how far you can go rather than the cost of fueling/charging. Like, above a certain weight/energy store ratio, it's either too heavy to fly or would just have an incredibly limited range.
- nvy 3y agoSeems like marketing hype to me. An 8-hour transatlantic flight requires something like 600MWhr of energy. That's about 75MW, which is in small nuclear reactor territory.
- kolinko 3y agoCloser to 200MWh - jet engines are ~30% efficient
- rgmerk 3y agoNot every flight is transatlantic. These batteries, if they deliver on the advertised specs and aren’t too expensive should make short-range electric aviation possible. The electric air taxis that Joby and others are working on suddenly have a lot bigger margin to work with, as do electric regional airliners.
- Epa095 3y agoReplacing transatlantic flights is out of the question (for batteries for now). But there exists shorter routes, and according to this list [1] on Wikipedia, the busiest route in the world is 449km long. That's probably also not doable now, but maybe in some years? For the first years it will probably only be a few wierd, short routes in rich countries like Norway with 110% financial support from the state. But when they can safely fly 5-600km there is a actually quite a number of routes with a lot of passengers out there. 1: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_busiest_passenger_air_routes https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_busiest_passenger_ai...
- microjim 3y agoCool! What didn’t occur to me until I learnt it was that you get a multiplicative benefit with energy density when weight is a major factor (air transport, especially) because you need to spend less energy accelerating mass used by the battery itself.
- heywhatupboys 3y ago0,01 % maybe
- nvy 3y agoFor a battery of arbitrary weight you need to spend the same amount of energy accelerating its mass, irrespective of how much energy that battery contains.
- mkaic 3y agoRight, I believe GP's point is that for a given capacity, you now need fewer kilograms of batteries to store it, meaning the percentage of overall capacity used to accelerate the mass of the battery itself goes down.
- buro9 3y agoThe article mentions aircraft multiple times. Once a range is achieved through available energy, reducing weight is a goal. The energy is more useful the less weight you need to move as then you can shave off a bit more weight as less energy was needed. Your car may not need this as much, an aircraft does.
- fock 3y agoand then in Germany right wing/neoliberal politicians run around, make smug faces and tell people: ooooh, we need e-fuels because those combustion engines, they are sooooo good, the chinese are envious and will just copy (yes. for tanks...). During their reign: - solar industry: gone (in the 2000s germany had everything, domestically produced) - wind energy: gone (well, Siemens did it themselves too) - existing domestic electronics production: gone (Siemens had highly automated facilities producing state of the art mainboards...) - in the pandemic masks were bought in China for billions. All the while the automation companies newly taken over by their Chinese joint venture partner were happy to show people how they built those in their chinese factories... They call it responsible, I call it Seppuku... Oh and of course they now want to build nuclear plants after they've shown for the last 30years that we have reached a state of more dysfunctional oligarchy than the Soviet Union ever was (they changed their system! Here the mantra is "There Is No Alternative"). I congratulate the chinese oligarchy for somehow keeping an interest in the physical world and fleecing two continents of 1200 million people for all they built and some more while their people are infighting on idiotic frontlines.
- j16sdiz 3y ago> Oh and of course they now want to build nuclear plants after they've shown for the last 30years that we have reached a state of more dysfunctional oligarchy than the Soviet Union ever was I can't express how much I hate this. In terms of technology and engineering, nuclear is now so mature that it should be used everywhere solar doesn't make sense. Yet, in terms of politics, society and governance, we are still stuck in the state of 1970s. Putting nuclear in their hands is just irresponsible
- jpgvm 3y agoChina is.going to have the largest fleet of nuclear reactors in the world, all within a decade or two. We can bitch and moan all we want about their governance system but when it counts they are always the ones doing the right thing while Western governments hold their dicks and piss into the wind.
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- prai1SE 3y agoI like the headline, specifically aimed at aviation. This might definitely turn some heads. While this is still strong on the marketing with few details, it shows the intent to electrify air travel at some point, which is a good thing IMO. Also might put pressure on SAF, which themselves have a long way to go. Also, this could be interesting already for existing small and/or short range airplanes like Pipistrel‘s training aircraft or Eviation‘s Alice. I don‘t know the energy density of their current batteries, but this could give them a boost very soon.
- anigbrowl 3y agoGood for drones too.
- ur-whale 3y agoNotably missing from the release: - cost? - what new chemicals are involved and what is the environmental impact? - how many cycles can the new battery take? - volume? (density is always shown as weight/mass, it's not the only thing that matters)? - how does it behave under environmental changes (temp / pressure / etc ...)
- acyou 3y agoYes, there are tradeoffs with all of these. We can easily get one or some good looking stats, but to get good results with all of these parameters is the real challenge. The claims about new battery chemistry are rarely farfetched or inaccurate, but we as a society (and especially the reporters) don't do a good job of interpreting the claims, focusing on one promising sounding parameter and neglecting all others. The manufacturers are also not helping by omitting this sort of critically important information that you have highlighted (lying by omission).
- beaned 3y agoHow was this achieved? It seemed like battery energy density improvements were very marginal. I'd expect that this type of jump could only be achieved with a new significant insight, but the article seems to say it's just traditional process done better and newer. That's very vague: > the condensed battery integrates a range of innovative technologies, including the ultra-high energy density cathode materials, innovative anode materials, separators, and manufacturing processes Are these all things that are common knowledge now, and they're just the first ones to slap them all together, and that it's a short matter of time before all battery manufacturers start providing much better density? Or is there something more to it?
- Sugimot0 3y agoIANAE but from what I've seen, there's been a lot of different potentially "game-changing" breakthroughs in energy storage, but the bottleneck lies in manufacturing capabilities. "Undecided with Matt Ferrell" on Youtube has great content on recent energy storage developments.
- mg 3y agoKey numbers: They doubled Wh/kg from about 280 to about 500. I assume that thinking about battery capacity form first principles, the theoretical limit is reached when the charged battery consists of 50% matter and 50% antimatter, right? Then during discharge, the reaction between the two would turn the matter/antimatter into energy. How would that stack up against the 500Wh/kg stated here? Update: Did a bit of googling (Note to my future self: AI was still bad at math in 2023): Looks like 1kg of mass cointains about 25x10^9 Wh. So if the above assumptions are right, we still have 8 orders of magnitude to go. An electric car with an optimal battery could go 100,000,000 times further on a single charge than the current ones.
- budoso 3y agoit’d be quite a bit better
- atleastoptimal 3y agoprobably better
- dojomouse 3y agoNo. That wouldn’t be a battery by any meaningful definition, nor have any similarities in implementation or enabling technology or physics. But it would deliver 24 trillion wh/kg… so by that metric at least we’ve room to progress :-)
- inasio 3y agoRidiculously higher. One gram of matter converted to energy (matter-antimatter annihilation assumed to be 100% efficient) yields, using E = mc^2 and 3.6x10^6 Joules per Kilowatt-hour, 25 million Kilowatt-hours
- asdfman123 3y agoA unit containing matter and antimatter isn’t a battery, it’s a completely different thing altogether. Maybe a slightly closer but still very different example would be a core of weapons grade plutonium. But what you’ve described would be far more powerful than that.
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- lannisterstark 3y agoI swear I've been reading this headline for last 15 years.
- asdfman123 3y agoThat’s because you have: battery performance keeps getting dramatically better.
- sanderjd 3y agoThis one seems pretty different to me, because it is "largest battery manufacturer to start mass producing these this year" rather than "promising startup has battery breakthrough that they need to convince someone to actually manufacture".
- christkv 3y agoNice this would mean potentially cheaper electrical cars with same or longer range than today or more expensive cars with much longer range than today.
- Animats 3y agoIt's not a new battery chemistry, though. It's still lithium-ion. Does something prevent thermal runaway with this?
- beanjuice 3y agoWhile it does use lithium it doesn't necessarily have to use the 'same chemistry' as existing technologies. Beyond that, they haven't (or maybe never will) release fully the technology so we can not know.
- ianburrell 3y agoIt uses a solid-state electrolyte which is probably big reason for capacity increase. It is the flammable liquid electrolyte that causes fires in lithium ion batteries. Solid-state electrolyte shouldn’t be flammable, that is main reason people have been researching solid-state electrolytes.
- datadeft 3y ago> World’s largest battery maker announces major breakthrough in energy density > This is a little under 2x the density of current batteries. Anything less than a ~400x increase is a minor breakthrough based on my expectations. I would like to charge my phone once a year.
- Triesault 3y agoDo you not feel this is an unreasonable expectation? I wouldn’t think we would ever get to the point where phones are only charged once a year. This assumes that power consumption would not increase over time.
- topper-123 3y agoSomeone should do a followup on all the batteries break-troughs on the front page of HN over the last 5 years and count how many got into production. Still, an announcement from a big company like this is a lot more credible than from research labs or small start-ups, IMO.
- tonyedgecombe 3y agoIt’s interesting that battery stories generate so much opprobrium when battery performance has increased so dramatically over the last couple of decades.
- potamic 3y agoDon't know why, I just love esoteric words thrown into a sentence when a simple one would do.
- RivieraKid 3y agoWhat about the last decade? My guess is that iPhone battery density hasn't improved at all.
- Workaccount2 3y agoLooking at currently available 18650s, they are the same ones I was buying for my e-cig in 2015. Which were already a year or two old at that point. However the prices seem to have come down a bit despite all the inflation since then.
- perlgeek 3y agoThe other day I heard a podcast interview ( https://www.theskepticsguide.org/podcasts/episode-927 https://www.theskepticsguide.org/podcasts/episode-927 ) with somebody from Amprius Technologies, they're also starting serial production of a 1000 kwh/kg battery. Their main energy density boost is a silicone anode, which we've known "for ages" that it leads to higher energy density, but soaking it with lithium degrades the material very quickly, leading to cracks and thus damage after just a few charge cycles. The main innovation is some kind of nano-structuring of the anode, and that technique was published in the scientific literature in 2006. I'm sure it was hyped as a battery break-through in 2006, and it has taken 17 years to get to market. So, maybe we shouldn't go back 5 years, more like 20 years (OK, no HN back then :D). Batteries do get better over time, fairly consistently so. The development lifecycle is just soooo much longer than in software.
- msravi 3y agoI just realized how much energy efficiency is being squeezed out of a Tesla. It's incredible. A normal diesel fueled sedan such as the Chevy Cruze diesel runs at about 31mpg, which is 13.2 km/l or 15.3 km/kg. Diesel has a mind-boggling 12700 Wh/kg energy density[1], which translates to an efficiency of ~827 Wh/km for the Chevy. By contrast, the Tesla Model S, has a ~540 kg battery[2]. At 272 Wh/kg (from the posted article), that's ~147 kWh of energy storage, and the Tesla can do a rated 650km on a single charge[3]. So that's an efficiency of ~225 Wh/km, which is ~27% of the energy required to run a normal car! It just wouldn't have been possible to run cars on batteries without this efficiency bump. 1. https://chemistry.beloit.edu/edetc/SlideShow/slides/energy/density.html https://chemistry.beloit.edu/edetc/SlideShow/slides/energy/d... 2. https://blog.evbox.com/ev-battery-weight https://blog.evbox.com/ev-battery-weight 3. https://www.caranddriver.com/tesla/model-s https://www.caranddriver.com/tesla/model-s
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- TylerE 3y agoRegen braking will do that. I suspect it’d be a much closer competition at, say, 80mph stead state.
- mrob 3y agoGasoline internal combustion engines run at about 30% efficiency. Diesel does somewhat better at about 40% for car size engines, and about 50% for the really big ones. Electric motors easily exceed 90% efficiency. The EV wins even without regenerative breaking, even accounting for the losses in the batteries.
- HPsquared 3y agoIt's somewhat matched if the electricity is generated by combustion. Even then, if the power is generated using an efficient cycle (e.g. CCGT) the EV still tends to come out ahead.
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- kylehotchkiss 3y agoWow 2 day iPhone battery life. Let’s go!
- EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 3y agoCan some energy be recuperated on descent, blades turning in reverse?
- pbmonster 3y agoSure, completely possible in theory. That would of course be equivalent of deploying an air brake almost the size of the rotor/propeller disk. So descend rates would be pretty fast, and aerodynamic stability not necessarily guaranteed. In the end you probably have to design the aircraft for it. Might be worth it for applications like sky-diving planes or heli-sking helicopters.
- rvz 3y agoFinally. A proper engineering breakthrough deservedly getting recognition here. Unlike the mass in-flux of low effort GPT-laden BS promoted by the generative AI grifters. We need more of these foundational breakthroughs and less from the generative AI hype squad.
- sanderjd 3y agoI feel like this is a misunderstanding of HN's niche... For most of my time here the majority of articles have been about social media and other consumer web and mobile apps. Which makes sense because that's what Silicon Valley has been up to and this is an SV rag. It's nice that there are also lots of nerds here who are interested in other, frankly way more interesting, technologies so we get a good number of articles about those too. But your criticism just strikes me as odd. Generative AI is much more interesting and fundamentally new than the stuff I was reading about here a decade ago when Instagram filters were the new hotness...
- jonplackett 3y agoAnother reason we will all rely on China…
- dx034 3y agoI believe car manufacturers are already big in battery production, for them it's as crucial as ICE production was before. It takes time to ramp up but I'd expect battery tech to be a key component that large manufacturers will want to have in house. But it could be one of the first key technologies where Chinese companies are a few years ahead of European and American companies.
- Tade0 3y agoApparently they're in turn relying on a US company named Group14: https://group14.technology/en/news/group14-enters-production-to-power-the-next-generation-of-smartphones-for-atl https://group14.technology/en/news/group14-enters-production... CATL is a spinoff from ATL, so it's possible that there's some cross-pollination going on. This company is fascinating to me, because until recently they had no media presence.
- tmalsburg2 3y ago… in mice.
- samsondelilah 3y ago[flagged]
- eunos 3y agoManchin and Youngkin already getting restless.
- Tade0 3y ago> During the presentation, CATL said its working with partners on the development of electric passenger aircraft practicing aviation-level standards and testing in accordance with aviation-grade safety and quality requirements. Get ready for passenger drones[0], delivery drones[1] and just drones in general, because this is what this breakthrough means really. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lw6HDgv4ekE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lw6HDgv4ekE [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOWDNBu9DkU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOWDNBu9DkU
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- MagicMoonlight 3y agoScrew electric planes, the real benefit of this is that we can finally achieve long range electric airships
- walrus01 3y ago500Wh/kg will be truly revolutionary if it can sustain reasonably high amperage draw rates, for UAV applications. For reference hobby lipo batteries used in small quadcopters are around 155-160 Wh/kg. Lithium ion battery packs built from the very best Sony and Panasonic high-C rate cells for UAV applications are right around 250Wh/kg.
- ConcernedCoder 3y agoso I worry a bit about energy density when it comes to accidents/battery breakage/fires/explosions/ect... anyone have any idea if these batteries are any safer than the currently used tech?
- CameronNemo 3y agoThis is a different battery chemistry. It does have a different fire risk. Not sure about this chemistry, though.
- 0xDEF 3y agoChinese manufacturers will increasingly dominate innovation in their respective fields. Manufacturing and innovation is inherently intervened and the West's decision to outsource manufacturing has stagnated our ability to innovate in many fields.
- jpgvm 3y agoI think outsourcing is actually a symptom rather than a cause. The real problem is that many countries don't want to do innovation because it's expensive and/or they don't want to invest in the education necessary. China is able to do China things because they produce an absolutely staggering number of STEM grads and have jobs for them to fill. Everything from high energy particle physics to industrial chemistry, if you have a hard science degree in China your employment is pretty much gauranteed. This is a self perpetuating cycle too because as you provide more and more STEM labour more and more innovation occurs which spawns new industry which employs more STEM labour, etc. Conversely China is struggling with the opposite end of the scale where most Western countries excel at which is finding jobs for people without hard skills. China youth unemployment rate is very high among those without STEM degrees.
- tooltalk 3y ago>> The real problem is that many countries don't want to do innovation because it's expensive and/or they don't want to invest in the education necessary. << oah, what batst nonsense is this? CATL and BYD's battery production output/capacity, or whatever innovation you claim China has achieved, is a function of the CCP's protectionist policy to prevent foreign competition and nurture domestic battery industry since 2016 -- ie, China's refusal to grant license to operate battery business in China to South Korean and Japanese battery makers such as LG Chem, Samsung SDI, and Panasonic unless they gave up their core battery technology in exchange (forced tech transfer); or blatant discrimination in EV battery maker subsides or later outright no subsidy for EVs equipped with foreign companies' batteries (illegal subsidies). Ever heard of Make-In-China 2025? Wonder where Biden got inspiration for the IRA which excludes all things sourced or made in China? BYD and CATL are #1, #2 in China, but, outside China, they have to deal with the South Korean trio, LG Chem #1, SK Innovation #2, Samsung SDI + Panasonic (Japanese) -- and they are likewise leaders in their respective battery tech: for instance, LG Chem and SK Innovation in NCM, Panasonic and Samsung SDI in NCA. >> China is able to do China things because they produce an absolutely staggering number of STEM grads ... << Stop, stop, stop. That's not how it works. If we assume your fallacious theory to be true, China would have won the World's most popular sport contest, the World Cup several times over. We all know how China poured billions into training millions of their youths and spent boatload of money recruiting the World's best soccer players only to see their national team getting beaten by small South East nations like Vietnam, and certainly no match for soccer powerhouses like Honduras with 1/150 of China's population or budget.
- FabHK 3y agoMinor pet peeve: Energy density is energy per volume (in GJ/m^3, for example, or Wh/litre, or whatever). -> "X density" = X per volume What's discussed here is specific energy, ie energy per mass (in Wh/kg, or whatever). -> "specific X" = X per mass The latter is particularly relevant for aviation, needless to say.
- acyou 3y agoYou're right, and it's not just a minor pet peeve. It's a major error that recurs throughout the article and it destroys the credibility of the website and reporter. They even refer to "energy intensity", which as far as I am concerned doesn't refer to anything.
- giantg2 3y ago1200wh/kg is when it will get really interesting to me. Half the weight and double the range would be great. Plus, electrified ultralight "aircraft" start to have numerous advantages over the traditional 2 stoke engines.
- audunw 3y agoWhy would it only be interesting at that point? At 500wh/kg, if the cost is low enough, you're already going to eliminate fossil fuels from basically everything except long range flights and shipping. > Half the weight and double the range would be great You don't need to quadruple energy density to achieve that. If you just half the weight (without increasing the total amount of energy in the battery), you're going to significantly increase range. The less weight you have, the less energy you need to move the vehicle. > Plus, electrified ultralight "aircraft" start to have numerous advantages over the traditional 2 stoke engines. I think you'll have plenty of benefits with ~300wh/kg (that's the target for many useful eVTOL aircraft). The key challenge is you should redesign the whole aircraft around electric flight to get the full benefits. Look at NASAs Maxwell X-57 for an example of how that could look. With 500wh/kg you can start taking over most regional flights. Yes, the range won't be as good as jet planes. But jet planes have FAR more range than they need because they don't design a special purpose aircraft for shorter range. They just put less fuel in. But it'll probably take 10-20 years regardless of when we get good batteries because it'll take a long time to design and certify the aircrafts.
- giantg2 3y agoUltralight have a very specific set of regulations. 500wh/kg is where you can really start to use it in that application. Currently there are models with electric, but it's about 1 hour flight time (advertised) and you don't have great margins. If you can reduce the weight and get a true 2 hours, then that would replicate the characteristics of today's 2 stroke. Another point is that it won't take very long for ultralight since they aren't technically defined as an aircraft but as an air vehicle. You can home build them. Yes, you might see a 10% increase in range with half the vehicle weight. If you tow or take long trips, you want double the range. At that density, you're choosing one or the other, or an "eh" compromise. I want 800 miles and less weight/size. This can especially be useful for retrofit kits for existing vehicles for people who hate all the tech in the EVs.
- sylware 3y agoThe real news is "mass production" of those high-end of batterise I guess.
- vrglvrglvrgl 3y ago[dead]
- boringg 3y agoThat high density energy is going to need some good fire protection. Excited about the increased density coming out of energy storage - these breakthroughs take a lot of research work.
- wuming2 3y agoI do wonder sometimes if scraping the million plus of components, produced and assembled with great care into a ICE car and still relatively new, makes any sense. Re-powering seems no brainer to keep millions of new cars out of the scrapyard. And avoid the environmentally unsustainable production of slightly newer cars. Reusing them whole, engine included, is ideal. If battery re-powering, synthetic gasoline and hydrogen re-powering are not viable for multiple reasons I wonder what the best pool of options is.
- hoofhearted 3y agoI believe that current car racing trends will paint a picture of the future of automobiles. The hybrid area is among us, and the technology used is so well thought out and advanced. Hybrid as in “go incredibly fast”, and not “save gas” like as with a Prius. Currently in F1 and the new prototype classes, they are using electrification in conjunction with the internal combustion engine to create more instantly available horsepower. They are using twin turbo 6 cylinder engines, and anything that has large rotational mass has been electrified with motors. The turbos, crankshaft, and camshafts all have hybrid electric assist motors built into them to combat inertia. They then have incredibly engineered heat recovery systems built into the brakes and turbos. They collect the heat and convert it into electric to recharge the battery. Additionally, when the electric assist motors aren’t providing power to their components, their function is reversed and they become generators that also feed to the battery. I don’t believe the streets have ever really even seen electric assist turbos and crankshafts lol. Ford only recently realized that you could make more fuel efficient and reliable power with less displacement using forced induction.
- fnordpiglet 3y agoI think the age of Rube Goldberg dinosaur fumes fire machines is over and the age of Maxwells Equations is upon us. It’s sort of like college physics progression I just realized.
- hoofhearted 3y agoDo you believe that Saudi Aramco is just going throw their arms up and be like “well, the dinosaur fumes era is over everyone! Pack it up.” The two technologies of electric and combustion are going to coexist with each other. The rebirth of F1 into this new hybrid generation, as well as the new dPi hybrid prototype class will prove to you that Maxwells Equation is not close, and we breaking a new era of acceleration, braking, downforce, top speed, and fuel efficiency.
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- SubiculumCode 3y agoas an American I am concerned this innovation is coming out of China.
- jpgvm 3y agoWhy? This is good for the world. Surely we can find a way to come together on things that improve the world for everyone?
- 11thEarlOfMar 3y agoHow do these batteries compare in terms of charge/discharge cycles? I suppose that if they can store twice the energy by mass, they'd only need 1/2 the cycles to be equivalent, yes? If it's twice the density and the same number of cycles, a BEV will have a lifetime of 4 ICE vehicles.
- yc-kraln 3y ago500 Wh/kg means Sulphur cathode, which also explains the solid electrolyte. Roughly speaking, it'll be 3x as energy dense but only a 1/2 as volumetrically efficient (so, a given capacity battery will weigh 1/3 less but take up twice as much space). There are other approaches to Li-S (and Al-S and Mn-S) which will be less expensive. Grats to CATL for bringing this to market, but the race for sure isn't over yet.
- TrainedMonkey 3y agoMaybe volumetric inefficiency is where "condensed" part of the announcement comes in? Just spitballing here, would love to know more details.
- elefanten 3y agoA lot of other comments are saying 2x as dense (that current norms are around 250Wh/kg for mass produced and widely available product)… can you square that with your 3x claim? Am I missing something?
- m463 3y agoHonestly it doesn't seem like that big a drawback. EVs for instance have reclaimed lots of space from under the hood, the gas tank, the exhaust system and more.
- 2h 3y ago> 3x as energy dense but only a 1/2 as volumetrically efficient (so, a given capacity battery will weigh 1/3 less It would weigh 1/3, not 1/3 less.
- raindear 3y agoA competition to self driving cars? If urban flight is possible in 10 years, will people need self driving cars?
- seandoe 3y agooh god, could you imagine some of the car drivers you see flying a _plane_ -- above your house? Self-flying would be the only way to go.
- fnordpiglet 3y agoI sort of feel like this is what the inception of singularity feels like.
- crypot 3y agoWhy are people trying to turn this into a story about Tesla? It must be quite the threat to get so many paid Tesla shills commenting on this.
- fwungy 3y ago>no mention of cost Means expensive chemistry. >targeting aircraft first Means expensive chemistry >no mention of durability If they were highly durable this would be an important feature so they're likely not. Sounds like these are going to be expensive special application batteries.
- chaorace 3y agoFWIW: lithium-ion was also expensive chemistry. If the promise matches the reality, supply chains will eventually realign to the point where consumer applications become feasible.
- fwungy 3y agoWe are likely in the incremental phase of battery innovation. You've got to balance so many factors to commercially release a battery: safety, durability, reliability, weight, energy density, cost. You can build cheap batteries, they just have some terrible characteristics.
- tuatoru 3y ago> cheap batteries That was CATL's other announcement, two years ago: sodium-ion batteries. Now being incorporated into a model of car by Chery, one of the second tier Chinese EV manufacturers, and another by BYD, the biggest. 1. https://www.notebookcheck.net/First-electric-cars-with-BYD-and-CATL-sodium-ion-batteries-without-lithium-to-launch-by-year-s-end.709264.0.html https://www.notebookcheck.net/First-electric-cars-with-BYD-a...
- hoenickf 3y agoby what factor is it increasing?
- itissid 3y agoWould a bunch of economists and sustainability researchers have to redo their calculations for how sustainable the electric vehicle future just became?
- hoenickf 3y agoBy what factor is it increasing?
- thangalin 3y agoThe Hyundai Kona EV battery has a energy density of 141.3 Wh/kg and range of 414 km, give or take. 500 / 141.3 * 414 km = 1,465 km. Is that around the expected range, presuming a new battery is a drop-in replacement? Lithium-air has an energy density of 11,140 Wh/kg, yielding 32,639 km, which doesn't seem possible.
- jeffbee 3y agoLithium-air and all other -air batteries have outsourced part of their mass to the atmosphere, which is also part of the reason why liquid motor fuel has such high apparent density. The joke with lithium-air batteries is they absorb oxygen when they discharge, so a dead battery is full of lithium peroxide and weighs significantly more than a charged one.
- w10-1 3y agoNo article, headline, or comment about batteries should omit the proven lifecycle. Unless, of course, the battery manufacturer has a very long warranty and the resources to back it up. Otherwise: noise :)
- lxe 3y agoFinally, an actual battery breakthrough! Most "new battery" media has been mostly fluff for decades.
- acyou 3y agoFor me, this signals CATL is either actually on the verge of a breakthrough, or desperate and in big trouble. If the technology is brand new, how can it have been thoroughly life and cycle tested already? I will believe the batteries are truly ready for prime-time after approx. 5 years of real world service. That's enough time to see the creeping, unforeseen issues that tend to crop up with batteries. Dendrite growth, structural failure, etc etc. They could be shipping millions of cars in 2025 with these and I would, rightly, still have my doubts. A breakthrough based on solid state electrolyte sounds very plausible. But look at the presentation graphic. They get the translation of "energy density" wrong.
- perlgeek 3y agoThe actual breakthrough likely happened several years ago, maybe 10+ years ago, and is only now hitting mass production.
- nerpderp82 3y agoHere come all the aircraft.
- JustSomeNobody 3y agoI look forward to the weight savings of having a smaller battery would bring.
- CyanLite2 3y agoAnybody but me notice the weird wording on safety? "EXCELLENT density" "EXCELLENT performance" "good safety" Does this mean it's more likely to explode than current-gen NMC batteries?
- dhruvbird 3y agoHow combustible are these batteries compared to the standard lower density ones, and if one of them catches fire, how easy/hard is it for the fire department to get it under control?
- semireg 3y agoLike Amazon shopping, I come here for the 1-star reviews. Does it charge in cold? Will it catastrophically fail when punctured? Does it wear out over time? At this point only the negatives matter.
- perlgeek 3y agoIf it doesn't charged when cold, just heat it up for charging. Some negatives can be mitigated.
- SEJeff 3y agoThey're one of Tesla's biggest suppliers. It is unsurprising they'll be doing battery research themselves.
- jpgvm 3y agoThey were battery kings well before that. CATL is the OG of the LiFePO4 chemistry and developed most of the mass production techniques to make the chemistry feasible. Tesla came along later and just bought lots of their stuff.
- SEJeff 3y agoI thought tesla used Panasonic exclusively until after they expanded into China with the Shanghai Gigafactory?
- jpgvm 3y agoYeah precisely. Tesla only adopted LFP when they started production in China and instead of producing their own batteries like they had to in US they just bought from CATL instead. CATL was already supplying SAIC, JAG, BYD, etc in China well before Tesla landed there.
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