NASA’s incredible new solid-state battery pushes the boundaries of energy storage: ‘This could revolutionize air travel’::“We’re starting to approach this new frontier of battery research."
Quick, let’s sell this US funded tech to the Chinese or Japanese or Germans and not actually benefit from home grown research. This has happened so many times over the decades it’s disgusting.
Wouldn’t this benefit everyone? Presumably the implications are far wider and more important than who makes the most profit from it.
Wouldn’t this benefit everyone?
Not if capitalists have anything to say about it.
Then why shouldn’t “everyone” be funding it??
Funny how the same people who (rightfully so) complain about privatizing profits but socializing risks, don’t see a problem with research that will benefit everyone should maybe also be funded by everyone.
If one group is funding that research, then you better believe they should be the ones who overwhelmingly see it’s benefits.
Japanese government has a huge investment in battery tech alongside toyota and other Japanese companies. Solely to boost their economy in the long term
Yeah when other countries do it, it is seen as a smart move to help their country and employ their own people for years to come.
When the US does it, it is somehow demonized as being “nationalist” or labeled as being greedy capitalism or some other negative term.
You know you have the top comment right now, right? I think most everyone agrees that the US should be seeing the benefits of its publicly funded research - except some buttsore Europeans who will never miss an opportunity to piss on / armchair general the US.
Not that I care about internet points, but I have a -3, so if that is the “top comment” then how badly downvoted are all the other posts?! LOL
And I know a bunch of Europeans will be a little bitter, but the worst are fellow Americans who have this angry anti-American chip on their shoulder. I’ll be the first to say that we need to fix this, that and the other thing, but there is a ridiculous anti-American sentiment out there that covers anything and everything dealing with the US. You can hate on politicians like Trump - guess what, so do it! - but they do not represent the US and what the US can be.
I’m talking about your “quick let’s sell this….” comment at the top level.
Many large discoveries by research in Australia in universities and CSIRO didn’t get funding they needed in Australia, and the engineers and researchers simply found funding and moved to the United States. Then the US benefited from all that education and university research investment simply because the economy and startup funding was better.
I guess you know America is on a downturn if they see the same thing happening to them.
Quick, let’s sell this US funded tech to the Chinese or Japanese or Germans and not actually benefit from home grown research. This has happened so many times over the decades it’s disgusting.
If that’s true, why aren’t the Chinese, Japanese and Germans running around with amazing futuristic technology while “we’re” over here still stuck in the stone age?
They manufacture it and sell it to us. The US led solar research. China organizations certainly contributed to research as well, but they’re a much larger manufacturor than the US, despite the significant research advancement contribution by the US. US politicians failed to put any backing into domestic effects to manufacture solar and now it’s second fiddle in an industry its research helped create. So, it’s not in the stone age, because it’s paying out the ears for it while other countries profit heavily.
They manufacture it and sell it to us.
So then we actually do “benefit from it”, right? If we actually wanted to assemble the batteries, place thousands of components on circuit boards, whatever, we could.
So, it’s not in the stone age, because it’s paying out the ears for it while other countries profit heavily.
If it’s so disadvantageous, why don’t you start a company to manufacture solar panels or whatever in the US and become super rich? Why doesn’t insert random rich person do so if it’s so obvious? The answer is because it’s probably not so obvious: lots of regulations, expensive labor, etc.
So then we actually do “benefit from it”, right? If we actually wanted to assemble the batteries, place thousands of components on circuit boards, whatever, we could.
What’s your point? My comment was that the US missed out on the opportunity to be the dominant financial beneficiary in this sector. Is you point that it gets something out of it should and that should be good enough? That’s silly.
If it’s so disadvantageous, why don’t you start a company to manufacture solar panels or whatever in the US and become super rich? Why doesn’t insert random rich person do so if it’s so obvious? The answer is because it’s probably not so obvious: lots of regulations, expensive labor, etc.
It is obvious. For years the Chinese government has provided significant financial incentives for companies to manufacture solar panels. The US until recently has provided almost nothing, instead heavily subsidizing fossil fuels. The US does now subsidize solar, and people are making panels. Solar is one of the fastest growing industries in the US. A rich guy has gotten involved - Elon Musk, who owns Solar City. If the US has acted earlier, it would dominate the solar industry, and now it’s a second-rate player. It’s so tiring talking to people on the Internet. Did you look up any of this before forming your hypothetical questions? “Why doesn’t a rich guy do it?” Ugh.
My comment was that the US missed out on the opportunity to be the dominant financial beneficiary in this sector.
You didn’t say that, you just said “benefits” in general as though you were talking about all the benefits. I was just responding to what you wrote: that was my point.
Fine though, now I understand you were just talking about a part of the potential economic benefit of manufacturing those products. In the future, you could make these kinds of misunderstandings less likely by being more specific.
A rich guy has gotten involved - Elon Musk, who owns Solar City.
Is it your position Solar city 1) currently manufactures its own solar panels and 2) doing so is currently profitable and the business is thriving? Because as far as I can see it’s not even clear they’re still manufacturing solar panels. They had a deal with Panasonic but Panasonic exited a year or so ago, presumably because they couldn’t get enough of a compensation for their investment even with the subsidies. Even at that point, it seems like they were just assembling components at the most, they weren’t doing anything like fabricating the chips themselves.
“A New York State Comptroller’s audit found just 54 cents of economic benefit for every subsidy dollar spent on the factory, and external auditors have written down nearly all of New York’s investment. Most of the solar-panel manufacturing equipment bought by the state has been sold at a discount or scrapped.” — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gigafactory_New_York
Regarding effects after Tesla acquired Solar City: “By 2019, Tesla’s solar panel market share was falling, prompting the company to cut its sales force. Revenue from Tesla’s energy generation and storage operations from January to September 2019 fell 7% from a year earlier to $1.1 billion.” — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SolarCity
My take away is Musk tried to milk as much as he could from the subsidies and generally for society the thing was a net value loss. That’s in line with my conception of how he operates.
benefit
My comment did not say that the US did not benefit. My first comment did not even use the word “benefit” or any of it’s varants. I’ve stopped reading your comment here, as you obviously are not doing people the curtousy of reading theirs.
LOL have you seen where all our futuristic tech is manufactured? Why don’t you look into solar panels for a great example. Who’s making and selling them? Hm? Hint: it’s mostly not the US.
Also, if you think life in the US is “futuristic” compared to Germany and Japan, then it’s obvious you haven’t traveled there.
Because solar and chip making is pretty hard on the environment. We don’t do it here cause you need to process the waste to make it less toxic, so instead we buy from places that don’t care.
Other countries have lots of advantages over the US, but let’s not pretend that it’s a utopia over there. Japan is so overworked and makes immigration so difficult they basically don’t have a next generation.
Germany is great and all, but they also have a lot of imports, heck they almost froze last year due to their over reliance on cheap Russian fossil fuels.
Now you’re just naming any off topic problem you can think of with those countries.
Japan’s immigration policy is a choice, and they’re paying the price. It has little to do with how advanced they are in terms of research and technology.
Germany’s insufficient domestic fossil fuel supply is fucking geology. Hooray the US has rich fossil fuel resources. So does Venezuela.
So what does any of this have to do with how high tech life is in any of these places?
Gosh we’d better not look at high end manufacturing or the state of public infrastructure or rail transit in these same countries, you know, something actually on-topic having to do with level of technological advancement.
Germany gave you the COVID vaccine, by the way. The words you’re looking for are danke schoen.
Do you enjoy not knowing what you’re talking about?
Intel, GloFo, TI, Micron, ON Semi, and NXP all have semiconductor foundries in the US.
One of the ten largest photovoltaic companies is based in the US.
Biden just dumped untold billions of USD into building out more domestic semiconductor and photovoltaic manufacturing capacity.
To be fair the majority of those things are still produced abroad, particularly Vietnam has a lot of semiconductor manufacturing, and biden dumping money into domestic production is specifically to try and fix the problem of outsourcing
Why don’t you look into solar panels for a great example. Who’s making and selling them? Hm? Hint: it’s mostly not the US.
So somewhere else is doing the dirty, laborious part and we’re getting the benefit?
The other person said “and not benefit from it”. That’s what I responding to. Just to be clear, I’m not saying that kind of outsourcing to places with exploitative treatment and lax environmental regulations is a good thing in general.
if you think life in the US is “futuristic” compared to Germany and Japan
I didn’t say anything remotely like that.
Of course you did. It’s right there. You balked at the idea of Germany and Japan enjoying “amazing futuristic technology” compared to the US.
Of course you did. It’s right there. You balked at the idea of Germany and Japan enjoying “amazing futuristic technology” compared to the US.
You have a very active imagination.
You also 100% missed the point I was making, which is that western countries like the US didn’t lose the benefit of that technology. Nothing I said had anything to do with 1) saying other countries have relatively less technology or 2) being opposed to other countries having equivalent technology. Is it possible I have some kind of opinion on that? Maybe, but I didn’t share it. If you want to know what I think about something, you could try asking me instead of just fabricating an alternate reality out of the ether.
With some exceptions (like trade embargoes, military secrets) if you can pay for it, you can get your hands on any technology that exists in the world.
Silly me for thinking I was learning your opinion by reading words you wrote. Don’t wait around too long for me to come asking for more of your opinions.
Yes that notably cheap Japanese and German labor is going to undercut Boeing.
Japan has access to lots of cheap labor in Asia, and the Germans have Eastern Europe which has salaries a fraction of what Germans get.
Which is becoming rather untrue more and more. An good engineer in Wrocław costs about the same as in Germany. So many factories and offices there, it’s hard to find people…
Source: am German, have a competing plant in Poland near Wrocław
This is what the US does to Swedish companies, only with the added benefit of running them into the ground (I’ll never forgive what they did to Saab)
Oh please, who are you kidding? SAAB would have been dead at least a decade earlier if GM didn’t try to save them. The only reason they lasted as long as they did was because of GM’s injection of money into the company.
They are still a thing, just not in the car world.
So you claim that SAAB was already lost when GM heroically decided to step in and do some charity?
You are very wrong and of course GM saw a value in SAAB that was more intellectual property than manufacturing cars.
I never really understood why battery technology was so difficult until a friend put it in perspective for me. The only difference between a battery and a bomb is the rate they release their energy. Now I understand.
This is similarly true to a container of gasoline. The difficult part is we’ve yet to find a battery tech that comes even close to the same energy density. Gasoline has nearly 12000 Wh/kg, compared to the 200-500 mentioned in the article.
Im curious what a regular size lithium car battery would release if you were to burn it
Not just energy density but also how quickly we can refill it.
I read this a bit ago. Hopefully all this tech eventually finds it way into aircraft.
My money “hope” is actually on smaller solid state batteries than can be recharged through the air. Similar to watt up tech and ossia.
With power over air you need less battery storage and work on keeping the battery from dropping.
Also I think best case scenario would be a massive reduction in the amount of planes flying.
High speed rail would be a better solution. Planes across seas and then rail travel on land.
If trains can get within speeds of air travel then we might be getting there.
Alas will be long dead before anything happens
power over air? 🤨
Are you asking or ? What’s the situation here ?
They clearly are. So, care to explain what “power over air” is?
Plesse don’t let it be wireless charging…
It was
It’s just as it sounds. Just Google power over the air.
Lots of different applications for it. Mostly it’s using some kind of wave to power devices from a distance. Currently it’s on a few watts at a few meters.
Pretty shit but actually would be useful as your phone or devices would discharge slower and you could charge at the end of the day
With planes it would be a bit different. Fuck knows how they’d manage it. But still something to look it.
Similar to wireless charging. Some countries have roads that charge electric vehicles as they drive.
This would be similar
The amount of research needed to make this technology work for the applications you are suggesting would be many times greater than the amount of research needed to just figure out better batteries. And. it would always be energy inefficient, so it would need an electricity surplus to be viable.
Didn’t say it would be easy. Oh magnitudes sure. It’s already a well known area though. Would reduce down the size and efficient of batteries.
It’s what I’m betting on. Already plenty of applications on it. Pretty sure Japan is or has trying to beam power from space solar to ground arrays.
I think to get drones to work effectively they will need this tech.
The air is a poor wire. Lots of electricity will be lost just getting it to the machines, so for high energy applications, especially over longer distances, trying to use this technology would waste huge amounts of power. Not economically viable until electricy costs almost nothing.
I don’t disagree that it has many applications, but probably more low power things for a while.
Battery/energy storage technology on the other hand has a lot of potential, and is entering it’s golden age of research. The advances we have already made will look like nothing compared to the advances in batteries we will have in the next 20 years. Why beam power from the ground to a plane in the air when it could have all it needs onboard, and can charge in minutes once landed?
Thanks for sharing. I struggle with feeling such dread about the climate crisis. It’s very helpful to see posts with positive stories like this. Such exciting possibilities for reducing fossil fuel usage and still having regular air travel.
There seems to be yet another new battery technology that will save the world every day. And yet, they never become available to the public. I really wish we could ban them from announcing until they can mass produce the battery and sell it to the public. It is almost as bad as all those articles about the “flying car that will be available next year” articles that have been appearing in magazines since the 1950’s.
The issue is generally scalability. Lots of cool concepts but hard to mass produce profitability.
As this is Nasa, it’s subsidized, but there should be even more government money going into energy storage as that is the biggest hurdle for renewable energy.
Powering a plane with a battery sounds like a bad idea. Almost worst than EVs.
Oh yeah, way worse than filling planes with thousands of gallons of extremely flammable jet fuel
Jet fuel is one of the few remaining applications of leaded fuel.
No, it’s not. Jet fuel does not have lead
Small propeller planes use leaded fuel
Actually , one of the proposed solutions to leaded fuel in propeller planes was to see if you could modify the engines to use jet fuel
Additionally, there are several unleaded alternatives in the works, one of which (GAMI 100UL) has been approved by the FAA for use in all avgas planes with the purchase of a Supplementary Type Certificate.
Some light aircraft, such as the Diamond DA40NG use automotive diesel engines adapted for aviation that burn jet fuel instead of avgas. The diesel version of the Diamond is about 40% more efficient than the avgas version, and also flies considerably faster.
Why do you think EVs are a bad idea?
I’m going to guess “all the precious metals in manufacturing of the EV are so much worse than my gas cars!” Nonsense that the oil industry has been shilling online with bots for years to slow adoption of EVs among specific demographics.
Even though this myth has been debunked a hundred times, by folks like MIT, and in Reuters they showed if you live in an area that’s exclusively renewable power like I do, then I actually broke even 4ish years ago; within 3 months of owning my EV. Source: Reuters article, norway vs us ev break even point
But hey, I’m sure that propaganda of “just buy a gas car! It’s better for the environment” will make sense eventually once they figure out how to ignore more science.
I read one of the studies and they pitted a Prius vs a Leaf. Like the best possible and most efficient ICE car that is also a hybrid Vs one of the worst BEV and used it in a highway
I wonder what they thought that Prius’s battery was made out of. Must have been gas cells or something. Couldn’t be one of those pesky rare earth batteries.
Depending on when this “study” was done the Prius probably had a NiMH battery though.
They are worse on the environment then gasoline cars due to the rare earth materials needed to make a EV and it is harsher on the environment when it comes to dispose a EV once they reach end of life.
And all a EV car does is demand energy from a power plant which are either using coal or natural gas for the most part. The only “green” efficient power plant option out there is nuclear but no one wants to go nuclear.
If your concered about the climate and want to take that into account when getting a new vehicle. I always tell people to buy a used vehicle since it already exists and by driving a used car, your keeping it from being in a land fill and you save money buying used. Or the other best option is to get a bike or use public transportation.
And I do not see any difference with battery powered planes. I see more planes crashing due to using a new technology. Planes have come a long way and only gotten safer with years of engineering but by changing the power source to a battery over gasoline, unexpexted problems will like arise. Essentially do not fix what is not broken.
They are worse on the environment then gasoline cars due to the rare earth materials needed to make a EV and it is harsher on the environment when it comes to dispose a EV once they reach end of life.
While it’s typically true that making an EV car has more environmental impact than an ICE vehicle, this is more than compensated for by the emissions while driving, says also the EPA. Additionally, new LFP batteries are taking over the EV market and do not require rare earth minerals.
And all a EV car does is demand energy from a power plant which are either using coal or natural gas for the most part. The only “green” efficient power plant option out there is nuclear but no one wants to go nuclear.
Yes, let’s just ignore hydro, solar and wind power altogether. Renewable sources are currently almost 25% of US electricity production (more than coal) and growing rapidly. Also, even if you charge the EV with energy from a coal power plant, it’s still better than a gasoline car. The reason is efficiency. Power plants are more efficient at getting energy from fuel than a car engine, and electrical engines are more efficiently converting energy to motion.
If your concered about the climate and want to take that into account when getting a new vehicle. I always tell people to buy a used vehicle since it already exists and by driving a used car
This is not bad advice, but even better would be to buy a used EV.
And I mean; can we just not ignore hydro at all and point out that if you own an EV in most of Canada you have broken even after your first year of driving then? Because we don’t get a choice to use “clean beautiful coal” like the trump folks want! We only get that dirty hydro!
So. Yeah. I’m happy with my EV. I bought it because gas prices are completely outrageous in British Columbia (2 a litre or 8 a gallon for the U.S. folks) I honestly didn’t think I was helping the environment so much as helping my wallet. Turns out it does both. Cool with me.
Important to note that it’s not 25% spread evenly across the country. Oregon and Washington get almost all their power through hydroelectric and wind power.
Do you have a source for thinking that over the lifespan of the vehicle, that an EV is worse for the environment than a gasoline powered vehicle? Because I have multiple studies referenced in this article from the EPA stating the exact opposite.
The advantage of using an electric powertrain over any other is that the energy can be produced by any source of energy. Yes, right now, a lot of that’s coming from coal and natural gas, but even then, those power plants are WAY more efficient than the gas engines in cars and produce FAR less greenhouse gases source. Also, as countries transition from coal and gas to solar, wind, geothermal, and most critically and hopefully nuclear, the way the energy makes it from the earth to our cars can remain the same: the power grid.
Also, if everyone buys used cars, then that’ll solve the problem? Where do you think used cars come from? You think we should just keep making ICE vehicles and burning shit when we have plenty of new technologies which are being developed at breakneck pace that could actually make a huge difference in reducing emissions?
I do not have a souce that I can just copy and paste. However if I recall my source on this come from Patrick Moore who was a founder of Greenpeace or Alex Epstein. They both publish some great books on the subject of climate change.
I don’t give a shit what the founder of Greenpeace or someone who has published books thinks. I care about scientific studies. I’ll be here to review them if/when you care to actually contribute to this conversation with verifiable facts, rather than just things you remember.
Alrighty then, nice talking to you to? Books are a very reliabe source and their books have lots of scientific facts. Check them out sometime, espeically Patrick Moore’s literature.
In general, sure, books can be great. When it comes to nonfiction, they need to be based on repeatable science (AKA studies). I don’t think it’s a huge ask to bring some facts to a conversation about science.
Patrick Moore denies climate change so he has zero credibility. Alex Epstein is a philosophy and computer science major. Neither of those people have credibility in the topic. I would suggest you find some others who have at least an inkling of credibility.
Patrick Moore has degrees and is well educated on the subject. Patrick Moore been to the arctic and to these places that claim to be suffering from climate change.
Alex Epstein is well educated on this climate stuff. He did not go to school for it but higher education is not required to understand this climate change stuff. Anyone can be self taught these days on many subjects and fields.
Just read the books when you get a chance, until them I not interested in this one-sided debate were everything needs to be from an “official” source. I been down this road before where I read peoples sources and shared mine and I am always wrong because you got to trust the science and if some questions it like me, I become labelled as a heretic to the climate change movement.
I get it though, you been told this stuff your whole life and how to always trust “official” sources. That is how many of us were raised. It is not your fault but man, the truth will set you free. I used to be worried that by the time I become adult or be in my middle years, I would inherit a earth that is uninhabitable. The amount of anxiety and depression this puts on one person is awful. However the world will be around just like it is today for a very long time. I can promise you that.
There is no trust required in science. That’s the whole point of a study in that it lays out the methods used so others can replicate the methods to see if they arrive at the same conclusion.
Shocking (not really) that you’re willing to listen to these two authors who aren’t doing studies in this field and by your own admission, one of which just “been to the arctic,” as if that makes them credible.
Nobody’s calling you a heretic here; we’re encouraging you to provide peer-reviewed studies that refute the claims we’re making which are backed up by peer-reviewed studies. It’s an apples to apples conversation that you’re trying to force oranges into.
Also, I was raised a Christian and learned to see through the bullshit being fed to me because I learned to read studies and understand they’re the only way to know what’s actually true. We can only build upon testable, repeatable science.
I strongly disagree with your assertion that the earth will be around just like it is for a long time. We’re seeing climate changes come along A LOT sooner than predicted even just a decade ago. This is no time to be a conservative when it comes to the climate.
The same Patrick Moore who thinks that it’s okay to drink weed killer? Leaving aside his insane stances on climate change, the guy is obviously a crackpot and it’s wild that he is taken seriously by anyone.
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Dude you’re right!!! Gasoline appears magically in the pump station and there’s absolutely no electric motors in a gas powered car like a starter motor!!
Yeah! Thank goodness for that magical gas appearance! And there’s never any rare earth metals used in those pesky computers on cars these days! Nobody has touch screens or anything! It’s all switches and dials like we used to have in the 70s!
Right? ….right?
Disagree all you want. I made my case and it is well proven in the world.
I’m certainly always open to the possibility that my views are incorrect, but I tend to base them on facts proven by repeatable science, which is why I linked studies and am requesting you do the same to back up your “well-proven case.”
You haven’t made any cases because you haven’t provided any studies. If it’s well-proven, linking us some studies should be easy.
I’d also encourage you to read the studies I linked because you might change your view on this subject. If you’re interested in learning, anyway.
Alright. Do note that there is lots of censorship around this topic. Many scientists have had their careers ruined or been censored when publishing work that goes against the climate narritive. Not many know this.
A few times in the past I have shared internet sources but was accussed of sharing unoffical sources, or unreliable sources, etc. Kinda like being accusee of sharing fake news since it did not come from a pro green NGO or government.
I do believe the points I made earlier came from either Patrick Moore or Alex Epstein.
Called it way above in the comments didn’t I? I must have ESPN or something.
So just so we’re clear; if there’s published scientific data around it: it’s a conspiracy of scientific censorship because of the “climate narrative”, but if it’s unproven opinion narrative that works for the oil companies profits that happen to be huge public policy lobbying forces; it’s definitely the truth. Because obscure scary reasons, “not many people know this” Got it.
Oh good, more unverifiable claims. As much time as you’ve spent commenting on this post, surely you could’ve come up with some links containing some actual evidence to back up your claims?
Do people not know about this stuff you claim because it’s made up? I’m very open minded and curious about your viewpoint, but you’ve given me absolutely nothing to go off of here.
You can’t just make claims and say shit like this without backing it up somehow.
You’ve provided the names of two people; am I supposed to go read ALL of their work??
No. They likely had their careers ruined because they did shoddy work.
The points you made earlier are simply incorrect with even the most conservative estimates. So you should clearly not be listening to whoever wrote them.
All of that is wrong except the bike or public transportation:
https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/electric-vehicle-myths
Lithium is not rare and is largely mined in areas with no life at all. The US gets most of its lithium from the Atacama Desert in spots where there has never been recorded rain. Cobalt is more rare but that is being phased out in newer batteries.
As for emissions, an EV is better over its lifespan even if it is charging up from 100% coal energy. The breakeven point for that is about 85k miles. With your typical energy mix, it is closer to 20-30k. Even buying a used car does not win when it comes to emissions over its use unless you are planning on driving it less than 85km.
For electric planes, they are already starting to do smaller ones with a short range. Solid state batteries will allow for much larger ones.
Nuclear is not the most green energy source. It is significantly better than fossil fuels but it is still pretty far behind both solar and wind with energy storage.
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Did you read the article? Solid state batteries are much safer than lithium ion batteries when damaged, so the risk of fire is quite different.
The only other reason it’s a “bad idea” is energy density, and the article is reporting advancements there. Really, just read the article next time.
Of course they didn’t. They can’t even be bothered to provide links to research that backs up the claims they’re making in this thread.
