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Gbatteries (YC W14) Launches BatteryBox, A 50Whr Backup Battery For MacBooks

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Re: Gbatteries (YC W14) Launches BatteryBox, A 50Whr Backup Battery For MacBooks

#71
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it's obviously snake oil. If you had a technology that increased the charge-cycle lifetime of a battery by any substantial amount, you wouldn't be marketing a stupid plastic box for mactards. You'd be cashing billion-dollar checks twice a day.

if you read the article, you'd see they're working on OEM deals to get the tech into batteries across the board. The Box is just a nice consumer demo so people can get their hands on it now. Actually a pretty smart PR move. Also, the patent: https://www.google.com/patents/WO2013142964A1

The box, judging from that patent, is unlikely to benefit from what they're doing. In fact I can't see how anymobile devices would - a laptop has 6 - 9 Li-Ion cells and needs all of them to run all the time. A cellphone has exactly 1.

The patent is proposing they're going to use capacitors/inductors to do some type of pulsed battery charging/discharging while not connected to AC power. The thing is, there's no room to move on that - you're absolutely at the mercy of the quality of those cells, since you need all of them all the time when you're running on batteries.

Worse, if you have say, 3 strings of 3 like in a laptop, and you shut-off 1 string, then you're increasing your current draw from the remaining cells and losing more power to internal resistance.

Re: Gbatteries (YC W14) Launches BatteryBox, A 50Whr Backup Battery For MacBooks

#72
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if you read the article, you'd see they're working on OEM deals to get the tech into batteries across the board. The Box is just a nice consumer demo so people can get their hands on it now. Actually a pretty smart PR move. Also, the patent: https://www.google.com/patents/WO2013142964A1

That's a patent application, yes. Are you aware that the USPTO gets so many applications for perpetual motion patents that they have regulations forbidding them? Patent application does not in any way indicate feasibility.

I believe the point was for you, with all of your infinite battery wisdom, to review the patent and possibly even use that to back up your hyperbolic "obviously snake oil" claim, but I'm not holding my breath.

Re: Gbatteries (YC W14) Launches BatteryBox, A 50Whr Backup Battery For MacBooks

#73
The Air's battery already lasts 12+ hours. How much demand could there possibly be for people to stretch it out even further? HyperJuice (and I would guess others) is already out there and I've never even seen one of those things in the wild.

Re: Gbatteries (YC W14) Launches BatteryBox, A 50Whr Backup Battery For MacBooks

#74
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes you think this? Portable batteries like this are dime a dozen (maybe not for macs, I don't own one). Or the real play is licensing the battery tech which doesn't really seem Microsoft like at all since the company would likely fade into the background as the big battery companies use the technology. I don't mean to be offensive, just curious why you are so confident this company or product is a industry ga…

You need to read to the end of the post to understand PG's analogy. There is software that controls the charging rate of the battery that (if the claims are correct) could be fundamentally disruptive to batteries going forward, so the Altair analogy implies a potential software licensing strategy as an upside in this company.

But is this new technology? Have they really figured out something that other battery companies don't know?

This charger takes 2.25 hours to reach 80% or 4.5 hours to reach 100% capacity. Could it simply be that they're charging more slowly?

Maybe other battery makers know about this, but they don't implement it because they (and consumers) don't value using the battery effectively. Hoping for some lithium-charging experts (I know there are people out there with this as their primary research focus) to weigh in.

Re: Gbatteries (YC W14) Launches BatteryBox, A 50Whr Backup Battery For MacBooks

#75
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it's obviously snake oil. If you had a technology that increased the charge-cycle lifetime of a battery by any substantial amount, you wouldn't be marketing a stupid plastic box for mactards. You'd be cashing billion-dollar checks twice a day.

if you read the article, you'd see they're working on OEM deals to get the tech into batteries across the board. The Box is just a nice consumer demo so people can get their hands on it now. Actually a pretty smart PR move. Also, the patent: https://www.google.com/patents/WO2013142964A1

You said

>if you read the article, you'd see they're working on OEM deals

I did read the article and didn't recall that, so I re-read. This is what I saw:

>It’ll take some time for Gbatteries to get its technology embedded with third-party OEMs

Re: Gbatteries (YC W14) Launches BatteryBox, A 50Whr Backup Battery For MacBooks

#76
post #58

Would this be useful for Tesla?

Absolutely. And Apple, and Dell, and anyone else that uses rechargeable batteries that degrade over time. This solves the degradation aspect of batteries, so it would improve the longevity of devices.

But I've read so much about Tesla being really intelligent with charging. Wouldn't they have already thought of this?

(Or at least be doing enough intelligent things already that they wouldn't get much additional improvement?)

Re: Gbatteries (YC W14) Launches BatteryBox, A 50Whr Backup Battery For MacBooks

#78

They claim that their 50 Whr battery can power a MacBook Pro for 6 hours, a MacBook Air for 12 hrs. By my math, that would mean that the MacBook Pro would only be consuming an average of around 8.3 watts an hour, the air only around 4.2 watts an hour. That seems absurd to me, considering the power supplies that ship with the MacBook Pro and the MacBook Air are 85-watt and 45-watt respectively. They are assuming that…

It's entirely true, and means I could run my MacBook Air off of USB power at 5 volts and one amp (5 watts), but zero battery charging. Unfortunately Apple doesn't allow this scenario, but the math works out...

Re: Gbatteries (YC W14) Launches BatteryBox, A 50Whr Backup Battery For MacBooks

#79
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it's obviously snake oil. If you had a technology that increased the charge-cycle lifetime of a battery by any substantial amount, you wouldn't be marketing a stupid plastic box for mactards. You'd be cashing billion-dollar checks twice a day.

It turns out that even the most amazing technologies don't just automatically get you huge checks overnight. You have to build a business, starting with a first product, and grow from there.

Actually no, if this worked it would be a 30-minute meeting.

Our patented technology extends the charge-cycle life of standard lithium-ion batteries by at least 200%, and we can prove it. Great, we will license that. Here's a check for five billion dollars.

Re: Gbatteries (YC W14) Launches BatteryBox, A 50Whr Backup Battery For MacBooks

#80
post #61

Mentioned in passing in child comments below, but worth highlighting - the HyperJuice Battery range of products (eg http://amzn.to/1mqK9ap ) already does this, at a similar price point, and is available for purchase today. In fact they're already onto the second generation of the product, with minor bugs and issues with the first gen already ironed out. I get this GBattery has a new "BatteryOS" management feature but…

We bought a HyperJuice 2 for use on trips. It's terrible. It'll charge a 15" rMBP about 10-15% before it's completely dead.
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