Comment by heimatau
4 years ago
> Just looking at the density is not enough.
On the contrary, it should be the driving force about making long-term decisions to benefit society. Hell, I'd be all for mini-nuclear in vehicles but the ability to make it safe is such a high threshold that it's not even remotely feasible.
No one thought electric cars would be where they are today. Elon made this electric car market happen by making it sexy (and selling only premium cars) which helped him double down on the real vision. There is a ceiling for the battery and it's not as high as many think.
We'll see what Tesla battery day shows but my main point is this: That to improve society with long-term thinking, we need to be more innovative and it's my opinion that attacking Milton's weaknesses is a waste of the public's time/energy. Especially when short sellers get a lot more freedom in how they deal with the market. No one is being a fair arbiter of the facts. Hydrogen is better for hauling big loads, it just is. To bring that to market is Nikola's real challenge. The upside to hydrogen is greater than the upside of li-ion, full stop. Shouldn't we want the better solution for society?
> On the contrary, it should be the driving force about making long-term decisions to benefit society.
No. Because people don't drive cross country everyday. Making an overall system vastly less efficient to optimize on specific metric that most people don't car about in a product is nonsense.
For grid storage density is also totally irrelevant.
What matters is price and scalability, not density.
> Elon made this electric car market happen by making it sexy (and selling only premium cars)
They are selling premium cars because that really whats economically feasible. As they go down the cost curve the cars will get cheaper.
> There is a ceiling for the battery and it's not as high as many think.
Even with current battery just going to silicon anodes/single crystal cathodes can and will double density.
Go look what is possible with Li-Sulfer batteries that are already being worked on to get to the next level.
> No. Because people don't drive cross country everyday.
Do you like spending a non-insignificant amount of time driving to/from a gas station (or electric charging station) and then spending even more time to wait until your local energy (car's tank/battery cells) has recharged enough for you to go again for....non-insignificant amount of time...etc..etc.
How many people have done this? How many years? etc. It's a pretty important first principle to have a system where energy density is a maximum (or at least significantly higher theoretical maximum than existing trends [i.e. Li-ion]).
> For grid storage density is also totally irrelevant.
I'm not discussing this. I'm talking about high power demands needed for semi's/trucks. The above (in this comment) is also considering the consumer market efficiency to be had.
> Go look what is possible
I'm aware but many of the efficiencies that are implemented for Li-ion [and it's variants] could theoretically compound the limit with hydrogen based. Abundance of essential compounds is a better by product than a scarce quantity of essential compounds.
P.S. This is about moving the goal posts. We're talking about innovation in a specific market. But ultimately the end goal is improving all aspects that affect society. (less destructive to the earth, doing more with less, etc)
> Do you like spending a non-insignificant amount of time driving to/from a gas station
More then 95% of EV charging happens at home. For most people a 300 miles way beyond plenty. In Europe the avg will likely be half of that.
Its seems you focus on the problems with batteries but ignore the many problems in scaling hydrogen and fuel cells. Two gigantic new industries that need to be bootstrapped and both have very significant technical and cost challenges to even get on track.
Batteries are in full ramp with 100 billions of investment in scale and 10s of billions in research. I just think they will win for the waste majority of situations.