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Comment by paws | Hacker News Reader

TL, DR: This tech utilizes solid-glass electrolytes vs today's liquid electrolytes. This apparently brings us:

"at least three times as much energy density as today’s lithium-ion batteries"

"greater number of charging and discharging cycles, which equates to longer-lasting batteries, as well as a faster rate of recharge (minutes rather than hours)."

The team lead is Dr. Goodenough, making things better!

(sorry, couldn't resist. that's really his name)

If true, that first point especially sounds awesome!

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I used to always be excited about new battery tech, but let's be honest: we see nearly these exact claims ALL THE TIME, and they never come to market.

I don't know what's to blame, but I'm to the point of "believe it when I see it."

These new discoveries and inventions are years away from market, but to say, that they never come to market is just not true. Why do you think our phones are getting thinner with longer battery life? They are certainly coming to market, but to introduce something this new in your consumer grade products would increase price by likely $1000's, to very few people you'll need to build plants, and production lines.

The batteries shipping today are considerably better than the ones shipping 10 years ago.

Which feels like normal, incremental improvement.

The news is always game-changing. Instant charging. 3x capacity. Biggest breakthrough in years. Huge capacities for pennies on the dollar. Blah blah.

Yes, but not to the extent that the hyped tech over the years would have you believe. It's hard to tell how much improvement is due to new tech vs. simple incremental improvements.

"Faster rate of recharge (minutes rather than hours)" sounds like a big win for some applications.

It's such a shame that these batteries are so heavy, because IMHO fast recharge is one of the things still holding back electric car adoption. Even the Tesla fast-charge stations take 30-40 min to reach 80% charge, while a gasoline-powered car can hit 100% in only a minute or two.

(Though OTOH, I've always been surprised that fleet vehicles like city buses can't surmount that issue with modular battery backs that can be physically swapped out at the terminal stop and then charged offline before swapping back into another bus...)

I borrowed and electric car for a week, charging overnight on a 15 amp circuit. And occasionally on a middle and top end circuits as a test. Charge times come into play when you dont own your home or easily have a way to run power to your car. That is it. I don't think is the biggest blocker, cost is the blocker.

Transit hubs could even have the charging infrastructure onsite but in that case why not just swap the whole bus?

Because then you have an empty bus while it charges.

I guess it depends on how hard it is to swap out a battery but on a vehicle like a bus that can probably be made very simple. Now that I think about it a bus must carry a large quantity of fuel, I wonder how long it takes to fill one up. Swapping a battery could actually be faster.

Depends on battery charging rates but in general, a swap will be faster at large energy densities. BAIC in China are currently experimenting with this in taxis and buses.

Sure but even with low charging rates you can make up the difference with more battery packs right?

I don't understand why so many people are ignoring that it uses sodium instead of lithium. Even if it was WORSE on metrics it would still be better due to the cost advantage. Amazing.

I just heard about polymer electrolytes last week.

Quite happy about the moves in energy storage.

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