New Battery Technology Coming Soon – A Game Changer | Hacker News Reader

New Battery Technology Coming Soon – A Game Changer

nikolamotor.com

28 pointscaesartcs15 comments

This looks like an announcement of announcement.

On HN, there's no harm in waiting.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

If you need to "pre-announce" a game changer, it immediately calls into question the reality of the news and your actual motivations. If you have a game changer in your pocket, reveal and demonstrate it with little to no warning. That is how hype marketing works today. It is fine if it is 'coming in 2025', but demonstrate it, working, today.

The world is numb to 'pre-hype' without proof.

Tesla's reveal of the Roadster 2 was a perfect demonstration of a headline stealing reveal paired with proof the technology is real. Those tunnel runs using Plaid mode immediately demonstrated the potential of what was 'coming in 2020'. No pre-hype-piece was required.

Whoever insisted on this announcement from Nikola Motors doesn't understand marketing, or is trying to raise capital/interest. A shame, because as everyone is pointing out, this is another "game changing battery tech" that is "coming soon" (whatever).

I look forward to being "surprised" in 2020. /s

I bet that in 2020 we'll find out that there were "unforeseen" difficulties.

Even if something works perfectly on a lab doesn't mean you can mass produce.

If they already have the batteries and they are this revolutionary, then why wait a year to give a demonstration? Surely a demonstration of such batteries right now would cause the value of their company to skyrocket.

Exactly!

This month, Nikola entered into a letter of intent to acquire a world-class battery engineering team to help bring the new battery to pre-production. Through this acquisition, Nikola will add 15 PhDs and five master’s degree team members. Due to confidentiality and security reasons, additional details of the acquisition will not be disclosed until Nikola World 2020.

Wait, they're announcing that they have a letter of intent to hire the R&D team? This isn't even a pre-announcement. This is a pre-pre-pre announcement. This is about the point at which they would approach YC or some other VC, where a due diligence would be done and somebody qualified would check out the technology.

They really have built and shown truck prototypes, though. Hydrogen-powered, not battery powered. In 2016, they "pivoted" from battery power to hydrogen power with natural gas backup.[1] Even Electrek was skeptical back then. Now they seem to be "pivoting" again, back to batteries.

They claimed 7000 pre-orders for one model of their truck. They built and demoed a little battery-powered ATV prototype. They've announced six vehicle products and shipped zero.

Not that Cummins, a respected maker of Diesel engines, is doing much better. They announced an electric semi-truck in 2017, for delivery in 2019, and it's not here yet.

[1] https://electrek.co/2016/08/30/nikola-motor-one-hydrogen/

"Could drive down the cost of hydrogen and double the range of battery-electric vehicles worldwide"

This point hints at the likely Achilles heel: an aqueous electrolyte that is partially decomposed during charging, releasing hydrogen. Hydrogen evolution means that the energy efficiency of charging the battery is limited. Hydrogen release is also a potential safety hazard. Finally, it means that the battery system can't be sealed; the battery needs to be able to release gas build-up and accept additions of water to restore what has been lost from the electrolyte.

Limited charging efficiency due to hydrogen evolution has been a sticky point for other battery chemistries in the past. Nikola appears to be trying to spin this as an advantage. "Buy a battery and get a hydrogen source for free!" But then you need expensive infrastructure to capture, store, and use the hydrogen.

Heard this before. I won't believe it until I can buy it.

Didn't such revolutions with batteries happen several times already? And aren't we already buying the results in our mobile phones and cars?

There was a big leap, the lithium ion chemistry. Other than that, most improvements were incremental, not huge leaps. Which is the norm in almost all industries.

Wouldn't it make more sense to sell batteries directly? Are they going to win more revenues by "bundling" the rest of their EV with batteries compared to selling to other EV makers directly?

Nikola has been a big talker for years now. I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt, but at a certain point you got to cash the check they've been writing.

Good luck to them, but... I see a lot of "could" and very little "will" in that press release. Also, if they're hiring researchers than that seems to indicate a certain amount of speculation to the whole affair.

The list of hires sounds more research than production.

Bold figures, guess we'll see...in a year

I didn’t see mention of maximum rates of battery charge/discharge in the press release. This suggests to me they may still need to optimize that.

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