9 条评论
- jillesvangurp 12小时前Batteries are quite good already. You can wait for the next big thing, or get something that works and scales right now.
Battery production is now measured in multiple twh of capacity per year. That goes into vehicles of all types with any number and size of wheels, grid storage solutions, and domestic storage. People use them all over the world now. Including some developing economies.
There are many quality attributes you can look at with batteries: cost per kwh, weight per kwh, volume per kwh, charge/discharge rates, longevity in charge cycles, operating temperatures, robustness, chance of flammability (near zero with some cell types), etc. Better is a meaningless qualification unless you express it in those.
And what is best and what is optimal are two things. There's a reason LFP is dominating rather than NMC. It's good enough and a lot cheaper even though it has slightly less energy. For the same reason sodium ion is being put into some cars. It doesn't have the energy density. But it's cheap, operates in arctic and desert temperatures, and they last pretty long.
When it comes to new battery chemistries, it takes time to go from a lab breakthrough to mass production. Sodium ion is now being mass produced. A few years ago there was only low volume production. And before that, the technology was stuck in various stages of the R&D pipeline at various companies. From a lab prototype in a university to an actual proof of concept might take several years. And from there to production many years longer.
With solid state, there are about at least half a dozen technology companies that are moving from test samples to low volume production in the next years. Mostly the technology is proven and validated at this point. But it might still take until at least the end of the decade before we see any mass production. Building big factories costs billions and is super risky. Companies don't do that unless they are certain something will work.
Solid state will have to compete on quality and price. High density solid state in cheap cars is not likely to be a thing for cost reasons. But they might be popular with drone and sports car manufacturers. The press is unfortunately a bit sensationalist on this front and it creates unrealistic expectations.
- Recurecur 9小时前All fair points.
It is worth saying that vehicles sporting next-gen solid state batteries are available right now.
Ever since the Goodenough solid state battery announcements years ago, I’ve been anticipating the benefits. According to his team’s research, they had the following attributes:
- Higher energy density than the best liquid electrolyte lithium cells.
- Non flammable.
- Much better resistance to cold temperatures.
- A sodium option that should be much less expensive.
I’m not sure where the Goodenough battery tech is at right now, I’ll have to do some searching and see if it’s progressed…
- scottLobster 11小时前It also doesn't help that every "breakthrough" announcement is always about something that happened in a lab that may or may not be scalable, and is usually said lab or their sponsoring organization just trying to put itself out there.
And hey, can't blame labs for playing the game, but it does produce a lot of noise with little signal for the average reader.
- kristianp 6小时前> weight per kwh
Is it weight/kWh or is kWh/weight more common?
Another question I have about buying a new electric car: if I buy a new BYD, for example, can I run it until it's done 150,000km? Like a gasoline car?
- ErrorNoBrain 9小时前If i recall, Toyota have said they'll make a car with solid state batteries, in 2027
ok maybe 28.
https://electrek.co/2025/10/08/toyota-aims-to-launch-worlds-...
they have tested this on the roads.
- jillesvangurp 7小时前The question is in how much volume they will produce that car. Given how late they are to this market, I would not expect a lot of cars from them for a while.
Larger volumes would require bigger factories. And without going through some low volume initial production, that would be very risky for them.
The big question is how it will compare in price and quality to cars from other manufacturers.
- phtrivier 12小时前> When it comes to new battery chemistries, it takes time to go from a lab breakthrough to mass production. Sodium ion is now being mass produced. A few years ago there was only low volume production. And before that, the technology was stuck in various stages of the R&D pipeline at various companies. From a lab prototype in a university to an actual proof of concept might take several years. And from there to production many years longer.
That's absolutely fine and understandable. But then, why do we keep hearing the word "breakthrough" ? I hate this word with all my heart.
Batteries are still not ubiquitous. EVs are still expensive.
The "breaktrough" that would be worth mentioning will be when people can buy an EV and never, ever, ever manage to build a scenario where there is _any_ range anxiety.
Or when everyone has a battery in their garage, that's as inconsequential to buy as a fridge, and can store enough energy for them to go through the winter with 2 months of sunshine.
I know we're far away from that. Fair enough. Godspeed to you if you're working on that, in the lab or in the factory. You or your grandkids will get there.
Just, write the _breakthrough_ article then, please.
- jillesvangurp 11小时前A scientific breakthrough can happen and is news worthy. The consequence might be mass production of some thing enabled through decade of R&D that follows the breakthrough. But there are lots of reasons why that might never happen.
Anyway, catchy click bait news lines sell. And breakthroughs are worth reporting on by themselves. Anyway, the economist didn't do a great job here doing their job. They are all over the place mixing things that are basically on the market (sodium ion) or nearly on the market (solid state) with various scientific progress from research labs.
As for the rest of your comment, I don't think accurate information is your problem.
- stetrain 11小时前There will be no single moment when that happens. It will be a stack of years and years of innovations and improvements each of which take time to roll out into mass production, start expensive, and get cheaper.
- phtrivier 5小时前Of course.
Then, write your "breakthrough" article when they get to mass production. (Ok, you can write the article when they demo it as the consumer show six months before availability, if you really can't help. They won't ship it in six months, they will ship in a year, maybe that's fine.
I'm a software engineer, I'm not going to lecture anyone about optimistic release dates.)
Write another one when they find a way to make it affordable to the average consumer.
I m asking : don't write it when it's a proof of concept in the lab, or when you just started the workforce that's going to contemplate thinking about thinking of a plan to build a pilot plant for the alpha version of the prototype. I'm sick and tired of those.
Same thing if your "breakthrough" is in curing cancer or making fusion. Please stop using this word. It does not mean what you think it does.
- Ajedi32 11小时前> Just, write the _breakthrough_ article then, please.
When exactly though? When the price of the "new" breakthrough technology that's been around for decades at that point drops from $101 per kwH to $100 per kwH?
I totally get your frustration but it seems kinda arbitrary to say a new technology isn't a breakthrough until it's ubiquitous.
- phtrivier 5小时前When it gets from 1000 to a 100. Or from 100 to 10.
In production. On shelves. That the average consumer can buy.
Do you remember the time where hardly anyone had a mobile phone, and one year later everyone got one for christmas ? I was there. That's a breakthrough.
Then internet in your home. Two or three years from "none has it" to "of course I have it, here's my ICQ number".
Or the day the polio vaccine was announced.
Or when when a rocket booster landed on itself.
"Before / After" moment. They exist. They don't happen overnight - great. You may have "overcame one of the many hurdles on the path to reaching a credible plan that may lead to a before/after."
Write that ! It's not a "breakthrough", though.
Or, is "breakthrough" the word for "tiny incremental change", and there is another word that I should expect to read when something consequential happens ?
- samat 12小时前I wish there were a media with articles like this
- kaon_2 13小时前"Distinguishing hype from reality is not easy. But recent developments mean that ambitious promises could be fulfilled. "
Just like AI is changing the world before our eyes, this may be just such a technology. Maybe I will come to resent them when they are omnipresent, but a person-transporting drone (EVTOL) flying on a solid state battery would be transformative in connecting people, and I cannot wait to see it happen. The EU has committed 500bn in inter-european railway investment by 2050. Maybe it will be entirely disrupted? Who knows.
- lavela 12小时前Maybe I am missing something, but I haven't seen a solution to the noise problem of air traffic (especially anything rotor based).
Might not be an issue for long distance connection in sparsely populated countries like the United States, but I don't see it replacing trains in Europe until this is solved.
- bobthepanda 12小时前There is also the fairly obvious problem of safe operations in urban areas.
Rooftop helicopters were banned from Manhattan’s office buildings after a helicopter tipped over and decapitated waiting passengers, and then the blade fell to the street level where it killed another person.
- xnorswap 12小时前Flying no matter how diminutive always has the issue of Newton's third law. This requires having large empty landing zones to be safe, or you risk having people land on you, which would hurt no matter how slowly they're coming in.
- Zigurd 12小时前In the way Boring Co. disrupted subways?
- jwr 12小时前I had a chance to fly a simulator of the Beta Technologies VTOL airplane (they're a PartsBox customer). I went from horizontal flight into hover, and my guide said "oh, by the way, you are consuming a megawatt right now".
A megawatt. To hover.
That really opened my eyes to the reality: unless we have unlimited, clean and nearly free fusion power, flying cars are not going to be a thing.
- Manuel_D 9小时前Two things here: one, hovering is actually much more energy intensive than horizontal flight. Two, a megawatt isn't that much energy in the context of aerospace. A 737 engine produces nearly 100 megawatts at peak output (the engines are rated in terms of pounds of force, so the conversion is a bit wonky).
- tekacs 11小时前This conclusion is... kinda absurd.
In any reasonable setup, hovering would be a rare, rare operation (like 30-60 seconds during takeoff and landing), with most of the time spent in wing-borne forward flight – which'd be _wildly_ lower power usage, more like 200-250kW tops. About ~par with staying in continuous acceleration in an EV. More for sure, but not nearly as insane as what you're pointing to.
... and this is exactly where better batteries would help – being able to hold that power level for longer so you could actually go places in earnest without untenable mass.
- scottLobster 11小时前Is it? If we're talking about a future where EVTOL takes over for passenger cars, there will be air traffic jams with delays that require extended circling and likely hovering.
There's a reason all the EVTOL startups show individual vehicles landing in pristine fields, and it's the same reason car advertisements show one car on a closed course instead of I-95 at 3pm on a Friday
- tekacs 10小时前... air traffic jams? The air is _much_ bigger than the corresponding ground.
Certainly there'd be density _at_ take-off and landing, but even that's manageable by having e.g. arrival/departure locations at multiple heights.
It also seems vanishingly unlikely (at this point) that we'd have EVTOL that's not fully autonomous, further reducing the odds of this - ~perfect and coordinated driving, as well as foreknowledge of what's happening between you and the arrival location drastically reduces traffic.
- dmbche 10小时前Do you know how planes land at an airport? They circle waiting for their turn. Why would that problem vanish?
- tekacs 10小时前... because the entire point of VTOL (which is what the parent commentary was about) is that you can take off and land vertically and therefore don't need one of a few, scarce, super-long runways? ... and the waiting you're talking about is entirely because of those?
On top of that, small VTOL craft that can hover and would be at lower speeds closer in (esp. autonomously flown) would just need less mutual clearance compared to jets, which also have an altitude band they have to stay in, as well as no ability to slow to a crawl and coordinate finely.
- dmbche 9小时前Gotcha, just spitballing - my mistake taking it seriously
- DanielHB 12小时前I have been thinking this for quite a while now, electric planes will kill a lot of rail routes. However I am still skeptical about the EVTOL form factor for mass scale transportation, at least on the short or medium term.
I think we are going to see a lot of fragmentation in modes of transport where we have jets going from international airports for long range, small electric planes in small airports for that 50-300km distance low-frequency destinations. And rail only for high-frequency destinations.
In fact I imagine that electric vs jet planes math will get so crazy that it might kill some international hubs that are too far inland, companies will want people off jets into electric propeller planes as fast as possible.
- lacewing 12小时前> I have been thinking this for quite a while now, electric planes will kill a lot of rail routes
Why? If you have an existing rail network, trains are bound to be cheaper than planes and can get to more places (including convenient centrally-located stations in most major metro areas).
Plus, air travel is generally miserable unless you have a private / chartered plane. Crowds, long lines, security screenings, opaque and abusive pricing models, etc. This is not something we couldn't fix, but over the past 30 years, it's gotten a lot worse, not better; electric planes don't automatically change that. In contrast, rail travel in Europe is almost universally pleasant and hassle-free.
- kvdveer 12小时前If flying ever becomes efficient energy-wise, this may happen. However, right now, flying is very energy inefficient, so anything that doesn't need to be flown, is transported overland to save costs. A change of fuel won't change it, unless the underlying energy usage changes fundamentally.
Better batteries do not impact energy usage, only the means of energy delivery.
- bluGill 12小时前For high volume routes rail is best. For lower volume automated cars on the highway are more efficient than flying by enough that only the rich will fly - just like today. You can book a helicopter flight home today if you are willing to pay for all the fuel. However even at 1/10th the energy cost, a car will be vastly cheaper and so what most people will choose. We also will continue to use trucks to move freight for many of these trips, so the roads will exist either way.
There is one other issue with flying: it often isn't legal - for good reason - to fly and land where you want to be. For a 300km trip flying to an airport is fine (if there is one close - they are not evenly scattered around), but at 50km you may as well drive the whole way instead of transfer at the airport - unless you live very close to the airport (which you won't because of noise)
- Descon 12小时前Rail will always be more efficient since you don't have to carry the load. I think places that never built passenger rail (Alberta has been toying with Edmonton to Calgary since they've existed) this will wipe out the need for them.
- jeffbee 11小时前A lot of the weirdos are trying to force trains to be worse by carrying batteries. Almost everyone knows this is crazy, except some Americans with surprising influence.
- cguess 11小时前Most trains are diesel-electric, so they already have batteries? For those unaware, in this type of engine the diesel engine is actually a generator which charges the batteries and then the electrical power is used to drive the train. It's actually more efficient for the torque needed.
- jeffbee 8小时前Diesel-electric trains do not have traction batteries. And they don't even carry half of the reactants for their engines.
- FuriouslyAdrift 11小时前In the US, over 70% of commuter rail uses shared freight track and electric planes are not going to be moving freight.
- dmbche 12小时前Where have you heard of electric planes being so much more energy efficient than jets?
- scottLobster 12小时前We have these things called helicopters, they are already made small enough for single occupants and have been for decades. Making them electric and automated doesn't make them less of a helicopter with all of the issues of existing helicopters.
For instance, I will never have any desire to risk the air traffic clusterfuck of hundreds of EVTOLs with different computers from different brands with different levels of maintenance trying to land/take-off in a Costco parking lot to grab a rotisserie chicken on their way home from work.
It isn't a technology problem. EVTOL only makes sense where helicopters currently make sense.
- OisinMoran 12小时前Your last sentence is simply not true. Helicopters are massive in terms of volume and weight, and incredibly loud. You're also assuming our current layout of everything would stay the same. Imagine if teleportation existed, do you think cities, towns, and suburbs would still look the same?
A collision is less likely in 3D than in 2D, and obviously the chicken would be delivered to you via drone rather than the inverse.
- scottLobster 11小时前EVTOL isn't exactly quiet either. It will annoy the living shit out of your neighbors, particularly if everyone is doing it. Houses/apartments near airports are already cheaper for that reason.
And sure you can contrive whatever clean-slate sci-fi setting you want to try and make it make sense, but we aren't going to be ripping up existing infrastructure for it. This isn't Popular Science cover art.
Collisions are more likely if there's hundreds going to/from the same place at the same time, and also they can just fail and fall out of the sky onto dwellings, roads and businesses in ways that cars can't.
Your vision will be killed politically the first time a child playing on their swing-set or shopping with their mother or driving down the road is killed by a poorly maintained EVTOL.
- Groxx 12小时前Multiple smaller rotors does seem to have a powerful simplifying ability due to redundancy and the much better responsiveness it offers.
Generally though I agree with you. Plus it will always use WAY more power than a wheeled vehicle, and have much worse failures.
- scottLobster 12小时前Yeah, they're definitely better helicopters than what came before depending on what you want out of the vehicle, but helicopters nonetheless.
- simmerup 12小时前Electric helicopters come with the advantage that they’re much simpler to maintain surely.
- scottLobster 12小时前Go watch some of these and tell me you trust these people to maintain an EVTOL vehicle, however simple.
https://www.youtube.com/@mechanicalnightmare/videos
We already have fatal car crashes from people who neglect maintenance and don't get their car inspected. Now imagine instead of a 2D plane to cause a wreck, on a road where people are generally alert and paying attention for wrecks, they can fall out of the sky onto kids playing in yards, onto busy roads out of the sun, or just onto each other during the final approach/take-off.
Nope, air travel is only safe because we strictly regulate pilots and maintenance.
- empath75 11小时前I would think the most likely use for evtol (assuming, for the sake of argument, that whatever sci-fi technology needs to be invented will be invented to make it cost effective) is autopilot flights that are currently long commutes with a lot of traffic -- ie: Suburbs to city center and back, or long cross suburb trips.
- scottLobster 11小时前Autopilot with strictly regulated maintenance and no personal ownership is about the only way it works, assuming your neighbors don't care about the noise
- sublinear 12小时前Rail is energy efficient and extremely reliable. You're not going to win on either of those metrics.
- jeffbee 11小时前Recent history is full of examples of trains that killed air routes. Trains took 80% market share from Paris to Lyon and 100% to Brussels. Similar in Spain and Japan.
- cguess 11小时前Trains are absolutely better but France also outlawed most of those short haul flights. https://www.euronews.com/2024/07/06/frances-short-haul-fligh...
- jeffbee 6小时前This mostly codified established reality. TGV had overwhelming Paris-Lyon market share by 1981 and Paris-Bordeaux by 2018, years before the ban.
- acidhousemcnab 13小时前https://archive.is/ReAtU
You'll need to get your hands on Greenland first.
- NoSalt 9小时前Who else is longing for the days of the "Shipstone"?
https://www.google.com/search?q=robert+heinlein+shipstone+te...
- tiffanyh 12小时前With both battery tech and quantum, you have to separate out "commercial availability" vs "laboratory availability".
- johnea 6小时前With regard to batteries:
It's also important to separate "commercial availability" into "commercially available in the US" and "commercially available for everyone else"
The US petroleum and automotive industries are spending many multiple millions of $$s to make sure the latest battery and electric car technology is not available inside the US.
This is a good example:
BYD Seal 08 debuts with Blade Battery 2.0: 1,000 km range, 5-min charging, 684 hp
https://electrek.co/2026/04/27/byd-seal-08-blade-battery-2-1...
This is a car in production in China now, which has 640 miles of range on one charge (not many gas cars have that range) and charges 10-70% in 5 minutes. Of course, the chargers that perform that high speed charge are also not available in the US.
With regard to quantum: let's just not drag that into a discussion of batteries.
- therealmacsteel 12小时前I doubt we have even scratched the surface of battery technology though.
- bluGill 12小时前Battery technology is governed by the laws of physics and chemistry. I'm not an expert in battery technology, but I trust those who are to know physics and chemistry. We are likely asymptotically approaching a known limit. Perhaps someone who is an expert can tell us where those are.
- therealdrag0 11小时前Well we know gasoline as an organic battery is 50x more energy dense than an EV battery by weight for example and 25x more dense by volume.
- Ajedi32 10小时前And if you want to get really exotic, antimatter is about 83.2 billion times more energy dense. We're not going to be running into fundamental physics limitations for energy storage anytime soon.
Though maybe it's a little unfair to call either of those things a "battery", they seem like fundamentally different technologies to me even if in theory they could fill exactly the same role.
- johnea 7小时前Thank you for raising this point!
It calls for a couple of specific responses:
- A battery doesn't have to be set on fire to get the energy out of it!
- Energy can be put back into a battery, allowing them to be used over and over again!
- Electricity for putting into batteries can come from many different sources of generation. Gasoline only comes from one place: petroleum, the extraction and burning of which is a very dirty process.
- Battery chemistry is not one thing, there are very many, and the energy densities of different chemistries are increasing rapidly. This leaves a LOT of room for battery energy density to be increased via technical innovation.
- Gasoline has a fixed chemical structure that contains a fixed amount of energy. Unlike batteries, there isn't much innovation that can occur to change that energy density.
- bluGill 6小时前> A battery doesn't have to be set on fire to get the energy out of it!
unfortunately burning things results in a lot more energy than the processes a battery uses.
> Gasoline only comes from one place: petroleum,
Well... We do know how to make gasoline from the atoms - the same process that we use the make synthetic oil can result in gasoline as well. Of course this would case about 4x as much so nobody does. There is more energy in synthetic diesel some races use that since the energy content is part of winning. (generally though race cars use a gasoline engine running an alcohol because they can get more power and don't care about fuel economy).
> Battery chemistry is not one thing, there are very many, and the energy densities of different chemistries are increasing rapidly. This leaves a LOT of room for battery energy density to be increased via technical innovation.
Yes and no. Technology is getting better. The laws of chemistry and physics tell us the limits of this technology, but not how close to those limits we can achieve in the real world.
> johnea 39 minutes ago | parent | context | flag | on: Breakthroughs for batteries could soon make them b...
Thank you for raising this point!
It calls for a couple of specific responses:
- A battery doesn't have to be set on fire to get the energy out of it!
- Energy can be put back into a battery, allowing them to be used over and over again!
- Electricity for putting into batteries can come from many different sources of generation. Gasoline only comes from one place: petroleum, the extraction and burning of which is a very dirty process.
- Battery chemistry is not one thing, there are very many, and the energy densities of different chemistries are increasing rapidly. This leaves a LOT of room for battery energy density to be increased via technical innovation.
- Gasoline has a fixed chemical structure that contains a fixed amount of energy. Unlike batteries, there isn't much innovation that can occur to change that energy density.
Utterly false. Octane is a specific molecule with a fixed amount of energy. However gasoline is many different molecules with different energy content. The total is all close enough to the same that we don't normally think of this, but there are variations that we can measure in the lab.
> Unlike batteries, there isn't much innovation that can occur to change that energy density.
There is, but that would be a lot more expensive (see synthetic gasoline above) and so we don't. More importantly, even accounting for the losses in a ICE, gasoline is still a lot more energy dense than we expect a battery to ever reach.
- jeffbee 11小时前250 years ago nobody knew what the hell a battery was. It seems hubristic to assume we now possess ultimate knowledge of the universe.
- bluGill 11小时前While we don't know everything, what we don't know must fit without the things we already know. It seems highly unlikely there is something significant in this area we don't know.
- jeffbee 9小时前I don't agree with this philosophy at all. Current scientific understanding is not and need not be compatible with past scientific belief.
- bluGill 9小时前Not belief, things we have exponentially observed. Either you need to explain why the observation was actually incorrect. Or you need to have a theory that explains the observation. We believe relativity is correct because we have lots of experiments and observations that show that it's correct. That doesn't mean relativity is actually correct. However, it means that if it's wrong, whatever actually is correct must somehow encompass what relativity predicts in the same way relativity currently does.
- fnord77 13小时前solid state batteries - perpetually only 5 years away
- comrade1234 12小时前Mercedes has cars on the road now with solid state batteries. They're not mass-producing the batteries yet so they're only in test vehicles. Performance has been great.
- LoganDark 13小时前Everyone's been talking about breakthroughs for batteries for years. Until I see one on the shelf, it doesn't matter. Go make them better, and come back once they actually are!
I've even seen ceramic batteries being tested on YouTube as long as 7 YEARS ago [0], but I still can't actually buy one.
- ac29 12小时前> Everyone's been talking about breakthroughs for batteries for years.
Lithium iron phosphate has quietly gotten price competitive with lead acid and its wildly better tech. Not particularly sexy but its having a real world impact (LFP is commonly used for solar storage among many other uses).
- konschubert 13小时前I think CATL bringing sodium-ion to industrial scale should count as "on the shelf".
https://www.pv-magazine.com/2026/04/28/catl-secures-worlds-l...
- LoganDark 13小时前Hmm, that is industrial-scale which I wouldn't say is something I can really buy but that is cool nonetheless!
- zardo 11小时前They're available. Though you probably shouldn't invest to heavily in gen1 (production) sodium-ion batteries. It's looking like they'll be obsolete pretty quick.
https://battery-tech.net/battery-markets-news/gotion-unveils...
- jillesvangurp 10小时前CATL's recent sodium ion battery production start is their second generation. The first generation was a few years ago.
- triceratops 13小时前> something I can really buy
What are you going to use them for?
Consumer batteries are already good enough IMO. Cheaper batteries in large quantities are what we need more of.
- layer8 11小时前Smartphone batteries that last a month instead of just a day would be nice.
- danaris 11小时前I would agree if I could buy a AA battery that would power my toothbrush for a year. Or one that could be rechargeable with easily-available chargers reliably for a decade (and without having to drop 0.2V to achieve it...).
Any kind of consumer power technology can only ever be truly "good enough" if it never causes any inconvenience or significant cost.
- tzs 50分钟前Here are some rechargeable AA batteries that were specifically tested and worked in toothbrushes [1].
For almost all devices there is no good reason to care that the nominal voltage of NiMH rechargeable batteries 0.2V lower than the nominal voltage of alkaline non-rechargeable batteries. Alkaline batteries have a steeper initial discharge curve and pretty quickly drop below 1.3V.
If your device has trouble with 1.3V it is either going to almost instantly stop working if it is a high load device, stop working after using maybe 10% of the battery's capacity of it is medium load, and maybe 30% for a light load.
On the lasting a decade or more front, I'm still using 19 of the 24 1st generation Eneloops I bought sometime before March. 2 died and 3 are missing. Last time I went through and measured their capacities, about 3 years ago, they averaged 1886 mAh. They were sold as having an average 2000 mAh capacity with a minimum of 1900 mAh.
I've also got 15 4th generation Eneloops bought 2014-08. Those are also all still fine, with an average capacity of 1960 mAh.
You might wonder why I bought the 4th generation ones since the 1st were still fine. It is because they greatly improved the self-discharge. 1st generation was specced at retaining 80% charge after a year. 4th generation is specced at retaining 90/80/75/70 after 1/3/5/10 years. I've got some lower power applications where changing batteries is annoying, so I want to minimize self-discharge.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/best-rechargeable...
- BobaFloutist 4小时前> Any kind of consumer power technology can only ever be truly "good enough" if it never causes any inconvenience or significant cost.
I mean, that's not the case with current consumer power technology
- konschubert 13小时前My point is that this is clearly out of the lab.
- yCombLinks 11小时前They are better and keep getting better and cheaper. Iteratively rather than one giant leap, but undeniable.
- s0a 13小时前been tracking this sector for years and we did hit a major inflection point in the last 12 months
- gruez 13小时前What actually changed?
- DannyBee 12小时前So random consumer who just bought a ton of batteries here: i don't follow the hype closely, nor am i a crazy battery dude, but i have tracked over the years the cost of doing battery backup vs generator, etc.
It's definitely the case for me (and friends of mine), that between reasonably priced batteries, inverters,etc, doing good battery backup for the house (and peak demand shaving/etc, i use a lot of power and take advantage of time of use tariffs) is now less than half the price of a generator.
Most of my friends spent 35-45k on a generator.
I will have spent <20k on batteries + inverters. It would actually be even less, but i have 600amps of split phase for the house, and 150 amps of 480v 3 phase for the shop, so i need two different kinds of inverters.
It is all literally being installed right now.
I would actually go completely off grid, but i live in a historic area and have slate roofs so can't really do solar easily ;)
As for what changed - 12 months ago this setup would have been almost double the price, just because of the availability (or lack thereof) of the right kinds of products necessary to achieve it. I know because i priced it :)
Availability here isn't in terms of stock, but literally in terms of "variety and choice of product".
For example - the availability of UL certified low cost 48v batteries in various sizes has skyrocketed in the past year. Lots of states require UL certification, assuming you are doing this in a permitted/etc way) Additionally, a lot more outdoor batteries are now available (my setup is outdoors but mostly protected).
The availability of choices in higher kVA but still residential grade inverters has also skyrocketed, etc.
As for why the price was doubled - before i would have needed 2x the number of inverters, and you really couldn't get a good 480v inverter except with high volt batteries that are wildly less available and wildly more expensive. On top of that, the batteries you could use that were UL certified and outdoor rated or could easily be done in outdoor enclosures was much lower than it is now.
- phtrivier 12小时前> Most of my friends spent 35-45k on a generator.
Honestly curious: why do you need a generator ? And more to the point, why do "most of you friends" need one (35-45k seems like a huge investment, so it would not be some vanity purchase, right ?)
Is that customary where you live, because the grid is unreliable ?
- intrepideng 12小时前I would be interested in hearing more about the system you installed, if you don't mind sharing. I'll probably be taking the plunge in a year or two.
- LoganDark 13小时前I would love to see one I can actually buy! Let me know once there's one I can actually buy.
I've been having this issue for years of everyone being so excited about things that I can't actually buy. I don't care! I would love to be excited too, but it's just tiring now.
I wish there were some kind of aggregator for exciting achievements that you can actually buy. I'm tired of all this premature hype!
- gosub100 13小时前They will be delivered as soon as fusion power plants come online to charge them.
I agree with you, I'm sick of hearing about the "developments" in batteries, nano materials, and fusion. Need an add blocker for these.
- epistasis 13小时前There are continual improvements in batteries all the time making them better, cheaper, and they are being deployed with exponential growth.
Silly headline. Just say solid state, yet again, the thing that's always been around the corner while lithium ion and sodium just ship ship ship on a massive scale.
If solid state works out, great, but it would no longer be a big breakthrough. Batteries are here and a major grid component today.
- strictnein 12小时前The first quantum laptop will run on solid state batteries that were charged with electricity from a fusion reactor.