• helenslunch@feddit.nl
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    4 months ago

    Every day it feels like we’re getting closer to battery revolution.

    It’s been “every day” for as long as I can remember. Some new world-changing battery tech is right around the corner, but never manages to appear in consumer vehicles…

    • Dave@lemmy.nz
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      4 months ago

      Battery tech has still come a long way since say 10 years ago, even though the “next gen” stuff hasn’t made it to scaled production. Looks like this is the beginning of scaled production, though.

      • helenslunch@feddit.nl
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        4 months ago

        Looks like this is the beginning of scaled production, though.

        Production is a tiny link in the supply chain.

        According to the article they’ve sent them to manufacturers for testing and that’s it.

        Even if they were able to make them they’d still be impossibly expensive for decades, as the implications of such a technology would be gargantuan.

        • Dave@lemmy.nz
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          4 months ago

          Nah, see the battery density graph here. Batteries have made great progress already, and it’s accelerating because suddenly there are trillions of dollars on the line for anyone that can make big strides in battery technology.

          • helenslunch@feddit.nl
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            4 months ago

            Nah, see the battery density graph

            Yah, I see your battery density graph and the batteries in question would blow a hole in that chart:

            Samsung’s oxide solid-state battery technology boasts an energy density of 500 Wh/kg, nearly double the 270 Wh/kg density of mainstream EV batteries.

            That’s without even getting into the charging rates, which are impossible because you can’t even deliver power to the car at that rate, even if it could take it.

            suddenly there are trillions of dollars on the line for anyone that can make big strides in battery technology.

            What makes you think that’s “sudden”?

            • Dave@lemmy.nz
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              4 months ago

              Yah, I see your battery density graph and the batteries in question would blow a hole in that chart, and several charts above it.

              I’m not sure if we are looking at the same chart. The chart goes up to 500 Wh/kg, the same as this new Samsung battery as per the original article. It’s may well be the same battery that gives the chart that value, but notice the years prior it gets higher and higher up to that value.

              It might be 10 years away from being the mainstream battery but the battery technology that was 10 years away 9 years ago is almost here.

              What makes you think that’s “sudden”?

              I was meaning how EVs created a consumer market for huge batteries where prior to that the biggest battery in your house might have been a power tool. But you’re right, there was a premium market for emerging battery tech and it increases along a scale like anything else.

              • helenslunch@feddit.nl
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                4 months ago

                It might be 10 years away from being the mainstream battery

                Yes, that was my point, thank you.

                • Addv4@lemmy.world
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                  4 months ago

                  I mean, lithium cells were used for fringe use cases 20 years ago, now they are seemingly everywhere. The difference with this tech is that they know it’s currently expensive, so are aiming for use cases where the added cost is justifed. Give it 5 years and the tech will more than likely become easier to produce, lowering costs. That and sodium batteries are probably going to dramatically lower cost for grid storage, which should make it easier to have consistent power delivery.

                  • helenslunch@feddit.nl
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                    4 months ago

                    I don’t understand what this has to do with my comment. I’m not disputing that battery technology is improving. I’m disputing that there’s going to be any sort of quantum leap in capacity or charging speed in the near future.

                • Resonosity@lemmy.world
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                  3 months ago

                  Michael Thackeray filed a patent under Argonne National Laboratory for the leading EV battery chemistry worldwide today, Lithium Nickel-Manganese-Cobalt Oxide (NMC), sometime around 2007-2008.

                  The first cars with that specific technology started coming out in the US market in 2013/2014 IIRC, with EVs coming out before then basing their battery chemistry on NCA (Tesla) or LMO (Nissan Leaf & Chevy Volt).

                  That’s a 5-7 year timeframe from laboratory to mass production.

                  If you consider new technologies today like Samsung’s battery in this article, and make the not so unrealistic leap that we’re better at battery production today than in 2013/2014, it’s very possible that we see this technology hit the market in 5 years or less.

                  Technology always improves. It’s CAPEX that hinders it, and I’m willing to bet that there are financial interests out there to keep the main battery chemistry NMC and secure steady profits.

            • GreyEyedGhost@lemmy.ca
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              4 months ago

              There is a solid state sodium battery factory being built in Japan, I think, and one in America. (Yes, I mixed up my two battery technologies, a common problem in a stagnant field…) But yes, real life isn’t a game, you can’t immediately use new tech as soon as it becomes viable, and factories take time to build. That doesn’t mean that advances haven’t been constantly occurring, just like advances continued to occur with NiMH battery technology a decade after lithium was mainstream. Partly, no doubt, because factories are expensive, they take time to build, and companies like to maximize the profits from their investments.

              • helenslunch@feddit.nl
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                4 months ago

                That doesn’t mean that advances haven’t been constantly occurring

                No one said they haven’t. Please note the “world changing” part of my comment. I’m not talking about iterative advancements, I’m talking about things like solid-state and sodium batteries. Things we’ve been reading about for decades that are quantum leaps in battery technology.

                In the case of the OP, we’re talking about doubling battery density and charging speeds well in excess of what you could actually ever get to the car.

                • GreyEyedGhost@lemmy.ca
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                  4 months ago

                  As I mentioned in my other response, our battery capacity and longevity has increased by a factor of 10 in the last 30 years. Charging capacity has increased significantly, as well. And the only reason we don’t have more powerful chargers is because we haven’t needed them. It will certainly require a different configuration to charge twice as fast, probably with local power storage to reduce the burden on the electrical grid, but the only technical challenge is the power draw, and there are a number of ways to avoid that.

    • GetOffMyLan@programming.dev
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      4 months ago

      Battery tech is constantly having huge breakthroughs. They are just come in small steps.

      I mean a smart phone is literally a battery powered computer. It’s absolutely astounding compared to what we had 10/20 years ago.

      • HerrBeter@lemmy.world
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        4 months ago

        Only thing I’m upset with is that we get more battery capacity, but not longer battery time. I want to clock my phone down to save power, but that’s not allowed.

        • vaionko@sopuli.xyz
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          4 months ago

          Most phones have some sort of “Ultra power saving” mode that gives a lot of battery life.

          • HerrBeter@lemmy.world
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            4 months ago

            I always use the power saving mode, however my experience is that the battery time is almost the same irregardless of battery capacity (comparing arbitrarily över the years)

        • Nycto@lemmy.world
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          4 months ago

          It’s absolutely allowed.

          It’s not as good as previous versions but I am running stock android and I have wifi power saving and phone (background) power saving modes available. I just checked and the estimate of time until zero percent battery goes from 22 hours to 28 hours with the node that limits backup processes, and that is with 59% on the battery.

          There was a power save mode on my old phone that made everything grey screen and stuff that was way better. I think I enabled it for a camping trip once and used like 20% battery in 3 days.

          • Freefall@lemmy.world
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            4 months ago

            That made me think of the fairly low res picture of the menu screen from Mario Bros on the NES with the caption "this one image takes up more memory than the entirety of the Mario Bros game code.

            Good lord…I remember getting a 1GB HDD and thinking “welp, never gonna use that up” then a few years later installing Diablo2 and seeing it was 1.1gb…

      • helenslunch@feddit.nl
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        4 months ago

        Battery tech is constantly having huge breakthroughs. They are just come in small steps.

        My guy, those are opposite things…

        • GetOffMyLan@programming.dev
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          4 months ago

          Not really. They have massive breakthroughs that increase capacity and charging hugely.

          People just seem to expect some world changing development constantly.

        • Resonosity@lemmy.world
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          3 months ago

          Depends on how you define “constant”. Battery prices have been falling year over year, no thanks to technological improvements.

          If we’re referring explicitly to Academia and R&D, then OP is correct. You’re main point is that these huge breakthroughs haven’t affected the market, but OP isn’t arguing that.

          You’re both talking past each other.

          • helenslunch@feddit.nl
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            3 months ago

            Depends on how you define “constant”.

            No it doesn’t? Because there have been none. There have been steady and iterative advancements.

            OP is correct

            When was OP involved in this conversation?

            • Resonosity@lemmy.world
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              3 months ago

              There have been steady and iterative advancements.

              Steady imo is a synonym for constant, and revolutionary breakthroughs can be subjective if referring to industry or academia.

              When was OP involved in this conversation?

              Apologies. I sometimes refer to an OP as the Original Poster of a thread in a given post, but perhaps a better use of language would be OC for Original Commentator.

    • GreyEyedGhost@lemmy.ca
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      4 months ago

      There may not be a revolutionary discovery, but we are nearing a tipping point where battery makes more sense for most disconnected power storage than anything else.

      The cell phone I had 30 years ago had a battery pack that was about as big as my current cell phone and was 500 mAh. My current cell phone has a little battery tucked away in it that stores 4000 mAh, recharges about as fast, and can be recharged more before it loses a significant amount of its capacity. It also costs about 1% per mAh of the price of that battery from 30 years ago.

      Just because you haven’t bothered to investigate advances in battery technology doesn’t mean significant advances haven’t occurred.

      • helenslunch@feddit.nl
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        4 months ago

        There may not be a revolutionary discovery, but we are nearing a tipping point where battery makes more sense for most disconnected power storage than anything else.

        …what else are you using for “disconnected power storage” than batteries?

        The cell phone I had 30 years ago had a battery pack that was about as big as my current cell phone and was 500 mAh.

        Please tell me what part of my comment led you to believe I was insinuating battery technology had not improved in the last 30 years…

        Just because you haven’t bothered to investigate advances in battery technology doesn’t mean significant advances haven’t occurred.

        Please read better.

        • GreyEyedGhost@lemmy.ca
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          4 months ago

          Fossil fuels are currently the largest disconnected power storage by overall power used. You know, the thing cars use when they aren’t EVs. You may have heard of diesel and gasoline generators, or oil-fueled ships.

          As per the previous part of my comment that you quoted, my point was that incremental changes can accumulate to the point where at some point revolutionary changes can occur. We increased capacity and longevity by a factor of 10 over 30 years, have a new technology hitting mainstream, and another that could double power density in the next 5 to 10. Yet you seem skeptical that’s possible, in spite of the decades of advances we already have made.

          • helenslunch@feddit.nl
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            4 months ago

            Fossil fuels are currently the largest disconnected power storage by overall power used.

            Fossil fuels do not store “power” at all.

            incremental changes can accumulate to the point where at some point revolutionary changes can occur. We increased capacity and longevity by a factor of 10 over 30 years

            If it takes place over the course of 30 years, it is not “revolutionary”.

            Yet you seem skeptical that’s possible, in spite of the decades of advances we already have made.

            I am skeptical because of the decades of advances that have been promised time and time again but have not been made…

            I am not remotely skeptical of iterative advancements.

            • GreyEyedGhost@lemmy.ca
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              4 months ago

              Fossil fuels do not store “power” at all.

              Now, if you’re quibbling about the term power vs. energy, I can’t really be bothered with it. If you aren’t, what exactly do you think is the reason we use gasoline in vehicles than because it’s a highly portable source of energy?

              • helenslunch@feddit.nl
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                4 months ago

                if you’re quibbling about the term power vs. energy, I can’t really be bothered with it.

                Yeah, I’m getting that impression about you.

                • GreyEyedGhost@lemmy.ca
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                  4 months ago

                  I can’t be bothered because laymen don’t generally know the difference, and it’s the least important detail about this conversation. Granted, unimportant details seem to be your forte.