51–60 of 180 posts
Tesla said that they will use LFP batteries from now on in all "standard range" cars. https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/20/tesla-switching-to-lfp-batte... As I understand it, the "standard range" cars are no different from the long range cars, other than a software flag that allows a greater battery discharge. So this will complicate the Tesla fast battery swap stations if they ever actually build any of those. https://ww…
Tesla said that they will use LFP batteries from now on in all "standard range" cars. https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/20/tesla-switching-to-lfp-batte... As I understand it, the "standard range" cars are no different from the long range cars, other than a software flag that allows a greater battery discharge. So this will complicate the Tesla fast battery swap stations if they ever actually build any of those. https://ww…
The battery swap stations were a scam to get subsidies. They aren't any more real than the Cybertruck, Model 2, Roadster, solar roofs, semi, or Full Self Driving.
Just in case -> BYD Co. Ltd. is a Chinese manufacturing company headquartered in Shenzhen, Guangdong, founded by Wang Chuanfu in February 1995. Perhaps someone can comment on quality of these batteries compared to the current car batteries Tesla uses?
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FWIW Sony sued BYD for patent infringement in Japanese courts and lost. Sanyo sued BYD in US courts and settled mostly on the side of BYD. BYD also managed to invalidate a Panasonic patents. It seems to me that China bet on LFP, the West bet on Li-ion, and China's bet is pretty successful. You'd be right to say that patents limited LFP in the West, but generally Japanese/Korean firms seemed relatively uninterested in…
LiFePO4 has lower energy density and it's way more durable. Both properties go against the throw-away culture. (Hand held) Tool industry thrives on selling battery packs - every single brand has its own battery lock-in to boot as well. Phones often get disposed once their battery capacity diminishes.
Bonus points if there would be a mandatory way to replace the individual cells so that only they and not the pack would have to be replaced when and if the cells wear out.
Just in case -> BYD Co. Ltd. is a Chinese manufacturing company headquartered in Shenzhen, Guangdong, founded by Wang Chuanfu in February 1995. Perhaps someone can comment on quality of these batteries compared to the current car batteries Tesla uses?
So Tesla's Li-ion batteries are going to have a significantly higher mass energy density - these are around 150Wh/kg vs 230Wh/kg that Tesla can currently muster. This is somewhat mitigated by the fact that LiFePO4 handles 100% charges and 100% discharge, so in practice the protections on Li-ion means you can only really get 190Wh or so out of them every day, significantly narrowing the gap. However, these are going t…
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That interpretation might be a bit inflammatory. But at a minimum, it's certainly the new "fyi this is a JAPANESE business." How'd that work out for the generation of manufacturers that used it as a veiled insult?
As a young(ish) person, I've definitely heard "fyi this is a CHINESE business", but haven't really heard "fyi this is a JEWISH business" or "fyi this is a JAPANESE business". Are there communicable/generalised messages or stereotypes people are trying to invoke with this sort of thing, or have they always just been intended as slander?
In the 1940s, great industrialized nations vied with each other to see who could commit the biggest atrocities on the other guys. Japan lost out, but once set straight, they began an impressive multi-decade recovery.
In the 1950s, Japan's own considerable efforts, along with help from their former enemies, started to pay off. In the US, we were slow to let go of old grudges, though, and the (understandably) poor quality of Japanese exports was a standing joke. As tuatoru points out, anything that said "Made in Japan" was almost guaranteed to be crap, similar to the outlook many people have towards Chinese exports today.
In the 1960s, Japan's reputation as an industrial power was growing, but they were still mostly seen as imitators rather than innovators, again very much like the Chinese are today. The Japanese took an early lead in areas like solid state electronics, exploiting inventions that mostly originated in the West but weren't being used to their full potential in the consumer space. Companies like Honda and Toyota were also starting to sell a few cars here, but nobody took them seriously.
In the 1970s, the gas crunch hit. People stopped laughing at small Japanese cars and started buying them. There was still a lot of latent resentment towards the Japanese, though, coming from everyone from organized auto industry labor who saw their well-feathered nests falling apart, to WWII veterans whose interactions with Japan had proven too traumatic to forgive and forget. Not to mention anti-Asian sentiment being on the upswing as a whole, thanks to Vietnam and the "boat people" who were, of course, "coming to take our jobs" or worse.
The Chinese aren't selling cars in the US market but you can bet there'd be a lot of prejudice out there in the roads and parking lots of small-town America if they were.
Later, in the 1980s, Japan emerged as a player in computing and data processing, but we all knew that they were culturally ill-adapted to develop good software, so no biggie. Of course, this was just a refrain of 1930s-era prejudices. "They're all nearsighted. No way these guys can fly fighters and bombers." By the 1990s, many young people thought of Japan as the country where the best video games came from, and any notion that they were somehow incapable of writing code was forgotten.
So with respect to China and the US, I think we'll end up as valued trading partners in the long run. It's just a matter of waiting for one irrational prejudice after another to go away. This will take time, but it'll happen... if neither of us does anything stupid.
Elon has said multiple times Tesla will buy all the batteries from all the suppliers they possibly can AND make their own as fast as possible AND increase existing contracts with Panasonic AND seek out as many new suppliers as physically possible. Takeaway: Tesla want more batteries.
Global sales in 2018 (of light passenger vehicles) were around 70M. Absent chip shortages and financial crashes, we could expect to hit 100M in three or four years.
Yep, Tesla wants more batteries. And this number, 70M, is why sticking with Nickel-Cobalt is a Bad Idea.
There's a lot more iron and phosphorus available for a lot cheaper; demand for Nickel and Cobalt will push their price... er, very high.
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I'm in the market for home backup batteries and was wondering if you could namedrop the mfgs of your batteries if you were satisfied with them.
Overkill Solar https://overkillsolar.com/ I've ordered twice, and plan to order another 5kw soon After having 2 unbranded circuit breakers fail on me. Everything else will be Blue Sea, or Victron. They're the most expensive, but they feel as high quality as they are expensive which makes it worth it. Especially considering the alternative is explosions followed by fire.
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Is arbitrarily pointing out “fyi this is a CHINESE business” the new “fyi this is a JEWISH business”?
That interpretation might be a bit inflammatory. But at a minimum, it's certainly the new "fyi this is a JAPANESE business." How'd that work out for the generation of manufacturers that used it as a veiled insult?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
As a young(ish) person, I've definitely heard "fyi this is a CHINESE business", but haven't really heard "fyi this is a JEWISH business" or "fyi this is a JAPANESE business". Are there communicable/generalised messages or stereotypes people are trying to invoke with this sort of thing, or have they always just been intended as slander?
I can't speak to "Jewish", but I can to "Japanese". It relates to Japan's industrial rise after WWII. In the 1950s, "Japanese" was synonymous with "shoddy and cheap". The stereotypical import from Japan was an HB pencil. In the 1980s, "Japanese" became synonymous with "cheap and reliable" -- think Toyota vs General Motors. American manufacturers responded with racism rather than fixing their problems. There was hyste…
To be fair, the Japanese, through MITI subsidies, slaughtered the US semiconductor industry through the early 80s.
It took a lot of US government funding through VHSIC and the VLSI Project to prevent semiconductors from collapsing completely.
People too often assume that "things will work out" after the fact when sometimes it took great efforts up front to make it that way.
Of course, I'm originally from the Rust Belt of the US, so I have a front row seat to "Yeah, things don't always work out."