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Surur t1_j7jpmzt wrote

The lede is buried:

> But the big standout is energy density. The researchers estimate that, even in this immature state, the technology stored about 685 watt-hours per kilogram, which is more than double most current batteries. It also managed an energy-to-volume that was just shy of double that of typical lithium-ion batteries. So, in that sense, it lives up to the promise of its two electrodes.

That should allow small commuter electric aircraft comfortably.

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InsularAtlantica t1_j7k02fa wrote

Does this not also mean smaller batteries and/or longer travel times for EVs?

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[deleted] t1_j7lchcj wrote

[deleted]

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KnightOfNothing t1_j7ljng5 wrote

"cheaper to make"

car manufacturers: gonna pretend i didn't see that, in fact pretty sure it's more expensive to make.

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SatanLifeProTips t1_j7lvcwr wrote

I work with industrial machinery. Cars are ‘insanely cheap’ by comparison.

However China is coming for the the Canadian and US auto markets. China bought Volvo and polestar is a Geele. The Chinese electric cars are actually getting good and the domestic makers are running scared. The round of 10-20% price cuts you just saw in electric cars won’t be the last. China is bringing price competition.

Your car is probably full of Chinese parts now.

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Electronic-Bee-3609 t1_j7ngyqz wrote

And you know what? Someone other than Tesla needed to light a fire under their collective asses. And it also made Tesla go “oh shit” too.

I’m getting a Ford Escape this year, probably a hybrid. But if this cheaper trend continues and they’re solid in the USDM in a few years along with having decent reputation and have a marketable reception in the EV market; I just may be inclined to upgrade to a Chinese EV, and I’m loathe to give the CCP a single red cent of my money. Because, US companies despite the ass kicking Tesla delivered; just aren’t moving fast enough.

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SatanLifeProTips t1_j7nmn0f wrote

Check out the Rav4 prime instead. There is a reason it costs more.

I won’t buy a Chinese vehicle myself but I welcome the competition. China is the biggest auto maker in the world and they don’t fuck around.

GM is ready to go nuts on EV’s. Would you believe they are the top EV seller in China? They sell a $5000 EV under the Wuling brand. But they are busily building 4 gigafactory sized battery plants in America and are converting 24 of their 42 factories to be pure EV by 2025. Check out the new electric Silverado. That starts shipping within the next couple of months and it is primed to mop the floor with Ford. 640km (400mi) of range and 250kW rapid charging in an aluminum chassis. They aren’t fucking around anymore. Their proprietary battery is repairable, 24 swappable modules and is rated at 2000 cycles. 2000 cycles x 640km is 1.28 million km.

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AnDraoi t1_j7pgxmv wrote

How are you getting those numbers? Not arguing that a lighter, denser battery gives you better range but claiming you’d double the range when you have half the battery weight is a lot lol

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pinkfootthegoose t1_j7lokj4 wrote

If you want.. or you could keep the range the same and use half as much battery saving the difference in the purchase price.

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akmalhot t1_j7miux6 wrote

Haha pass savings on to consumer ?

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mhornberger t1_j7mkz71 wrote

Only on Reddit has this never happened. Meanwhile LCD and plasma TVs were ~$10-20K in 2000 or so. Cost of long-distance and international calling has plummeted. Cost of lighting. Cost of computer storage. The list of things that got cheaper for the consumer is vast, and much longer than the list of things that haven't.

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akmalhot t1_j7mml1f wrote

Have cars gotten cheaper in that time?

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mhornberger t1_j7mndj3 wrote

They aren't making the same cars today they did in 1970. Far more safety features now, safer construction, more fuel-efficient, air conditioning is no longer an optional add-on, etc. But despite all that, yes, they're cheaper after adjusting for inflation.

Adjusting for inflation, the Ford Model T cost almost $25K. Do we have cars on the market today cheaper than that?

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Bean_Juice_Brew t1_j7mqs11 wrote

AC was an add-on for some cars in the 2000s (looking at you, Honda Civic DX)

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akmalhot t1_j7modyt wrote

I was talking about your 2000 timeline

TV's have vastly improved since then

Higher barriers to entry mean less cuts parity. How many companies make TV's now

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mhornberger t1_j7mot4v wrote

> TV's have vastly improved since then

While also getting dramatically cheaper. This was the same point as with automobiles--they have gotten cheaper even while improving. I brought up the Model T just because it was so iconic, and has historical significance. It wasn't the only data point in those articles.

>How many companies make TV's now

Even TVs from the same companies are far cheaper. I'm not talking just about knock-off brands, but Sony, Toshiba, Panasonic, etc.

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TimmJimmGrimm t1_j7qftex wrote

We went out and got a 65" t.v. - the thing looks like a movie theatre in our living room. Compare that to the little black & white bubble boxes i had as a kid.

If they could do something similar to the cost of housing, i would relax much easier.

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mhornberger t1_j7qgjul wrote

Housing could never come down as much as TVs have. But the current housing crisis is mainly because of zoning and other regulations that reserve land for single-family detached homes. We've allowed homeowners to block the building of density, to protect the spiraling value of their asset.

Suburbia doesn't scale well. And unfortunately a century of culture changes, television, etc has linked "the American Dream" with owning a single-family detached home. Which entrenched sprawl and car dependence. Plus people now view housing, even their own home, as an investment. Housing can't both be affordable and a good investment. Those are conflicting goals.

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TimmJimmGrimm t1_j7qko3y wrote

It is both weird and ironic that Canada (2nd largest country in the world, tops for softwood production) seems to suffer from a space and materials shortage.

You are right though: this struggle is political-economic. There are no laws restricting the number of televisions nor where-how we can build them ('some of it might be toxic, maybe?'). Construction has been regulated since medieval times (well... not in Canada so much, but you see what i am agreeing with here).

Still, it saddens me to see technology bonk its head against human stubbornness. We have had amazingly cheap straw housing for decades. Now we can obviously print them. Heck, Sears made pre-fab homes back in the 1970s (just looked into it - apparently a pre-fab saves on 'time' but not much 'money' - they still exist now). Land is also a problem because most countries have weird 'dead zones'. The Canadian shield, for example, can't sustain much life (it is a large smooth rock with a few tragic weeds growing on it). Amazing place to build a house, tragically no one could live there.

It is a weird battle. It appears we are solving every aspect of living (heating, food, lighting, insulation, circulation of air and fluids, etc) and yet we still can't find a space to live. That's just upsetting.

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mhornberger t1_j7qnnml wrote

Well our housing standards also went up. We could throw up dirt-floor tarpaper shacks with no electricity or plumbing tomorrow, but no one would consider that "real" housing. We used to have single-room occupancy housing, rooming houses, bunk-houses etc that did serve the poor. They've been banned by zoning and NIMBYs, which increases the housing crisis. But even when I advocate for these to be built, people say "that's not real housing!"

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TimmJimmGrimm t1_j7sfmd7 wrote

This is a really nifty point. The houses went to a solid middle class standard but the wages went nowhere in four decades, effectively pricing people out of their own homes.

Well put, but i am surprised that i haven't seen this before.

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mhornberger t1_j7shcyh wrote

Houses have also gotten much larger. If you compare price per square foot, the increase in price isn't as great. But our expectations have gone up, faster than our income.

Per that last link:

>>On a per square foot basis using median home prices and median square footage, the inflation-adjusted price of new homes has been relatively stable since 1973

So our houses are larger, better insulated, etc. Our standards have gone up. But our income hasn't gone up nearly as much.

I think there's a similar issue with childcare, another big issue. When I was a kid, childcare was a random teenager. Plus I was frequently home by myself, at an age where that would be illegal today. But now childcare workers get paid more, are CPR trained, insured, etc. Plus we have more expectation that childcare be enriching, rather than the kid being dumped in front of the television.

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TimmJimmGrimm t1_j7t9gmt wrote

This is wild: i cannot imagine ANY home in the Vancouver BC mainland area. They were horribly expensive decades ago and this went crazy. You are right though: there are houses that are considered 'heritage' and they are very much cottage sized.

Nifty take on childcare-inflation. That also goes along with eduction inflation - everyone is expected to have at least one degree to be a 'professional'. I wonder how else the workforce changed besides the elimination of most farmers and weird shifts in trades.

One of the things they mentioned in problems with pre-fab houses, they noticed that having a 'Big Room' was hard to build and ship in factories. So what they did was combination building: they would have all the small rooms pre-fab built and the large room would be built on-site by the trades.

I wonder if this is why pre-fab homes are less popular. It is just harder to build these mega homes ('made up entirely of large rooms') with pre-fab, so collectively people gave up on them.

Must get to bed... but lots of stuff to mull on. Thank you.

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pinkfootthegoose t1_j7nk222 wrote

They are getting cheaper because you are the product.

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mhornberger t1_j7nkg8h wrote

They were cheaper even before smart TVs. Computer monitors are also cheaper, higher resolution, and so on. And a TV going from $10K to $500 can't be made up by them selling your data.

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pinkfootthegoose t1_j7njzs5 wrote

yes, a car made in the 1970s and earlier was lucky to make it to 100,00 miles and you have a lot more maintenance that added to the yearly cost.

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TimmJimmGrimm t1_j7qfgnt wrote

Not only does the durability of the Toyota-Honda group blow my mind, that pales in comparison to an electric car!

Except the battery of course. So many articles suggest that the bulk of an electric car is the battery that dies in less than ten years - and we are looking forward to a tsunami of car-sized bricks to recycle.

I honestly don't know what to believe at this time. It is nice that my 2003 Matrix still works though.

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pinkfootthegoose t1_j7qg49e wrote

recycling should not be a problem. many old EV batteries can be repurposed as home batteries for a second life.

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TimmJimmGrimm t1_j7qktg3 wrote

I know, right?

Big things, unlike 'toy' batteries. Few elements. Just... melt them down and reuse the parts, yes? An engineer friend of mine suggests it is not so simple.

I do like the idea of using them as house-batteries. If we can find the space?

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94746382926 t1_j7wj2nq wrote

Reddit assumes that any technical advancement is automatically gonna be in the hands of one super monopoly that never lowers prices for any reason.

In reality, there are plenty of competitors driving prices down for most industries.

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MightyH20 t1_j7k4a32 wrote

Its purely theoretical.

Nothing beats Plutonium-237 that provides roughly 200 watts per gram for decades on end without recharging.

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cyberFluke t1_j7k7yim wrote

In the real world, you have to also factor in the auxiliary equipment to support the energy source.

In your particular example, the reactor and shielding makes it rather difficult to drive it around in a small car, and that's before we consider the implications of a rolling nuclear reactor in the hands of your average driver.

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wants2helpuguyz t1_j7ks1gw wrote

The Fallout series did this and it turned out just fine

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cyberFluke t1_j7l55be wrote

That was exactly what I had in mind writing the comment.

o/

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korinth86 t1_j7kqy4p wrote

One that could fit, a radioisotope generator, produce too little current to be useful for basically anything relative to it's size.

So yea...not going to happen anytime soon unless we figure out micro reactors. Which is also slightly terrifying.

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MightyH20 t1_j7odvb9 wrote

You mean like real world small nuclear reactors and atomic batteries?

Just to give you a heads up. This is the real world, Brad.

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r0botdevil t1_j7loxci wrote

Are you seriously advocating for nuclear powered cars?

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MightyH20 t1_j7maas3 wrote

The article isn't about electric cars.

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r0botdevil t1_j7mfbor wrote

The comment you specifically replied to sure is, though.

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mhornberger t1_j7mlaa5 wrote

And batteries store energy, while any mention of nuclear power is about generation. So not really the same thing.

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mhornberger t1_j7ml5v6 wrote

Which doesn't work so well for a car or airplane, alas. We're also unlikely to have nuclear cruise ships, nuclear yachts, etc.

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MightyH20 t1_j7odn8z wrote

Which works and is currently under production as static energy carriers in the form of small nuclear reactors.

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itsgoingtobeebanned t1_j7mortd wrote

What if we invent Plutonium-238? I'm no mathematical wizard but pretty sure 238 > 237.

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whiteknives t1_j7kslx8 wrote

The article never mentioned charge/discharge rates. Nor does it shed any light on manufacturability, which is paramount.

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CutsOfRisk t1_j7li8eg wrote

Manufacturability can be figured out if the battery truly is that much better than everything else.

You are 100% right about the charge and discharge rates. Though even if this can't power cars or planes, for low power applications (ie cell phones) this could still be a game changer

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loercase t1_j7jl4ru wrote

Another day, another revolutionary battery technology.

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PARANOIAH t1_j7jq5ae wrote

Hopefully not another one of those that never make it to market.

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commandersprocket t1_j7jumk4 wrote

lots of dead ends are a sign of *healthy* innovation. If you look at the last 20 years of solar panels you can see the same cycle of hundreds of proposed new types of cells and variations. The result is that many of those have useful understanding of what *not* to do, that corpus of information guides the research that allows for cheaper/better production over time.

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LordOfDorkness42 t1_j7jw1s2 wrote

Not to mention, today's useless trivia night just be tomorrow's billion dollars industry.

Like look at bauxite. Before electricity it was literally considered mine poison that made the ground near useless.

Nowadays it's our main source of aluminium.

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earthwormjim91 t1_j7l43vj wrote

Well, nowadays our main source of aluminum is recycled aluminum. Mining new bauxite and extracting the aluminum is more expensive than just recycling.

Which is how it ultimately will be for a lot of the rare earth metals and stuff for batteries. It will eventually be cheaper and easier to just recycle the batteries than it will be to mine new lithium, cobalt, etc.

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ResponsiblePoet0 t1_j7kyfji wrote

That's actually really comforting. I get so discouraged looking at all these failures, or theoretical technologies that never make it to production, so seeing it in this different light is really nice. Thanks.

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datwunkid t1_j7l01n4 wrote

Not to mention research accumulates knowledge that can be tapped into later.

If it can't get out of the lab and onto the market today, there could be separate breakthroughs in the future that could help it.

Think of all those headlines of creating things with graphene and carbon nanotubes.

It's hyped up as this big revolutionary material that will change our society, but we can't make it at a cost effective scale.

If we ever do make it at scale, then we have so many practical uses ready to try out.

Or if we can't make it at scale, maybe we can find a very niche, but viable use for them that is worth the extremely high cost of them.

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ShadowDV t1_j7ltbyx wrote

They aren’t failures, they are steps along the way to innovation

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TimmJimmGrimm t1_j7qgf7v wrote

I was taught that each amazing break through is often in one dimension of the battery problem-set: expands-when-charged, holds-charge, charge-time, heats-when-(dis)charged, explosive/leaky, max-charge, etc, etc.

When each new technology is added into the meta-loop, it often adds 1% more overall efficiency. This is huge if you can do this ten times in ten years.

Engineering is a tough job, but it certainly sounds like a job that makes a huge difference to society.

Edit: here is an article from Ars Technics from 2021 - batteries have improved over a decade.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/05/eternally-five-years-away-no-batteries-are-improving-under-your-nose/

I bet that this continues to happen every year, the tortoise trying to win the tech-race.

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bawng t1_j7mrsyn wrote

Another day, another ignorant comment about battery technology.

Over the last decade or so, battery density has more than tripled, while at the same time become both cheaper and more long-lived.

Today's batteried in your old Nokia would give you months of use on a single charge.

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Doug7070 t1_j7m1btq wrote

If I had a dollar for every news story on Reddit about a revolutionary new battery technology that never actually pans out, I'd probably have enough by now to buy my own lab to start researching a revolutionary new battery technology...

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nastratin OP t1_j7jj91r wrote

In the lab at least, its materials are stable for over 1,000 cycles

Current lithium-based batteries are based on intercalation—lithium ions squeeze into spaces within electrode materials such as graphite. As a result, most of the battery's volume and bulk is dedicated to things that don't contribute to carrying charges between the electrodes, which sets a limit on the sorts of energy densities that these technologies can reach.

As a result, a lot of research has gone into finding ways of getting rid of one these electrode materials. People have tried pairing lithium-metal electrodes with various materials, while other efforts have tried using electrodes where lithium reacts with air to form lithium-oxygen compounds. While these worked by some measures, they tended to have problems that drastically shortened their useful lifetimes.

But a recent paper describes a battery that uses lithium metal at one electrode and lithium air for the second. By some measures, the battery has decent performance out to over 1,000 charge/discharge cycles.

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bingojed t1_j7lkeeq wrote

The phrases “by some measures” and “decent performance” are kinda loaded. “By a small number of measures” and “maintains 51% performance” could mean the same thing.

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Few-Swordfish-780 t1_j7kukr9 wrote

Just like every other battery announcement, I will believe it when I see it in a production car.

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merkitt t1_j7ldft6 wrote

Do you now believe the battery breakthrough announcements from 5-6 years ago? Because that's at least how long it takes for something proven in the lab to be commercially mass produced. Current EVs literally have double the range of the first EV I bought.

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Few-Swordfish-780 t1_j7le1wb wrote

Yes, I believed them when they actually came to market.

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dryfire t1_j7mlume wrote

Sounds like /r/futurology might not be your cup of tea. Early looks at unproven tech is kinda it's whole thing.

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Orc_ t1_j7o8hjt wrote

yea this isn't /r/technology, a lot of users here need to chill with the "BUT WHAT IS THE MSRP AND RELEASE DATE?!".

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FuturologyBot t1_j7jlq98 wrote

The following submission statement was provided by /u/nastratin:

In the lab at least, its materials are stable for over 1,000 cycles

Current lithium-based batteries are based on intercalation—lithium ions squeeze into spaces within electrode materials such as graphite. As a result, most of the battery's volume and bulk is dedicated to things that don't contribute to carrying charges between the electrodes, which sets a limit on the sorts of energy densities that these technologies can reach.

As a result, a lot of research has gone into finding ways of getting rid of one these electrode materials. People have tried pairing lithium-metal electrodes with various materials, while other efforts have tried using electrodes where lithium reacts with air to form lithium-oxygen compounds. While these worked by some measures, they tended to have problems that drastically shortened their useful lifetimes.

But a recent paper describes a battery that uses lithium metal at one electrode and lithium air for the second. By some measures, the battery has decent performance out to over 1,000 charge/discharge cycles.

Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/10vuq0g/new_battery_seems_to_offer_it_all/j7jj91r/

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KomputerIdiat t1_j7ng8af wrote

I'll pack this along the other battery articles like the salt one that can be recharged infinitely.

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thisimpetus t1_j7p5itq wrote

ITT: kids who know nothing about what they're talking about being really confidently pessimistic because they've seen that upvoted before

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chrisinsocalif t1_j7kzivz wrote

I keep seeing new technology announcements but never see them hit the market. I will believe it when I see it come out.

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too-legit-to-quit t1_j7kyay3 wrote

New battery tech is like cures for cancer.

Every day there's a new article about some bombshell new direction and none of them ever see the light of day in reality.

At least they're selling ads. Doing god's work.

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invent_or_die t1_j7kz8rt wrote

Baby steps are still steps.

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kidicarus89 t1_j7n0o7v wrote

No these guys want the kind of science that they know from movies, where a lone scientist tinkering in his basement stumbles upon a revolutionary invention purely through sheer determination and luck.

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Shoddy-Return-680 t1_j7nv33p wrote

I was employed at Tesla as a lower-level employee, I invented a technology that was a first review granted patent. I did it on my own in the field and at home under the Tesla umbrella. Sometimes it is a lone scientist in his basement, I don't have a basement though so it was more in the yard at home and on Walmart rooftops during the MC4/Helios H4 thermal event remediation.

"Drying Cartridge for Outdoor Electrical Components" Jonathan Vucic

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JCDU t1_j7l538c wrote

Mostly it's the journalists and/or university PR departments over-hyping it, usually the scientists are just releasing papers that get picked up & blown out of proportion.

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