A Battery Breakthrough that Proved Too Good to Be True | Hacker News Reader

A Battery Breakthrough that Proved Too Good to Be True

technologyreview.com

76 pointsjcklnruns32 comments

Technology Review among all publications is the most guilty of hyping vaporware battery technology, especially, it must be said, if it is being developed by MIT people (not that Envia was). Here's the press release TR breathlessly and noncritically paraphrased in 2011. http://www.technologyreview.com/news/422627/startup-boasts-b...

Tech. Review has a hype problem across all its range of coverage.

Instead of moderation in all things, it tries to be extreme in many opposing directions. This doesn't work as well.

I remember when they loved all kinds of patents without question except for one regular columnist that once had an article titled "Patents Kill." It would be a lot better if they were a little more suspicious of patents while not bothering at all to employ that guy.

So, then journalists should be mercilessly and ruthlessly critical of all they are covering? ARPA-E judges are pretty smart folks, if they were fooled by this thing what makes you think a journalist on some tech news site is going to be able to vet this technology and determine if it's the going to be the next big thing or not?

The point I really want to discuss is the negativity of your comment. We like to come down hard on people dismissing new projects for being incomplete, unpromising, and so on when it comes to social sharing apps. Why not also be kind to failures in the cleantech area? The area where it's actually really tough to innovate, the area where improvements would definitively make this earth better than how it's currently heading.

ARPA-E's own stated mission is to fund ideas that are so far out that most institutions wouldn't fund them, "too early for private-sector investment" (their words). ARPA-E itself only expects 10% of the projects it funds to be successful. So then what good reason is there to cry about some specific project failing? It doesn't spell the end of ARPA-E, this is just the nature of the game. This is not some tragedy of news journals failing, nothing is wrong here, just move on. More will fail yet still, but one just might be that breakthrough that we're looking forward to.

I mention it because the author of this article tried to point out how he was a skeptic in 2012. But the same publication was not exercising skepticism in 2011.

After reading your comment, I went back to read the authors 2012 article and even that doesn't demonstrate that much scepticism. The title and sub heading reads as follows:

"A Big Jump in Battery Capacity

If Envia can overcome some key problems, its technology could cut the cost of electric-car batteries in half."

Which, to me, is just as hyped up as the other articles he's criticizing. In fact the most sceptical parts of that article were just him saying "it's not ready yet", which isn't so much scepticism but more anticipation.

I'm a little disappointed with the author for this. I don't like the way how the press always have to sensationalise everything, but I accept that it happens. However to post the kind of snide remark as he did regarding others hyping technology, yet to do the exact same thing yourself in the very article you're citing as evidence of your own scepticism, well it's just pathetic in my opinion.

I remember Steven Chu[0] and GM getting behind envia[1], it's unfortunate that it hasn't worked out. A lot of people had high hopes for their technology.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Chu

[1] http://enviasystems.com/pop_video_chu_annon.htm

It's hard to criticise technology advances that are largely still lab-based. The number of people familiar with nascent technologies like carbon nanostructure surfaces for battery boosts, for instance, is very small and the reasons for skepticism very technical and difficult to make a casual reader care about - sometimes you can summarize, sometimes it would take 500 words to even explain the basis of.

Technologies like this are the bread and butter of TR - exercising skepticism is one thing, but if journalists were capable of finding flaws in years-off tech like this, they would be experts in that field, not journalists. We have to give some level of credence to the reports of the people in the labs, writing university research press releases, and so on.

How many software startups have been breathlessly and noncritically paraphrased by almost every single tech and media outlet in the last decade, and how many turned out sour or "pivoted" within two years of those articles? It's not just 10-years-off science that's vulnerable to this, but I would say it's more forgivable in this subject than in something like reporting on web services and social networks.

http://gigaom.com/2013/12/03/court-documents-reveal-doe-back... <-- original link

Yes, this is a substantially more detailed article than the original tech review link - it actually details what the claimed deception is.

As far as I remember all battery breakthroughs in last 20 years were sad stories.

That's only part of the truth, though. There has been a steady increase in battery capacity per kg, dollar and volume over many years, it just hasn't been a revolutionary process.

That's maybe a bit pessimistic. We have come a long way (NiCd 40-60 Wh/kg, NiMH 30-80 Wh/kg, LiIon 150-250 Wh/kg), we're just still a long way from fossil fuels (~12,000 Wh/kg for gasoline). I think the biggest trick is to set expectations properly and wait it out as battery technology continues to evolve.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rechargeable_battery

Woah, you can't compare those numbers directly. If you could then Tesla cars would be travelling just 10s of miles per charge. Obviously, there are many other factors: weight and bulk of the power train, power train efficiency, regenerative breaking, driving conditions, etc.

Oh, totally agree! I wasn't necessarily referring to electric cars specifically, more just comparing how much energy different things store, although it does highlight why building long-range and high-performance electric cars is a Hard Problem.

There's a lot of things that are different. The 50L of fuel in my car is going to weigh about 45kg and will get me about 800km, and the batteries in a Tesla weigh 300-500kg (not sure exactly, found a few different numbers). But like you say, the power train is considerably different, etc etc.

Poking around, on the Lithium-air battery wiki page, they have this quote:

> The energy density of gasoline is approximately 13 kW·h/kg, which corresponds to 1.7 kW·h/kg of energy provided to the wheels after losses.

Any clue what the energy provided to the wheels is for electric cars like a Tesla? I'm wonder what the energy loss is for electric cars from stored form to actual power at the wheel.

The Tesla Roadster was 88% efficient. I don't remember the exact value for the Model S, but it's in the same general range. This huge difference is the main thing that makes electric cars viable.

Also, electric cars can be powered by coal, nuclear, hydroelectric, etc... or whatever the grid is powered by.

Good electric motors typically have 90%-95% efficiency. However tesla is using AC motors driven by DC batteries, so they have to convert.

I think this is mostly a reflection of tech/science reporting. Batteries are hard. They're complex with many factors into what goes into a good battery. But the moment a lab creates one with good energy density, headlines just say "Scientists create batteries 20x greater than your iPhone" without paying attention to the fact that it has 20 charging cycles before it's useless.

If reporters understood the law of conservation of energy they'll be more skeptical of energy solution claims, regardless of which form it takes.

I honestly think the best advancements aren't going to be battery technologies for mass transit(at least for the next hundred years or so). Which lead me to read about a group working on creating Biodiesel from algae[1]. Turns out they can have our waste (sewage) fed into vats with algae and providing the algae with nutrients to grow. They then dry/squeeze out the algae and due to the high amount of lipids produce oil and in turn it into oil (although low quality).

The amazing part about this process is algae converts carbon to oxygen more efficiently than plants, and can only introduce as much carbon as it removes from the atmosphere. Therefore process would actually produce the same amount of carbon emissions as it reduces.

Battery power is slow growing and will take many years (perhaps hundreds) based on the current rate to reach the efficiency of oil... So this seems like a better alternative to me.

[1] http://algae.illinois.edu/Projects/BiodieselProduction.html

One of the original press coverage: (~2 years ago) "GM Bets On Cheaper Electric-Car Batteries With Envia, Invests $17 Million" http://www.greencarreports.com/news/1054345_gm-bets-on-cheap...

Another shill company designed fail.

Meanwhile the real breakthroughs wither on the vine (e.g. http://gizmodo.com/this-graphene-coated-silicon-power-cell-s...)

Are you saying this isn't an investment opportunity, or that structural problems with the capital markets will mean that this investment opportunity will be ignored?

Batteriy and solar panel breakthroughs: stories of the week.

Imagine that it had worked. And imagine that the allegations were true: they had stolen the cathode from one company and purchased a sample of an anode from another, and that, together, they consistently stored 400 Wh/kg. Would all the intellectual property rights have stopped production anyway? Or are there circumstances when one or more governments would waive the IP rights and say "the world needs this technology to save itself from air pollution -- just make it and we'll sort out payments later"?

Why would intellectual property rights prevent anyone from buying parts from different suppliers and putting them together?

You are correct, patent exhaustion allows you to use any patented product as you wish, subject only to separate explicit contracts the customer has agreed to.

So if I buy a laser pointer with a patented on/off switch, I can use it to exercise my cat without fear of infringement of 5,443,036? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_of_exercising_a_cat

Perhaps I should have been more clear, and stated that the use of a patented product is not restricted by said patent; it is however subject to any separate contracts or obligations which the customer would be required to abide, had they not purchased the good.

I must say that it depresses me to see frivolous patents like the one mentioned above, though it no longer surprises me.

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