
Battery Reality: There’s Nothing Better Than Lithium-Ion Coming Soon - onetimemanytime
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-04-03/battery-reality-there-s-nothing-better-than-lithium-ion-coming-soon
======
airbreather
Western Australia, the Saudi Arabia of lithium, currently producing half the
world's lithium and more coming on line.

Albermarle are building a LiOH plant in WA that will add 33% capacity to
current world production on it's own, plus the Tianqi plant adding maybe 15%
is half finished construction right now.

We are the also the Saudi Arabia of gas/LNG, plus as a state produce a metric
fuckton of the worlds gold and iron ore, but a pity our state and federal
governments practically give all our minerals away for trivial royalties and
tax the sheeple to the hilt on personal tax...

(plus we have a homeless and public mental health problems due to "lack of
funding"" in one of the richest mineral states in the world with only 2.6
million people in an area almost size of Western Europe).

~~~
RobertoG
Maybe Australia should follow Norway sovereign fund idea:

"I don't think anyone expected the fund to ever reach $1 trillion when the
first transfer of oil revenue was made in May 1996."

From: [https://money.cnn.com/2017/09/19/investing/norway-pension-
fu...](https://money.cnn.com/2017/09/19/investing/norway-pension-fund-
trillion-dollars/index.html)

~~~
pytester
In theory every country rich in natural resources should follow Norway's
example but in practice the presence of natural resources tends to exert a
strong corrupting influence on both the economy and the political system:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse)

~~~
marvin
Norway only dodged this because we had a supremely visionary Iraqi visit the
authorities, and managed to convince them of this danger while the industrial
influence was still small enough for government to manage. It's a remarkably
lucky coincidence.

~~~
aembleton
Planet Money made an episode about this
[http://www.podcasts.com/npr_planet_money_podcast/episode/301...](http://www.podcasts.com/npr_planet_money_podcast/episode/301_norways_got_advice_for_libya)

~~~
sseppola
Thanks!

------
wesammikhail
It depends on the application.

There are plenty of applications where Li-ion is not the optimal solution. Li-
ion is not the defacto standard for a myriad of reasons in various sectors.
Certain massive installations have requirements that li-ion cannot work for.
For consumer electronics, maybe li-ion is the best thing we have but for other
applications there are breakthroughs made on yearly basis.

Enerpoly for instance have prototyped Zinc-Manganese batteries that have great
life-cycle, are rechargeable and have great power output for less than
40euro/KWh. In the next few years you will see more and more solutions
targeting specific industries and needs. Li-ion is not a silver bullet as its
production cost and lifetime is not the greatest of all the solutions offered.

[http://enerpoly.com/technology/](http://enerpoly.com/technology/)

Full Disclosure: I know the CEO of the company and this is not an ad or
anything like that. I just want people to pay more attention to upcoming
improvements in the sector.

~~~
indentit
This. For example, for people with old fashioned ICE cars like me, Li-ion
isn't going to replace my lead acid battery for SLI (starting, lights and
ignition) any time soon in -30 degrees C temperatures ;)

~~~
systemBuilder
We will regulate your entire car out of existence. Soon.

~~~
reitzensteinm
Even if parent were making the comment you thought you were relying to, you're
in a bubble if you genuinely believe that ICEs are going to be regulated out
of existence any time soon.

~~~
toomuchtodo
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase-
out_of_fossil_fuel_vehic...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase-
out_of_fossil_fuel_vehicles#Countries_with_a_full_ban_enacted_into_law)

Costa Rica has banned new combustion vehicle sales as of 2021, Norway 2025,
and other countries 2030-2040. As EVs go mainstream, I expect those deadlines
to be pulled forward.

~~~
reitzensteinm
Costa Rica installed their first public charger in 2017, and has a $10k GDP
per capita. The details in this Clean Technica article are damning for this
claim. It's pure post election puffery and the plan will be quietly set aside.

Norway is aggressive, but the rest of Europe is generally targeting 2030. I'm
not expecting the US to even come close to the EU, as range is a much larger
factor there.

[https://cleantechnica.com/2018/12/31/costa-rica-is-on-the-
br...](https://cleantechnica.com/2018/12/31/costa-rica-is-on-the-brink-of-an-
evolution-cleantechnica-exclusive/)

------
tim333
Zinc based batteries seem to have promise for grid energy. Enerpoly was
mentioned yesterday
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19586068](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19586068)
and NantEnergy have been making them:
[https://www.altenergymag.com/article/2019/03/zinc-air-
batter...](https://www.altenergymag.com/article/2019/03/zinc-air-battery-
technology/30652)

>The raw materials that we use are nearly 17 times lower cost than materials
used in lithium-ion

which suggests they could end up cheaper than Li Ion when production scales
up. Nant who claim $100/kWh say:

>We feel that $100/KWh is just the tipping point, as our fundamental raw
material cost of zinc is just $2-$3/KWh. Today, commercially available zinc
batteries are already below $30/KWh. Long term, we see a clear path to a very
low-cost battery option that would be disruptive to the entire energy
industry.

I guess the 30/KWh are non rechargeable ones. Enerpoly say 40euro/KWh but I've
a feeling that's projected rather than realised.

~~~
wesammikhail
Hey Tim, you linked to my Enerpoly post from earlier.

Enerpoly actually have a working massively rechargeable prototype produced for
way less than 40. We´ll have to wait and see the final cost at scale but the
whole thing certainly looks promising!

~~~
elcritch
Could you elaborate on the state of the prototypes and the remaining
challenges to scaling to production units? Curious as a material scientist
what type of issues arise with rechargeable zinc/manganese!

~~~
wesammikhail
I am not an expert on the topic. All I know is that the production procedure
is almost the exact same as regular zinc batteries. Any facility that can
produce regular zinc batteries today can produce these. The difference is just
in the chemical compounds used. The prototype is currently being tested 24/7
to ensure that they can deliver what they promise in terms of life cycle and
output over an extended period of time.

Enerpoly is planning on mass-producing and selling these battery cells within
the next few years (R&D + business and production line takes time to setup).
My understanding is that the scaling process is relatively easy as industry
standards will apply here due to their technology´s backwards compatibility
with existing production methods.

If you have any specific questions that you´d like me to forward to their CEO,
feel free to shoot me an email and I will put you in touch.

~~~
tim333
I'm curious what edge your guys have over NantEnergy. CNBC have an interview
with their "billionaire LA Times owner" CEO by the way. He seems quite an
interesting character [https://www.cnbc.com/video/2018/09/26/patrick-soon-
shiong-on...](https://www.cnbc.com/video/2018/09/26/patrick-soon-shiong-on-
holy-grail-zinc-air-battery-nantenergy.html)

------
spenrose
The article states:

1\. The price of Lithium will drop by half in the next five years: "prices,
which averaged $1,160 per kilowatt hour in 2010, reached $176 per kWh last
year and could drop below $100 in 2024".

2\. Tweaks to the formulation "could boost the energy storage of a lithium-ion
battery by 20 percent or more".

3\. Supply is going to increase: "Capacity now stands at 302.2 gigawatt-hours,
and plants with another 603.8 GWh are planned to open within the next five
years."

So there _is_ something better coming: in a few years we will have vastly more
batteries, which worker better, and cost much less. It's just that they'll be
an evolution of lithium-ion rather than a brand new technology.

~~~
Latteland
Tesla is already at $100-150/kwh.

~~~
ianai
Source?

That ultimately reflects better on Tesla’s bottom line than current or near
term electric car production across the industry. They’re not selling their
batteries at cost to other manufacturers. Until the rest of the industry is at
their level the full effects of those lower prices won’t be realized in the
market.

~~~
systemBuilder
Nissan accidentally leaked their battery cost for the Leaf, $140/kwh. But they
don't do cooling so their batteries die twice as fast as they have to ...
Panasonic was livid about this ...

~~~
spenrose
Our 2015 model year Leaf has not had any observable loss of range, FWIW.

~~~
m463
Apparently they had a reformulated chemistry, that might help.

However, I think the climate you live in has a profound effect:

[http://www.electricvehiclewiki.com/wiki/battery-capacity-
los...](http://www.electricvehiclewiki.com/wiki/battery-capacity-loss/)

scroll down to the battery aging table depending on location.

If you live in Juneau, Alaska you're probably good for a _while_.

Maybe taking steps like not charging to 100% and not discharging below 20%
will help.

------
sytelus
I went to article hoping to read some story like researchers have spend X
million hours looking at Y thousand chemicals and nothing better is found.
Instead the article sounds like directly published by lithion-ion lobby
essentially saying that there is too much legacy now with us and nothing new
would be accepted so don't even try. Right. If someone found battery that
produces 10X more kWh in 10X less form factor, I'm sure this can easily be
changed.

~~~
yogthos
Completely agree, a battery with 10x capacity would be huge. Imagine having
mobile devices that only need to be charged once a week or so.

There's one promising approach using fluoride that's being investigated right
now. It's only a matter of time until this or something similar comes to
market.
[http://science.sciencemag.org/content/362/6419/1144](http://science.sciencemag.org/content/362/6419/1144)

~~~
zimmund
> Imagine having mobile devices that only need to be charged once a week or
> so.

In practice we would have devices consuming 10x more power. The battery from
your phone would probably power a phone from 2005 for more than a week.

~~~
abandonliberty
Didn't phones from 2005 last for a week :)

Joking aside, a blackberry bold from 2011 had 1200mah and the samsung s10 has
3400.

------
torpfactory
Here's an interesting argument WHY you still might choose lithium ion (or
whatever you use for automotive storage) for stationary storage instead of
some other technology.

Total electricity generation in 2012 was ~21k TWh. Say you need ~8 hours of
battery storage daily (i.e. 1/3 of daily use). That works out to about 19k GWh
of battery storage, assuming you can recharge daily. For reference, Tesla's
Gigafactory produces ~35GWh of batteries per year currently.

Total oil consumption for road transport was ~2k Mtoe in 2012. That works out
to 23k TWh of energy. Assume you only need half of that when you go from a
heat engine to an electric motor. Now you've got 11.5k TWh of total use. Now
assume that you recharge your vehicle nightly. The world would need ~32k GWh
of batteries to hold all of the energy currently used for road-going vehicles
(given the above assumptions).

The market for whatever battery technology that works for automobiles is the
same order of magnitude as the market for grid-scale storage. If you're a
battery maker, you can increase your total addressable market by selling into
both automotive and grid-attached storage.

------
aphextron
The good thing is we don’t really need anything better than lithium ion for
most applications (aerospace excluded). Solid state electrolyte lithium ion
will get us to 400Wh/kg, which is more than enough for cheap cars with 400+
mile range.

~~~
shrimp_emoji
I think the average BEEFY desktop PC uses 300 to 600 W in practice (idle or
full load). Let's call it 400 W.

1 kg is 2 lbs.

Also, an iPhone 5 is 0.112 kg.

If 400 Wh/kg is the best lithium will take us, then we'll never have iPhone
5-sized or weighted devices capable of the same power as a desktop PC, and if
we did they'd need to have a battery weighing 1 kg to be capable of it for
even one hour. So the mobile and desktop ecosystems will be forever apart.
That's sad.

Also, what kind of mileage does 400 Wh/kg get you for artificial hearts? (It
may be good; I don't know; but, whatever it is, you'd probably like it to be
better if you had one.)

~~~
laurencerowe
A mains powered a 400W iPhone 5 sized device seems impractical from a heat
dissipation standpoint.

~~~
hopler
Heat is a by product of design flaws.

~~~
laurencerowe
All power ends up as heat. If a device consumes 400W of power it is going to
put out 400W of heat in some form or other. Fix the design flaw so it puts out
less heat and it will consume less power and no longer be a 400W device.

------
bufferoverflow
I predict this title will not age well. The progress is accelerating. Material
science is getting revolutionized by cheap computation and large-scale
simulations.

~~~
dredmorbius
There's only so much room at the top of the periodic table.

~~~
bufferoverflow
So? Alloys, compounds, and metamaterials give you an almost infinite search
space.

~~~
dredmorbius
There are limits to electronic charges found, period.

Adding additional elements increases mass.

[https://youtube.com/watch?v=AdPqWv-eVIc](https://youtube.com/watch?v=AdPqWv-
eVIc)

~~~
bufferoverflow
So? We don't know what we don't know. We might find some way to store energy
within chemical bonds like fuel (39,405 Wh/kg limit of liquid H2) or nuclear
(8,700,000,000 Wh/kg of Pu-239) or matter-antimatter interaction
(24,965,421,631,578 Wh/kg).

Current lab records of 1000-2000 Wh/kg are just a start, we're far far away
from hitting any limits.

~~~
dredmorbius
In this case, we do. Really.

------
AngryData
The problem isn't that we don't know how to make more powerful batteries right
now, the problem is safety. The more powerful your battery, generally the more
dangerous/flammable/explosive it is when it fails. The only reason we can even
use lithium ion batteries as much as we do is their exceedingly low failure
rate. So not only does any new and better batteries need to hold more power,
they need to be more stable and have more graceful failure modes.

~~~
ianai
Agreed, which is why I always look to see stories about solid state lithium
batteries. The documentary I saw on them made them look ready for use.

~~~
barney54
Sadly solid state is not currently ready on a large scale. There is still
significant work to be done in large part to use a solid state electrolyte.

------
stcredzero
The article says nothing about technologies formulated for larger scales
(literally "cheap as dirt") like molten salt.

[https://blog.ted.com/reinventing-the-battery-donald-
sadoway-...](https://blog.ted.com/reinventing-the-battery-donald-sadoway-at-
ted2012/)

We may have to wait for utility scale storage using Li-ion to become big, to
spur investment for alternative utility scale storage which could beat Li-ion
cost at scale.

------
travisoneill1
I remember hearing about a sugar powered fuel cell battery that was being
developed a few years ago. Supposedly would be able to bring energy density up
close to hydrocarbon fuels. I guess it didn't go anywhere, though, as there
doesn't seem to be any news around it.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugar_battery](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugar_battery)

------
ChuckMcM
It is useful to look at what it took for Nickel Cadmium to be replaced. (NiCd
used to be the dominant rechargable battery tech which had replaced PbSO4).
Nickel metal hydride came in and replaced the "big" negative of cell memory
for NiCd (so it took out a big user facing 'gotcha' to the tech.) LiOn
replaced the weight of NiMH which was a big user facing gotcha.

The next battery technology will have to be as light as LiON, have similar
power densities, and be impervious to catching on fire I think (that is the
current 'gotcha' of using LiON batteries today).

~~~
zild3d
The current user-facing gotcha isn't fire, it's capacity.

Consumers aren't walking around worrying that their headphones, watch, or
phone might explode (except for the brief galaxy note stint). They are worried
their phone is going to die before they get to a charger, will their laptop
last through the meeting, will their headphones die mid-flight

~~~
ChuckMcM
I think those are the same problem :-) But I may be looking at it in a way
that is slightly different than you are.

The way I see it, capacity is unbounded if size is unbounded, you can just
have giant batteries. But if size is bounded (as it is in cell phones,
laptops, cars, etc) then capacity is a function of energy density. And the
'flaming battery pack' problem is a function of energy density. The more
surface area, and thinner the electrolyte layer, the more dendrite development
you get and the those are the things that start fires.

The Galaxy is a good example of the trade-off, they made a battery with as
much capacity as possible, that lead to a an area that was 'pinched' which
allowed for dendrites to short, which caused phones to catch on fire. If the
battery had 10% less capacity (the fix as I recall) the dimensions can be
smaller and the fit better. No pinch, no fires.

~~~
mntmoss
IMHO the experienced future is likely to continue seeing improvements for a
good many years without battery technology changes, for the smaller consumer
devices. Vehicles aren't going to get hugely more efficient without something
massively disruptive like an efficient levitation technology but for a lot of
electronics now, things like backlit screens present a bottleneck, and these
can be tackled at multiple layers:

* Changing the types of device(screenless device, external display with its own battery, wireless peripherals)

* Improving average-case device environment(further standardization of charging methods, external displays as part of furnishings)

* Miniaturization and efficiency improvements of the internal hardware and software("battery with a phone attached" becomes increasingly true year over year and I have been living with an all-day battery phone for several years now)

Although energy density is a critical enabler, and we could definitely benefit
from some jet-fuel-grade density in our alternate energy sources, the larger-
scale stuff is also just a lot harder to tackle in a short time frame because
it's more infrastructure-dependent. Rethinking our cities is a necessary step,
one way or another.

------
FabHK
Bad news for electrically powered aviation. Cost is coming down, but the
specific energy (kWh per kg) is not going up.

So, probably no useful "flying car" anytime soon.

------
KirinDave
Didn't we just see last year that a stabilized sodium-ion battery is partway
through productization work[0] and proofs of concept are available? I can't
find any mention of this fairly important and rapid work in the article?

Lithium Ion batteries will be cheaper for a while, but once sodium ion
batteries can be produced at scale it'll greatly reduce global dependence on
very specific regions for high yield lithium mines. The net result will be
cheaper batteries.

[0]:
[https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/09/180912111913.h...](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/09/180912111913.htm)

~~~
maxerickson
There's a couple hundred dollars of lithium in a 100 kw-hour battery. It isn't
particularly driving the cost.

~~~
KirinDave
And if that was 10 dollars of sodium, that sounds like a pretty big cost
reduction to me? Sodium is cheap to extract from all sorts of sources, less
toxic to humans than lithium pre-processing, and you don't have to move it
around the world.

Sodium batteries don't just replace the lithium, they also use phosphorus
electrodes. Also easy to source.

~~~
fmajid
The most important benefit of sodium batteries is safety, they don't suffer
from the runaway thermal failures of LiIon. The 10% or so cost advantage
itself is not compelling.

~~~
KirinDave
The ability to source parts globally and without scarcity seems pretty damn
compelling.

And the lack of thermal runaway means you can have cheaper charging and
regulation features on the battery.

------
ksec
When could we get a Lithium-Ion Solid Battery or is that a pipe dream? I once
read it was used in extreme small quantities, sort of in AAA Battery size for
Military purpose, but it was not a well known source of publication. And I
could not find other evidence.

While it is important to further drive down the price for EV adoption, the
price of battery makes little different to devices I am interested in, such as
Phones, Tablet and Notebook. We want higher energy density, and even the
optimistic projection we could get only 30% more from better formula in the
next 5 years.

Battery is already the taking the largest volume in these devices, Not only do
I want my iPhone thinner, ( The current iPhone is thicker, I prefer it to be
iPhone 6 ~6.7mm or even iPad Pro 5.8mm thick ) I want it to have more battery.
Which means we need to increase the battery density by at leat 50% compared to
today to hit a useful battery life improvement while having a thinner design.

Then there is other improvement we want such as rapid charging and higher
cycle counts.

~~~
audunw
Still the most promising I've heard of is Solid Energy Systems. They claimed
to be selling batteries to the aerospace field already. In their last
presentation it seemed like their challenge is cycle life, but that it's
improving. But there's been a while since there's been any news from that
company.

[http://www.solidenergysystems.com](http://www.solidenergysystems.com)

------
DennisP
If a new battery tech like fluoride batteries has much more capacity but is
more expensive because it's not produced at scale yet, a solution is to do
exactly what Tesla did in the first place: put it first in expensive high-end
cars and gradually work down the value chain. It'd be easy to charge a premium
for an electric car with a 1500-mile range.

~~~
anovikov
If a car with 1500-mile range will become a reality with any chemistry, it
will not appear first. These (fantastic) batteries with 4-5x the energy
density of modern li-ion, will go into a much more profitable use: electric
airplanes.

Not sure if these ever appear though. This seems to push not just the limits
of technology, but even the laws of physics.

~~~
pdxww
An airplane usually spends 1-2 hours in the airport between flights. During
that period it needs to be recharged.

~~~
stubish
Or the battery needs to be swapped out with one that was charged while it was
in the air.

------
Matador79
In terms of electricity, this company is still refining its design, but most
energy used in industrial is heat energy and these guys are solving it.
[https://1414degrees.com.au/](https://1414degrees.com.au/)

~~~
2sk21
Can the stored heat can be converted to electric power or is it intended to be
used as such?

------
vixen99
"The annual output of Tesla’s Gigafactory, the world’s largest battery
factory, could store three minutes’ worth of annual U.S. electricity demand.
It would require 1,000 years of production to make enough batteries for two
days’ worth of U.S. electricity demand. Meanwhile, 50–100 pounds of materials
are mined, moved, and processed for every pound of battery produced."

[https://media4.manhattan-
institute.org/sites/default/files/R...](https://media4.manhattan-
institute.org/sites/default/files/R-0319-MM.pdf)

------
jalajc
“It’s not going to handle a day, a week, a month, a season,” said Moniz

I believe that way solar thermal based approach is going to be future; energy
stored in form of intrinsic heat of a liquified salt solutions (by the
concentrated solar beam), or may be for that matter simply inside heated
stones (by solar CSP), and then passing water to convert in steam and run
turbines!! But ya that will be for grid level solution, not the mobile
electronics' power source.

------
mrfusion
I’ve always liked the idea of batteries based on ATP. It’s the energy currency
of the cell, why not use it to power out batteries.

------
dontbenebby
Forgive my ignorance, but what are some of the "less good" options? I ask
since it's my understanding L-ion supplies are not infinite, so it's probably
good to think about alternatives if the price spikes.

(For example, I'm not an EE, but is it possible that if you're willing to
tolerate a bulkier rig for a device to store charge in capacitors?)

~~~
Tepix
Lithium is widely available, it's the fourth most common element in the
Earth's crust.

~~~
pfdietz
Lithium is not the fourth most abundant element in the Earth's crust (that
would be iron). Lithium is #33 (by mass), at about 20 ppm.

~~~
allannienhuis
What's interesting to me is that neither of you provided sources for your
claim. On what basis should I accept either of them?

Not trying to be a jerk :) And I know not every statement deserves footnotes.
Just thought it interesting that even in the case of refuting someone else's
information it doesn't happen (often). :)

~~~
dontbenebby
>Not trying to be a jerk :) And I know not every statement deserves footnotes.

Do you think these statements deserved footnotes? Did you attempt to verify
the claim and find it difficult to find a corroborating source?

Sources are good, but many people use "have a source for that" as DOS attack
on civil discourse.

~~~
allannienhuis
I think in the case of a rebuttal, particularly when the original statement
didn't provide any source, it is a useful practice to provide some type of
source - even if was a simple reference. eg 'wikipedia' or '1st result on
google!'.

Otherwise it's just a really uninteresting he-said-she-said back and forth,
no?

I really don't think every statement of fact needs references - this isn't
scientific paper writing. But where someone is calling out something specific
as incorrect, I think its often worth a little bit extra effort to avoid
things degenerating into something not much more interesting than name
calling.

That said, neither of those folks owe me anything. :) I'm just happy I get to
learn new things once in a while on HN.

------
mips_avatar
Current lithium-ion technology in the pipeline will probably get us to 400watt
hours/kilogram and $50-100 / Kwh. Just having that would give us 700 mile
range electric cars. And if the glass substrate stuff dr. Goodenough is doing
pans out we could see charge speeds 10x faster. So like 300 miles of range in
the time it takes to pee.

~~~
tcd
The problem is, however, the longevity of these batteries. In the smartphone
world, we've seen a huge emphasis on "50% charge in 10 seconds" but I like to
believe batteries weren't designed with that in mind.

I refuse to use 'fast charging' since I believe it will reduce the life span
of the battery (which I guess is what they want so you buy a new phone).

If it can be proven batteries can charge much faster AND have an acceptable
life span, that's okay. But I don't think that's going to happen any time
soon.

~~~
callalex
I have started viewing the batteries in my electronics the same way that I do
the tires on my vehicle. Sometimes it's fun to push the limits which eats up
the tires faster, but they're not that hard to swap out when they're depleted.
I refuse to buy electronics that can't have the battery swapped with half an
hour of work and some tiny screwdrivers (no glue!).

------
Causality1
Every time you see one of those "amazing new battery technology" articles,
just do a Find on the word "patent". If the creators don't think it's worth
patenting you can skip reading the rest of the article because it has no
chance of real world application.

~~~
Scoundreller
We all know the story: someone's uncle invented it. The government refused to
give him a patent, and then he died before he could tell anyone about it.

------
lawrenceyan
Super capacitors are where the real innovation is going to come in the next
few years.

Look to see them implemented in high end performance cars like the Tesla
Roadster within a year or two, and then make their way into the mainstream
through the Tesla Semi, Y, S, X the generation after.

------
chroem-
They use the same Li-Ion chemistry, but structural composite batteries are on
the near term horizon. You get extra capacity "for free" since they also serve
as the physical structure of the car/cellphone/aircraft.

~~~
cimmanom
That sounds potentially incredibly scary if you get into a fender-bender.

~~~
chroem-
They use LiFePO4 so it's chemically inert, and it's protected from shorting
out due to mechanical damage because the entire composite acts as a
thermoresettable fuse.

~~~
mrkstu
The next question is how do you repair damage in that scenario?

~~~
chroem-
Composite structures don't tend to be very repairable in general, but if it's
localized damage usually you will just glue a patch in place.

------
nabla9
Let's hope that lithium becomes economic in the future. Currently recycling
lithium costs five times more than mining it and it's not done in large scale.

------
varelaz
Does anyone know status of mechanical accumulator project. I've heard that
flywheel could be promising, while it has its flaws.

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theothermkn
The article’s premise is that Li-ion can’t be disrupted because of the amount
of current infrastructure built to produce them. I can’t help but hear a
little desperation in this line of argumentation. I’m no expert, but isn’t
this actually the kind of thing that we imagine vested interests in every
entrenched industry saying just before they’re disrupted?

For example, if flow batteries take less capital to produce. Or, if they take
different equipment, maybe their capital would be cheaper, given a lack of
demand?

~~~
the8472
the TL;DR is economies of scale favor li-ion for the next few years even if
other technology is superior in principle

~~~
ianai
There are probably some examples of how economies of scale discrepancies can
be overcome by external market conditions from the WWII/I days. (Steel?
Aluminum?) Basically government or significantly increased demand for those
alternatives could push past the benefits of economies of scale of existing
tech. Pricing carbon emissions or political outrage from the effects of
climate change could do it.

~~~
imtringued
That's basically what happened with PV. Germany invested in it, costs came
down and now it's profitable in the private market. Turns out our governments
(and the free market) don't invest enough into promising technologies and if
they do they will see great progress.

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xbmcuser
Personally to me the weird thing is that most people on hacker news or even in
general make up their mind about something and stick with it. I have noticed
it the most when it comes to solar and battery news as the tech is improving
at such a breakneck speed that what you find out today might no longer be true
1-2 years from now.

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baybal2
I am surprised to see a competent opinion on a technical topic in a popular
business journal

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zackmorris
I just did a quick search and it looks like the consumer price of li-ion is
more like $250 to $400 per kWh by 1000 * dollars/(volts * amphours), so the
bulk price of $176 from the article is believable:

[https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=lithium+ion+battery+48V...](https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=lithium+ion+battery+48V+50AH)

I challenge the idea that Li-ion is the lowest price though, because it's one
of the densest storage options.

The actual cheapest (lowest density) energy storage known is gravity, at a
potential energy of E = mgh, so we get roughly 9.8 J per kilogram-meter of
height. 1 kWh = 3.6e6 J, so with something like a 95% efficiency winch
generator, that's E/(g * efficiency) = 3.6e6/(9.8 * .95) = 387,000 kg or right
at 175 metric tons (cubic meters of water). A 90% efficient one-way trip with
pumped hydro storage would be 408,000 kg or 185 metric tons. Note that round-
trip effiency is the square of one-way, so remember to take the square root of
any reported round-trip efficiencies when calculating displacements.

An olympic swimming pool holds 2500 cubic meters of water, so that's 2500/185
= 13.5 kWh per meter raised. The average US home uses just over 10 kWh per
day. So a good rule of thumb to remember is 1 olympic swimming pool raised 1
meter powers 1 home for 1 day.

After writing all of this out, I think that the cheapest energy storage will
be to pump air down tubes to big bags under the ocean (or lakes) to displace
water. Since volume grows by the cube but surface area only grows by the
square, this is the only scalable energy storage system that doesn't require
access to a reservoir or oil well. Also since it only requires 1 atmosphere of
pressure per 9.8 meters of depth, the low compression might be close to an
adiabatic process by not raising the air temperature much, and could get close
to an 85% one-way (72% round-trip) efficiency. I feel like by PV = T, for each
doubling of pressure but halving of volume, the temperature should stay the
same. Maybe someone more experienced with entropy can provide an equation for
what percentage is lost per atmosphere of compression, say at 50 F (10 C)
ground/water temperature:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compressed_air_energy_storage#...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compressed_air_energy_storage#Adiabatic)

Hey it looks like they're already doing this in Toronto:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GicQwXbNnv0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GicQwXbNnv0)

But I think it's always good to derive an idea from first principles instead
of taking someone's word for it. So I'd put money on this as an alternative to
batteries. And just so we have it, about 4 of the $600, 2400 WH Chevy Volt
batteries at a total cost of $2400 would also power a home for a day (not
counting inverters).

~~~
imtringued
If your gravity battery isn't based on water then it's just vaporware like the
thousands of other gravity batteries.

~~~
allannienhuis
Did you look at the linked video of the pilot in Toronto? That doesn't seem
like vaporware to me? It may or may not meet its goals, but it's a pretty
simple concept to execute on I think.

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michaelcampbell
I've joked in YC before that it's about time for the semi-annual mind-blowing
battery technology announcement, so this was a bit of a surprise.

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thoughtstheseus
What happened to those train batteries?

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iamgopal
Elon knew it 10+ year ago. Also given amount of intellectual and monetary
capital being employed, I think sooner or later, Li batteries with the help of
combined efforts will beat gasoline in energy density.

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dstick
I have nothing to add except that the title “Batter Reality:” would have been
objectively better.

Enjoy your weekend :)

