8 ms·

Here is a classic example of a startup launching an Altair Basic with the potential produce a Microsoft-like giant. Incidentally, I think this is also the firs

by pg 13y ago

Here is a classic example of a startup launching an Altair Basic with the potential produce a Microsoft-like giant. Incidentally, I think this is also the first father/son team we've funded.

_jss 13y ago
What is the strategy for when Apple disallows sales based on the Magsafe adapter? This happened to HyperMac (now HyperJuice) batteries back in 2011. I still have mine, ordered before Apple lawyers went after them. It's wonderful. Edit: Adding link to Wired article: http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2011/01/hypermac-is-back-with-cable-chopping-magic-magsafe-adapter/ http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2011/01/hypermac-is-back-with...
- MiguelHudnandez 13y ago
  I have some HyperJuice units that I made cables for. It works OK, but is definitely clunky. I think it could be done in a better way, but it can only be a hack with Apple defending the walls of their garden so militantly. For this reason I really hope GBatteries have a license to use the connector, and that they build in some cable management similar to what's on the magsafe unit, so the cable can be coiled neatly. My other feedback is that having a built-in AC adapter would be so very useful. Look at the HyperJuice plug [1]. It's got the AC prongs that just slide out -- no separate wall wart, and no micro-usb cable. People that have only Apple devices won't have many micro USB cables around. It would also prevent someone from plugging the USB cable into their laptop while it's being powered by the external battery. :\ 1: http://www.hypershop.com/HyperJuice/Plug/ http://www.hypershop.com/HyperJuice/Plug/ (note that this model HyperJuice will not charge a laptop)
- toyg 13y ago
  I think that it's not about the BatteryBox product per se, but about some technology inside which is supposed to reduce long-term capacity loss. The box itself is basically a demo to sell or license the actual tech to OEMs.
  - XorNot 13y ago
    This is straight up not possible. Lithium-ion batteries degrade irreversibly as they're used - the only way to reduce capacity loss is to reduce the depth-of-discharge: add more cells, and discharge them less per cycle. Unless they're fiddling with the actual chemistry of the cells, it's unlikely they've changed anything.
    - jonknee 13y ago
      Did you read the linked article? > Batteries are typically charged and discharged through a constant stream of power, which causes problems like SEI layer formation that causes the battery to degrade over time. The BatteryOS system, by contrast, takes an active role in managing what’s happening inside a Li-ion battery, which not only lengthens the life of the battery, but also gives it the ability to store 10 percent to 40 percent more power. Obviously the proof is in the results, but that's what they're claiming.
      - dublinben 13y ago
        Active power management is nothing new to lithium ion batteries.
        kirk21 13y ago
        You're right, see for example http://www.qnovocorp.com/ http://www.qnovocorp.com/ Guess execution is king ;)
        tylerlh 13y ago
        "Guess execution is king ;)" Always has been, always will be.
        gridspy 13y ago
        I found this useful paper from qnovo that describes the charging process they use. It's very interesting. http://www.qnovocorp.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Qnovo-Intro-Adaptive-Charging.pdf http://www.qnovocorp.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Qnovo-In...
- crystaln 13y ago
  Did you read or think about the comment you are responding to? It's a battery technology company. This is their first product.
  - flyosity 13y ago
    I don't understand the need for snark. It's a valid point. The main selling-point of their first product is that it can power MacBooks but if Apple cracks down on them for using the MagSafe adapter then this product will no longer be useful for its intended purposes.
  - DigitalJack 13y ago
    And the selling point of their first product is a non starter, unless apple changed their MagSafe policies.
- pbreit 13y ago
  From the pictures, it looks like the strategy is to use a MagSafe-to-MagSafe2 adapter.
- tluyben2 13y ago
  Yep; I have the hypermac as well; it is very great. I buy new ones all the time. The magsafe thing is a bit (not much) of a hassle though. Curious as well how that will be handled.
- runako 13y ago
  Likely they will continue building the product described on their website: "A battery management system (BMS) that increases battery capacity and cycle count" I'm sure they can apply this to devices other than the 12% of laptops sold that are made by Apple.
- pg 13y ago
  I don't remember the details, but IIRC they are Apple proof.
  - mcmillion 13y ago
    I have a feeling that if it can connect to a MagSafe port and work, Apple has control over it.
    - deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
    - roc 13y ago
      The claimed performance would provide a huge competitive advantage. If it worked as advertised and Apple had control over it, they'd integrate the software into their products and this box would never see the light of day as a third party product.
      - esmi 13y ago
        Apparently Apple already has it. Read the section titled "your new notebook" http://www.apple.com/batteries/notebooks.html http://www.apple.com/batteries/notebooks.html
        roc 13y ago
        They have something like it. As do almost all makers of modern battery-powered electronics. But no-one else is claiming essentially no loss of capacity after 3000 cycles. Apple boasts 80% of original capacity after 1000 cycles. Which was industry leading, at least at the time of introduction. But a long way off GBatteries' claim. And better batteries would further buoy resale price of Apple gear, which buoys their premium pricing for new goods. If they could have this, they would want it. Badly. It would also perfectly fit their MO for acquisitions: an engineering/technology acquisition that provides a competitive advantage to their core business.
  - enraged_camel 13y ago
marvin 13y ago
Battery storage will be absolutely huge in a few years. There is so much potential that has gone unexplored, since batteries have traditionally been heavy, low-capacity and short-lived. At least some of the people in this space who are in the right place at the right time today, are going to win big. Someone will have to build all these batteries. Everything from cars to renewable energy to light aircraft is going to be battery-powered in the future. It will be very exciting to see what happens in this space, and I'm bummed that I'm largely unable to invest in this space myself. Best of luck to the YC-backed companies :) (Case in point: Tesla Motors have announced that they're building the world's largest Li-ion battery factory, to the tune of $5 billion).
- tedsanders 13y ago
  I think it's very unlikely that airplanes will be battery powered in the medium-term future. The chemical energy stored in hydrogen bonds is just so much denser than the electrical energy stored in concentrated lithium ions. I know that battery-powered planes have been built, but it just seems so uneconomical to me. Do you have evidence that could persuade me otherwise? Or perhaps am I misunderstanding? By light aircraft do you mean aircraft less than 100 pounds or something?
  - dchichkov 13y ago
    AFAIK electric airplanes have been around for 10 years or so. Antares 20E came out around 2003. And now there are plenty others: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_aircraft#Production_aircraft http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_aircraft#Production_ai...
  - marvin 13y ago
    In short, I strongly believe that you're incorrect. (Note: I'm talking about general/recreational aviation here). dchichkov mentioned the Antares, which is a high-performance electric self-launch sailplane. In this category, there's also the Pipistrel Taurus G4. Lots of other electrically-powered light aircraft exist, and they are all held back by battery weight, volume and cost. There is a large number of advantages to electric propulsion vs. combustion engines in aircraft: Much lower maintenance costs, simpler maintenance, higher reliability (in gliders, replacing two-stroke engines with electric motors yields a huge safety advantage), lower fuel cost, simpler operation (less possibility for human error), less noise, lower weight (ex batteries), smaller volume per unit power, higher efficiency, lower purchase cost. The only real disadvantages are low energy density and charging time/infrastructure. At some point in the medium-term future (~5 years) we will hit a point where the benefits obviously outweigh the disadvantages for many use cases. In fact, I think the inflection point has already been hit wrt. the battery tech, it's just that it isn't obvious to anyone who isn't intimately familiar with the progress in battery pack cost development. Give it a couple of years. Even this list of advantages disregards the fact that the mechanical simplicity of electric motors enable aircraft configurations that haven't been tried at scale, for instance gimballed/swerving variable-geometry ducted-fan propellers, etc. Electric motors are also not dependent on high air pressure to get enough oxygen for efficient combustion. There's just a huge new design space that opens up when you have sufficiently powerful battery storage. Super exciting. Pay attention to the drone aircraft companies, they are the ones in a position to drive this shift.
bnejad 13y ago
What makes you think this? Portable batteries like this are dime a dozen (maybe not for macs, I don't own one). Or the real play is licensing the battery tech which doesn't really seem Microsoft like at all since the company would likely fade into the background as the big battery companies use the technology. I don't mean to be offensive, just curious why you are so confident this company or product is a industry game changer.
- andrewparker 13y ago
  You need to read to the end of the post to understand PG's analogy. There is software that controls the charging rate of the battery that (if the claims are correct) could be fundamentally disruptive to batteries going forward, so the Altair analogy implies a potential software licensing strategy as an upside in this company.
  - chillingeffect 13y ago
    But is this new technology? Have they really figured out something that other battery companies don't know? This charger takes 2.25 hours to reach 80% or 4.5 hours to reach 100% capacity. Could it simply be that they're charging more slowly? Maybe other battery makers know about this, but they don't implement it because they (and consumers) don't value using the battery effectively. Hoping for some lithium-charging experts (I know there are people out there with this as their primary research focus) to weigh in.
    - veemjeem 13y ago
      Since they filed a patent on it, I assume it is new tech. There is new charging tech from time to time, but most of the IP belongs to those big semiconductor companies, like TI. I know TI has an innovative power management module for LiPoly batteries, but it is pretty expensive.
      - dchichkov 13y ago
        It could be a new tech. While there are quite a few BMS chips available around, from a bunch of companies [ http://liionbms.com/html/BMS_IC_table.html http://liionbms.com/html/BMS_IC_table.html ] it is possible that they did some careful research onto what charging cycles are used in these products and found charging cycles that work even better for particular battery chemistries. On the other hand, research is tough and it is so much easier to learn about the existence of a few hot words (like BMS), file a provisional patent and smooth-talk an investor or two with 'BatteryOS platform' . Considering that they are comparing their charging cycle with the "conventional" charger and throw words like "Chevy Volt, which only charges its battery to 50 percent capacity" I'm finding this scenario as a more likely one. Still. It is not like I wouldn't like having more well designed LiIon BMS/charger combos on the market! There aren't many available and it's always nice to have more choice! So good luck!
rasz_pl 13y ago
What? its just a powerbank, plenty of those on scambay they even lie about capacity/charge time just like Chinese
qwerta 13y ago
I have similar battery from APC. It is 5 years old and still holds most of its capacity. That super software is called battery calibration.
oskarth 13y ago
This seems bigger than Altair Basic to me. If this thing works well it's huge already. Battery time is one of the biggest problems for people working out of the office (along with decent internet and peace of mind).
benjamincburns 13y ago
I'm curious to know how much work they'd done on the idea ahead of time. If this was conceived during YC, they're definitely a very impressive team. A few months ago I looked into building this exact product. If you're a DIY kinda person and you don't mind carrying around some extra bulk, it's somewhat easy to cobble something together. If you want a light/small brick w/ self-contained charging and output regulation that just works, it's much more difficult and potentially dangerous -- especially if you want it to charge fast enough that a 1h airport layover is meaningful. Add in more advanced battery management/conditioning schemes, and I'm just all kinds of impressed. Though, this claim does irk me a little: > With the same battery, we could charge to a full 100 percent and it won’t degrade > Never experience loss in capacity again. A Li-ion battery powered by BatteryOS doesn’t degrade in capacity over time, and as a result has a 4x higher cycle life than when controlled by conventional methods. I think I need a better definition of "capacity degradation" here - if you acknowledge that there's still a charge cycle limit, I'm curious to know what happens once it's reached. Either way, I'm very sceptical of anything which claims to completely eliminate the effects of entropy.
- esmi 13y ago
  There are 100s of ways to game this cycle spec too. For example, for all we know there is a 100WHr pack inside the box and they only make 50WHr of it available to the user. This way you can make a 50WHr battery that effectively never "degrades". The BatteryOS just manages the "reserve". Then the only thing they are really measuring is the speed at which their algorithm looses calibration. The software for many BMUs (battery management units) actually does this today.
  - benjamincburns 13y ago
    That's not a terrible idea, actually. When you purchase any NAND flash device like a USB stick or an SSD, essentially the same thing is happening. The raw storage is much higher, but due to a high raw bit error rate (see NAND displacement errors), the need for wear leveling, and the need for reserve blocks to swap into service as the device ages, the claimed capacities are reduced to accommodate MTBF and observed bit error specs. In cases such as this I think it'd be disingenuous not to drop your claimed specs to reflect the actual usefulness of the device.

by pg 13y ago

Here is a classic example of a startup launching an Altair Basic with the potential produce a Microsoft-like giant. Incidentally, I think this is also the first father/son team we've funded.

_jss 13y ago

What is the strategy for when Apple disallows sales based on the Magsafe adapter? This happened to HyperMac (now HyperJuice) batteries back in 2011. I still have mine, ordered before Apple lawyers went after them. It's wonderful. Edit: Adding link to Wired article: http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2011/01/hypermac-is-back-with-cable-chopping-magic-magsafe-adapter/ http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2011/01/hypermac-is-back-with...

MiguelHudnandez 13y ago
I have some HyperJuice units that I made cables for. It works OK, but is definitely clunky. I think it could be done in a better way, but it can only be a hack with Apple defending the walls of their garden so militantly. For this reason I really hope GBatteries have a license to use the connector, and that they build in some cable management similar to what's on the magsafe unit, so the cable can be coiled neatly. My other feedback is that having a built-in AC adapter would be so very useful. Look at the HyperJuice plug [1]. It's got the AC prongs that just slide out -- no separate wall wart, and no micro-usb cable. People that have only Apple devices won't have many micro USB cables around. It would also prevent someone from plugging the USB cable into their laptop while it's being powered by the external battery. :\ 1: http://www.hypershop.com/HyperJuice/Plug/ http://www.hypershop.com/HyperJuice/Plug/ (note that this model HyperJuice will not charge a laptop)
toyg 13y ago
I think that it's not about the BatteryBox product per se, but about some technology inside which is supposed to reduce long-term capacity loss. The box itself is basically a demo to sell or license the actual tech to OEMs.
- XorNot 13y ago
  This is straight up not possible. Lithium-ion batteries degrade irreversibly as they're used - the only way to reduce capacity loss is to reduce the depth-of-discharge: add more cells, and discharge them less per cycle. Unless they're fiddling with the actual chemistry of the cells, it's unlikely they've changed anything.
  - jonknee 13y ago
    Did you read the linked article? > Batteries are typically charged and discharged through a constant stream of power, which causes problems like SEI layer formation that causes the battery to degrade over time. The BatteryOS system, by contrast, takes an active role in managing what’s happening inside a Li-ion battery, which not only lengthens the life of the battery, but also gives it the ability to store 10 percent to 40 percent more power. Obviously the proof is in the results, but that's what they're claiming.
    - dublinben 13y ago
      Active power management is nothing new to lithium ion batteries.
      - kirk21 13y ago
        You're right, see for example http://www.qnovocorp.com/ http://www.qnovocorp.com/ Guess execution is king ;)
        tylerlh 13y ago
        "Guess execution is king ;)" Always has been, always will be.
        gridspy 13y ago
        I found this useful paper from qnovo that describes the charging process they use. It's very interesting. http://www.qnovocorp.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Qnovo-Intro-Adaptive-Charging.pdf http://www.qnovocorp.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Qnovo-In...
crystaln 13y ago
Did you read or think about the comment you are responding to? It's a battery technology company. This is their first product.
- flyosity 13y ago
  I don't understand the need for snark. It's a valid point. The main selling-point of their first product is that it can power MacBooks but if Apple cracks down on them for using the MagSafe adapter then this product will no longer be useful for its intended purposes.
- DigitalJack 13y ago
  And the selling point of their first product is a non starter, unless apple changed their MagSafe policies.
pbreit 13y ago
From the pictures, it looks like the strategy is to use a MagSafe-to-MagSafe2 adapter.
tluyben2 13y ago
Yep; I have the hypermac as well; it is very great. I buy new ones all the time. The magsafe thing is a bit (not much) of a hassle though. Curious as well how that will be handled.
runako 13y ago
Likely they will continue building the product described on their website: "A battery management system (BMS) that increases battery capacity and cycle count" I'm sure they can apply this to devices other than the 12% of laptops sold that are made by Apple.
pg 13y ago
I don't remember the details, but IIRC they are Apple proof.
- mcmillion 13y ago
  I have a feeling that if it can connect to a MagSafe port and work, Apple has control over it.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  - roc 13y ago
    The claimed performance would provide a huge competitive advantage. If it worked as advertised and Apple had control over it, they'd integrate the software into their products and this box would never see the light of day as a third party product.
    - esmi 13y ago
      Apparently Apple already has it. Read the section titled "your new notebook" http://www.apple.com/batteries/notebooks.html http://www.apple.com/batteries/notebooks.html
      - roc 13y ago
        They have something like it. As do almost all makers of modern battery-powered electronics. But no-one else is claiming essentially no loss of capacity after 3000 cycles. Apple boasts 80% of original capacity after 1000 cycles. Which was industry leading, at least at the time of introduction. But a long way off GBatteries' claim. And better batteries would further buoy resale price of Apple gear, which buoys their premium pricing for new goods. If they could have this, they would want it. Badly. It would also perfectly fit their MO for acquisitions: an engineering/technology acquisition that provides a competitive advantage to their core business.
- enraged_camel 13y ago

marvin 13y ago

Battery storage will be absolutely huge in a few years. There is so much potential that has gone unexplored, since batteries have traditionally been heavy, low-capacity and short-lived. At least some of the people in this space who are in the right place at the right time today, are going to win big. Someone will have to build all these batteries. Everything from cars to renewable energy to light aircraft is going to be battery-powered in the future. It will be very exciting to see what happens in this space, and I'm bummed that I'm largely unable to invest in this space myself. Best of luck to the YC-backed companies :) (Case in point: Tesla Motors have announced that they're building the world's largest Li-ion battery factory, to the tune of $5 billion).

tedsanders 13y ago
I think it's very unlikely that airplanes will be battery powered in the medium-term future. The chemical energy stored in hydrogen bonds is just so much denser than the electrical energy stored in concentrated lithium ions. I know that battery-powered planes have been built, but it just seems so uneconomical to me. Do you have evidence that could persuade me otherwise? Or perhaps am I misunderstanding? By light aircraft do you mean aircraft less than 100 pounds or something?
- dchichkov 13y ago
  AFAIK electric airplanes have been around for 10 years or so. Antares 20E came out around 2003. And now there are plenty others: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_aircraft#Production_aircraft http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_aircraft#Production_ai...
- marvin 13y ago
  In short, I strongly believe that you're incorrect. (Note: I'm talking about general/recreational aviation here). dchichkov mentioned the Antares, which is a high-performance electric self-launch sailplane. In this category, there's also the Pipistrel Taurus G4. Lots of other electrically-powered light aircraft exist, and they are all held back by battery weight, volume and cost. There is a large number of advantages to electric propulsion vs. combustion engines in aircraft: Much lower maintenance costs, simpler maintenance, higher reliability (in gliders, replacing two-stroke engines with electric motors yields a huge safety advantage), lower fuel cost, simpler operation (less possibility for human error), less noise, lower weight (ex batteries), smaller volume per unit power, higher efficiency, lower purchase cost. The only real disadvantages are low energy density and charging time/infrastructure. At some point in the medium-term future (~5 years) we will hit a point where the benefits obviously outweigh the disadvantages for many use cases. In fact, I think the inflection point has already been hit wrt. the battery tech, it's just that it isn't obvious to anyone who isn't intimately familiar with the progress in battery pack cost development. Give it a couple of years. Even this list of advantages disregards the fact that the mechanical simplicity of electric motors enable aircraft configurations that haven't been tried at scale, for instance gimballed/swerving variable-geometry ducted-fan propellers, etc. Electric motors are also not dependent on high air pressure to get enough oxygen for efficient combustion. There's just a huge new design space that opens up when you have sufficiently powerful battery storage. Super exciting. Pay attention to the drone aircraft companies, they are the ones in a position to drive this shift.

bnejad 13y ago

What makes you think this? Portable batteries like this are dime a dozen (maybe not for macs, I don't own one). Or the real play is licensing the battery tech which doesn't really seem Microsoft like at all since the company would likely fade into the background as the big battery companies use the technology. I don't mean to be offensive, just curious why you are so confident this company or product is a industry game changer.

andrewparker 13y ago
You need to read to the end of the post to understand PG's analogy. There is software that controls the charging rate of the battery that (if the claims are correct) could be fundamentally disruptive to batteries going forward, so the Altair analogy implies a potential software licensing strategy as an upside in this company.
- chillingeffect 13y ago
  But is this new technology? Have they really figured out something that other battery companies don't know? This charger takes 2.25 hours to reach 80% or 4.5 hours to reach 100% capacity. Could it simply be that they're charging more slowly? Maybe other battery makers know about this, but they don't implement it because they (and consumers) don't value using the battery effectively. Hoping for some lithium-charging experts (I know there are people out there with this as their primary research focus) to weigh in.
  - veemjeem 13y ago
    Since they filed a patent on it, I assume it is new tech. There is new charging tech from time to time, but most of the IP belongs to those big semiconductor companies, like TI. I know TI has an innovative power management module for LiPoly batteries, but it is pretty expensive.
    - dchichkov 13y ago
      It could be a new tech. While there are quite a few BMS chips available around, from a bunch of companies [ http://liionbms.com/html/BMS_IC_table.html http://liionbms.com/html/BMS_IC_table.html ] it is possible that they did some careful research onto what charging cycles are used in these products and found charging cycles that work even better for particular battery chemistries. On the other hand, research is tough and it is so much easier to learn about the existence of a few hot words (like BMS), file a provisional patent and smooth-talk an investor or two with 'BatteryOS platform' . Considering that they are comparing their charging cycle with the "conventional" charger and throw words like "Chevy Volt, which only charges its battery to 50 percent capacity" I'm finding this scenario as a more likely one. Still. It is not like I wouldn't like having more well designed LiIon BMS/charger combos on the market! There aren't many available and it's always nice to have more choice! So good luck!

rasz_pl 13y ago

What? its just a powerbank, plenty of those on scambay they even lie about capacity/charge time just like Chinese

qwerta 13y ago

I have similar battery from APC. It is 5 years old and still holds most of its capacity. That super software is called battery calibration.

oskarth 13y ago

This seems bigger than Altair Basic to me. If this thing works well it's huge already. Battery time is one of the biggest problems for people working out of the office (along with decent internet and peace of mind).

benjamincburns 13y ago

I'm curious to know how much work they'd done on the idea ahead of time. If this was conceived during YC, they're definitely a very impressive team. A few months ago I looked into building this exact product. If you're a DIY kinda person and you don't mind carrying around some extra bulk, it's somewhat easy to cobble something together. If you want a light/small brick w/ self-contained charging and output regulation that just works, it's much more difficult and potentially dangerous -- especially if you want it to charge fast enough that a 1h airport layover is meaningful. Add in more advanced battery management/conditioning schemes, and I'm just all kinds of impressed. Though, this claim does irk me a little: > With the same battery, we could charge to a full 100 percent and it won’t degrade > Never experience loss in capacity again. A Li-ion battery powered by BatteryOS doesn’t degrade in capacity over time, and as a result has a 4x higher cycle life than when controlled by conventional methods. I think I need a better definition of "capacity degradation" here - if you acknowledge that there's still a charge cycle limit, I'm curious to know what happens once it's reached. Either way, I'm very sceptical of anything which claims to completely eliminate the effects of entropy.

esmi 13y ago
There are 100s of ways to game this cycle spec too. For example, for all we know there is a 100WHr pack inside the box and they only make 50WHr of it available to the user. This way you can make a 50WHr battery that effectively never "degrades". The BatteryOS just manages the "reserve". Then the only thing they are really measuring is the speed at which their algorithm looses calibration. The software for many BMUs (battery management units) actually does this today.
- benjamincburns 13y ago
  That's not a terrible idea, actually. When you purchase any NAND flash device like a USB stick or an SSD, essentially the same thing is happening. The raw storage is much higher, but due to a high raw bit error rate (see NAND displacement errors), the need for wear leveling, and the need for reserve blocks to swap into service as the device ages, the claimed capacities are reduced to accommodate MTBF and observed bit error specs. In cases such as this I think it'd be disingenuous not to drop your claimed specs to reflect the actual usefulness of the device.