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

Why is everyone trying to build a solid-state battery?

construction-physics.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 331 posts

Re: Why is everyone trying to build a solid-state battery?

#211

Post by _carbyau_ »

thelastgallon wrote: post #200
zuzululu wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm surprised they didn't flag and downvote you. There seems to be a certain crowd that seems view EV as sort of a panacea without considering the true realities which involve experience and research to know they are far from replacing ICE

If ICE is the only vehicle for you, because of religious reasons, thats okay. There are large and small countries ( China, Norway) that have majority EV cars and continue to grow. There are 120+ other countries that are buying EVs. Even in US, there are a few people who have bought EVs and realized it works for them. A person who really needs an ICE car would encourage others to buy EVs because it would reduce oil de…

I find this whole discussion weird.

The whole world is in a transition phase. For some it will make sense to jump to pure EV use, for others it won't. That whole “The future is already here – it's just not evenly distributed.” thing...

I have one of each. They work well for different reasons.

EV is the charge-at-home city car that is preferred for every day use.

The ICE is for when two cars are needed and long distance travel because charging stations here are not well sorted yet.

My plan for the future: The ICE car will be replaced with a hybrid with a significant emphasis on battery. Then eventually it'll be an EV as well. We'll get there.

Re: Why is everyone trying to build a solid-state battery?

#212

Post by _carbyau_ »

rootusrootus wrote: post #61
toss1 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It should be relatively straightforward to imagine — we already have that in gasoline-powered internal combustion engines. The Watt-hours per kilogram of good Lithium Ion batteries is around 250-280 Wh/Kg; for Lithium Iron Phosphate it's about 180 Wh/kg, and for Sodium-Ion about 170 Wh/Kg. The raw energy in gasoline is about 12,300 Wh/Kg but automobile internal combustion engines get only about 20-30% efficiency yiel…

> With a 130Lb/60kg battery instead, and saving the weight of the ICE engine and fuel system, the overall car design could go much more lightweight, regaining a lot of performance and range, all while gaining the huge torque of electric motors. I think you're underselling it, even. A typical like-for-like modern EV is only marginally heavier than the ICE equivalent. If we were able to drop the weight of the battery b…

> we could make EVs with the same form factor as today but with over a thousand miles of range. Not that we need that

I think this is the way to go. For most people (you can never please everyone) 1000 miles is enough to cover a full day car trip.

Then 8 hours of charge time while you sleep.

Charging while you sleep requires more distributed, lower power infrastructure compared to a 10 berth service station trying to juice cars in 5 minutes as seems to be commonly touted. I haven't run the numbers but juicing 10 cars in 5 minutes has to require significant electrical infrastructure!

Side bonus: never having to go to a service station.

Re: Why is everyone trying to build a solid-state battery?

#213

Post by ryan_lane »

SoftTalker wrote: post #70
rootusrootus wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> With a 130Lb/60kg battery instead, and saving the weight of the ICE engine and fuel system, the overall car design could go much more lightweight, regaining a lot of performance and range, all while gaining the huge torque of electric motors. I think you're underselling it, even. A typical like-for-like modern EV is only marginally heavier than the ICE equivalent. If we were able to drop the weight of the battery b…

Some people might need that range. If you cannot charge at home and you don't have good public charging infrastructure then you might want enough range so you only have to deal with charging once or twice a month.

If you can't charge at home it's probably because you're in an apartment, which means you're in a city, in which case there's going to be charging infrastructure.

Re: Why is everyone trying to build a solid-state battery?

#214

Post by _carbyau_ »

iso1631 wrote: post #47
laxisOp wrote: post #6

We need way more research on batteries. People cant ingine what is possible if we make battery 10x energy dense.

Not all batteries need to be mobile. A 1 GWh grid scale battery takes up about 4 hectares at the moment. The UKs total energy use is about 2,000GWh a day. It would need to use 240,000 hectares to store all energy requirements (eletric, transport, heating etc) for a whole month. Even in extreme cold conditions it would last a couple of weeks. That would be about 1% of land use.

Even if it doesn't work for the UK. Australia could do this easily.

Proportionally less population, less snow covered territory and general coldness = easier requirements.

Land coverage? To say Australia has plenty of land is an understatement.

To amp up(excuse the pun) this mental exercise (don't mind the practicalities of building it!) a bit:

If efficient super-long distance power transmission was a thing, we could have batteries and solar for the whole world and locate it where few people would ever see it.

If placed into a single contiguous blob though, I imagine the solar panels would cause their own microclimate by sucking 20% of the suns energy out of many hectares/acres of land... so that may be a problem.

Re: Why is everyone trying to build a solid-state battery?

#215

Post by jimt1234 »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #186
jimt1234 wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Gasoline ... it's not a "bomb" My teen years would beg to differ, when some neighborhood friends and I decided to experiment with gas and bleach. The neighborhood residents, fire department and local police also had an opinion, too. (We all got into BIG trouble. Definitely one of the dumber things I did as a teen.)

Bleach? What does that do? My high-school crowd stopped just short of building a multistage FAE device. I left early for college and everybody else was short of cash, and that was the end of our neighborhood R&D program. All pre-9/11, needless to say. It's a lot less fun when the possible punishment goes from detention at lunch to waterboarding in Gitmo.

We used to take a half-full can of gas, then get a ping pong ball, drill a hole in it, fill it with bleach, then put tape over the hole. Drop the ping pong ball in the gas can, screw the lid on really tight, then wait. It used to take about 10 minutes for the gas to eat its way into the ping pong ball, but when it did, and the bleach mixed with the gas... boom! The scary part is only worked, maybe, half the time. So there would be cans of gas/bleach just sitting in a field, waiting to explode or release really harmful chems into the air. We were kids, young and stupid.

Re: Why is everyone trying to build a solid-state battery?

#216

Post by jojobas »

qwery wrote: post #83

If you know a bit about electronics, you might be a bit surprised by the term 'solid-state battery'. It's a poor analogue to the more common usage of solid-state with semiconductors, integrated circuits, etc. -- a "solid-state" cell is still a chemical cell. It's not a paradigm shift on the level of, say, replacing a relay with a MOSFET.

Non-solid-state batteries have liquid/gel electrolyte.

Re: Why is everyone trying to build a solid-state battery?

#217

Post by jojobas »

vablings wrote: post #163
capitainenemo wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Requires a good mix though. The parent is still correct. Mythbusters spent a long time trying to get cars to blow up in a dramatic hollywood fashion in various episodes and determined that under most conditions it wouldn't happen. They did get it to happen, they just had to try really hard. In most accidents the gas tank will not blow up.

High velocity accidents where the gas is quickly dispersed into the air is pretty much the only way that happens.

Even then it's just a slow-burning fireball, not detonation, no shockwave.

Re: Why is everyone trying to build a solid-state battery?

#218

Post by hunterpayne »

bluGill wrote: post #65
jgilias wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In current battle conditions isn’t the range primarily determined by the size of the fiber optic spool attached to the drone than battery capacity?

Maybe. Last I checked Ukraine preferred radio drones to fiber optic - the spool is heavy and a limitation in many ways (not all that I understand). Fiber optics are used only when you can't get something else to works. Advances in AI, radio relay systems, self-navigation, and anti electronic warfare are all things they are working on so they can use more drones without fiber. For longer ranges drones fiber is not an…

They prefer what works. So it depends on the EM jamming the other side has at that point in the line. Some parts of the line are covered in old fiber optic cable because they are near somewhere important so the Russians have EM jammers there. Other parts of the line, they probably only use radio drones. Also, the ways the drones talk to the operators has changed at least 3 times throughout the war. So by the time you read this, it might have changed again.

Also, the last big change is network relay drones that fly at a few 1000 ft that allow other drones to have more range. The AI thing hasn't played out because the boards are too expensive to use in 1-way kit.

Re: Why is everyone trying to build a solid-state battery?

#219

Post by CamperBob2 »

jimt1234 wrote: post #215
CamperBob2 wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bleach? What does that do? My high-school crowd stopped just short of building a multistage FAE device. I left early for college and everybody else was short of cash, and that was the end of our neighborhood R&D program. All pre-9/11, needless to say. It's a lot less fun when the possible punishment goes from detention at lunch to waterboarding in Gitmo.

We used to take a half-full can of gas, then get a ping pong ball, drill a hole in it, fill it with bleach, then put tape over the hole. Drop the ping pong ball in the gas can, screw the lid on really tight, then wait. It used to take about 10 minutes for the gas to eat its way into the ping pong ball, but when it did, and the bleach mixed with the gas... boom! The scary part is only worked, maybe, half the time. So…

WTF. Seriously? Just plain old Clorox? Which is ~95% water?

BRB, stopping by the laundry room on my way to the garage...

Re: Why is everyone trying to build a solid-state battery?

#220

Post by rogerrogerr »

SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #198
rogerrogerr wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And you mostly aren’t charging to 80%, usually it’s closer to 40-60%.

heh, ok, that’s strange. So when you say it’s got a 350 mile range, but then make the point you only need to charge to 40% that you would be fine with a single vehicle that had a 140mile range? I swear buying an EV in 2026 breaks brains. The push back has been so bad because the mfgs pushed the single car lie… but the people that jumped in now need to defend their $60,000 purchases. I get it, but please don’t think y…

> the people that jumped in now need to defend their $60,000 purchases.

First, you're not assuming good faith.

Second, I got a used Model 3 for $16k. I also have an F150. I _choose_ to drive the 3 on road trips. I am not suffering from whatever mental illness you think EV drivers are.

Post reply on HN