

Google Gets into Battery Arms Race - antouank
http://www.wsj.com/articles/google-gets-into-battery-arms-race-1428694613

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timdellinger
Here's my read on the tea leaves that hint at what's going on at Google:

It looks to me like they're probably dumping ~$3 million/year into a battery
lab, which gives them state-of-the-art testing facilities and in-house
expertise, and thus the ability to knowledgeably stay on top of what's going
on in the battery space, what's real and what's not, and the strengths and
weaknesses of different technologies.

The probability that Google will invent something important is low, but the
business value of having a battery group justifies the cost, given the
importance of batteries in portable devices, electric cars, solar energy
storage, etc.

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Retric
Google has built enough devices / systems in house _Google Glass_ , _Nexus_ ,
_Self driving car,_ solar, and various computer systems that having a small
but world class team for battery technology is probably a no brainer. IMO it’s
less about keeping ahead of the curve so much as avoiding dumb mistakes.

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agumonkey
Also the fact that processing information to control energy forms (light,
sounds, emw, etc) is not the bottleneck anymore.

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ctdonath
Tangential thought: is there a sane physical upper limit to power
storage/generation in a given space (say, 1cc)? Sometimes helps to bracket the
question to predict what's possible & reasonable. (Comparable ex.: total
maximum possible solar energy capture is 1367 watts/m^2; circumstances will
limit that around 10%)

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ethbro
_> is there a sane physical upper limit to power storage/generation in a given
space (say, 1cc)?_

Start off with e=mc^2, revise downward with appropriate number of engineering
constraints.

I'd imagine in practice that gets limited mostly by battery chemistry. So
something like total reaction energy of components * conversion efficiency -
conversion machinery mass - packaging / safety mass.

Which, afaict, is why "battery breakthroughs" all tend to be in the chemistry
or conversion efficiency.

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deeviant
As I understand it, much of the "battery breakthroughs" are generally along
the lines of attempting to create a balance between capacity, discharge-
recharge rate, safety and cost. The conversion efficiency of most batters is
pretty good, it's making a long lasting, high capacity, quickly
discharging/recharging and safe battery that's also cheap that is difficult.

While pretty much everything above is related to chemistry/conversion
efficiency, I was just trying to define the efforts a bit more along the
goals.

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r00fus
The only story I see here is that Google is leaking some of their strategy.

I doubt Apple, Tesla or other heavily battery-tech-dependent companies would
allow their staff to even hint about this kind of research.

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pinewurst
I've been seeing a few of these sort of leaks lately. I have a feeling that
it's to counter a shifting perception of Google. I'm willing to bet that this
innovation will have the same real world impact as all of the other ones
"leaked" so far.

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Gabriel_Martin
I can't tell if this is great news, due to having a powerhouse with a massive
cash war chest lumbering toward this goal, or terrible news, because it will
Google-ize the hiring verticals surrounding this industry.

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melling
It brings a lot more money to the problem. Doesn't that usually increase
innovation in tech? Yes, Google will gobble up some of the startup innovators
but doesn't that encourage more startups?

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barefootford
"The company’s latest self-driving car runs on batteries recharged by
electricity." I'm missing something, aren't all batteries recharged by
electricity?

