121–130 of 201 posts
on a second thought, why not make the color of the box, say like mbp body color, or other light grayish colors, when it's intended for apple products. the green color does not seem a right fit for an accessory of apple products.
>and a total of 9 hours for 100% charge
yikes! But i guess it's okay since it's a 'standby' battery.
Here is a classic example of a startup launching an Altair Basic with the potential produce a Microsoft-like giant. Incidentally, I think this is also the first father/son team we've funded.
Battery storage will be absolutely huge in a few years. There is so much potential that has gone unexplored, since batteries have traditionally been heavy, low-capacity and short-lived. At least some of the people in this space who are in the right place at the right time today, are going to win big. Someone will have to build all these batteries. Everything from cars to renewable energy to light aircraft is going to…
I know that battery-powered planes have been built, but it just seems so uneconomical to me. Do you have evidence that could persuade me otherwise?
Or perhaps am I misunderstanding? By light aircraft do you mean aircraft less than 100 pounds or something?
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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.
Panasonic would NOT pay additional money in licensing to make less money by having their batteries last longer. Large companies like this make sure the batteries they use aren't interchangable or standardized. They certainly don't want to make batteries that you wouldn't want to replace. If you look at profit analysis of almost any product (like a panasonic camera), the profit margins are all in the accessories, like…
Why Macbooks? Is Apple friendly towards people who replicate their connector interfaces? Or are Macs the only popular device out there where people wish "I wish I could carry an extra battery!"?
The exact opposite: http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/10/hypermac/
Here is a classic example of a startup launching an Altair Basic with the potential produce a Microsoft-like giant. Incidentally, I think this is also the first father/son team we've funded.
Why Macbooks? Is Apple friendly towards people who replicate their connector interfaces? Or are Macs the only popular device out there where people wish "I wish I could carry an extra battery!"?
Watch Shark Tank for a while and you'll realize that even if you have a product people want, it's not trivial to scale a physical product business unless you have significant capital. Even if you reinvest the money you make, you are constrained by how quickly you can turn the money over.
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What laptop do you have? Macbook Pro's are so thin now even a RJ45 hole is too tall. I can forgive them for not having a replaceable battery for size/weight and noise reduction having everything so tightly integrated.
The ThinkPad x240 is thinner and lighter than a MacBook Pro and still manages to find space for an external battery, an RJ45 jack, and a VGA connector.
[1] http://www.laptopmag.com/reviews/laptops/lenovo-thinkpad-x24...
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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 e…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Panasonic would NOT pay additional money in licensing to make less money by having their batteries last longer. Large companies like this make sure the batteries they use aren't interchangable or standardized. They certainly don't want to make batteries that you wouldn't want to replace. If you look at profit analysis of almost any product (like a panasonic camera), the profit margins are all in the accessories, like…
Go for Apple then, custom batteries, not user-replaceable, not retailed. They'll sign you a check for $10bn instead.