Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

BYD has reportedly received 10 GWh of orders from Tesla for LFP batteries

pushevs.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 180 posts

Re: BYD has reportedly received 10 GWh of orders from Tesla for LFP batteries

#71

Post by ethagknight »

jacquesm wrote: post #55
sudosysgen wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The annoying bit here is that the LiFePO4 advantages only really start to pay off by the time a vehicle hits the secondary market.

But the first buyer wins with the improved resale value!

Re: BYD has reportedly received 10 GWh of orders from Tesla for LFP batteries

#72

Post by RNCTX »

sudosysgen wrote: post #27
consumer451 wrote: post #22

Modern IP rights combined with the IP wild-west that we have allowed in China are about backfire on western industry so hard. See section 3 here: https://roskill.com/news/batteries-the-true-drivers-behind-l... We chose to give China a 10 year head start on LFP at scale.

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…

> You'd be right to say that patents limited LFP in the West, but generally Japanese/Korean firms seemed relatively uninterested in the tech.

Because of the patents.

Japan and South Korea are US colonies basically.

Re: BYD has reportedly received 10 GWh of orders from Tesla for LFP batteries

#73

Post by RNCTX »

monkeybutton wrote: post #69
CarVac wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US doesn't make a lot of this type of battery because there is a consortium of patent-holders who charge enough to make LFP less economically viable that wasn't able to secure all the needed patents in China.

Why charge so much to license that no one will bother? Is it sunk cost thinking? Some money from licensing is better than nothing at all isn't it?

To create monopoly, the answer is always to create a monopoly.

All of this was set in our future when corporations were not prohibited from having patents.

Re: BYD has reportedly received 10 GWh of orders from Tesla for LFP batteries

#74

Post by RNCTX »

mountainriver wrote: post #67
grecy wrote: post #31

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.

That’s because Elon is genuinely trying to solve our energy problem, although people love to hate on him

Because he's not, he's just trading energy credits.

Re: BYD has reportedly received 10 GWh of orders from Tesla for LFP batteries

#75

Post by dheera »

consumer451 wrote: post #22

Modern IP rights combined with the IP wild-west that we have allowed in China are about backfire on western industry so hard. See section 3 here: https://roskill.com/news/batteries-the-true-drivers-behind-l... We chose to give China a 10 year head start on LFP at scale.

IP right shouldn't even be a consideration when it comes to clean energy.

What is super hypocritical is people who criticize China for environmental issues AND also want to restrict their access to clean energy tech.

Countries other than the US: Please copy the heck out of every invention that is going to help us fix climate change and deploy it at scale ASAP. Don't listen to noisy US patent lawyers. American lawyers think "intellectual property" (i.e. fake property that Mother Nature doesn't give a damn about) is more important than childrens' lives. Thank you.

Re: BYD has reportedly received 10 GWh of orders from Tesla for LFP batteries

#76

Post by jiggawatts »

dangrossman wrote: post #46
anonymousiam wrote: post #17

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…

There are a couple replies about why Tesla doesn't still do battery swaps, but none of them got it right: Back when Tesla demoed the battery swap capability, California's CARB was offering extra ZEV credits for each electric vehicle sold with "fast refueling" capability. Tesla set up the single "battery swap station" in order to comply with the letter of the law and collect a few extra tens of millions in credits. Th…

This is the same type of thing as the "green" hydrogen-based initiatives. Literally 100% of these are run by fossil-fuel companies that want to get various incentives and credits for green initiatives. Hydrogen is hilariously bad at everything, and makes zero sense to use for any purpose. Yet, it keeps getting pushed and pushed because of these legal fictions.

Re: BYD has reportedly received 10 GWh of orders from Tesla for LFP batteries

#77

Post by AnthonyMouse »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #56
DavidPiper wrote: post #38

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?

There are some striking parallels between China and Japan, not so many between China and Holocaust victims. 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, star…

A principle difference between Japan and China is that the war was followed with the Marshall Plan, which brought Japan a new constitution and elected government. That hasn't happened in China and it isn't obvious that it's about to.

Re: BYD has reportedly received 10 GWh of orders from Tesla for LFP batteries

#79

Post by zamalek »

infocollector wrote: post #2

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?

I am a very minor investor. They quite recently pioneered some very slick flat batteries. The volume/joule is better (not sure about joule/kg), and the batteries could become structural. I find them speculatively interesting.

Re: BYD has reportedly received 10 GWh of orders from Tesla for LFP batteries

#80

Post by sudosysgen »

RNCTX wrote: post #72
sudosysgen wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> You'd be right to say that patents limited LFP in the West, but generally Japanese/Korean firms seemed relatively uninterested in the tech. Because of the patents. Japan and South Korea are US colonies basically.

Eh, not really. It's complicated. For example, one of the major IP holders for LiFePO4 batteries is Hydro-Québec, which actually had it's own EV program in the 90s, but for political reasons mostly it was dropped (can't have a public company compete against the private sector without businesses getting unhappy). So there was actually interest to mass manufacture these batteries, and just like China it was by state companies, it's just that we shied away from that economic model.

Meanwhile private companies had a choice, either they would go with Li-ion which was also patent encumbered but was very mature, or LiFePO4 which was patent encumbered and very immature, so private industry largely went with Li-ion, with the exception of A123, but even without paying any royalties (they sold them without paying royalties for a fair while) they are 10x more expensive than the Chinese ones.

Post reply on HN