Tesla’s electric man | Hacker News Reader

Tesla’s electric man

economist.com

84 pointspmcpinto40 comments

Batteries are one of those technology bottlenecks that will pay off in a huge way when and if someone can create a major leap that allows a 10x or 100x improvement in capacity, cost, efficiency, whatever. For computing, for transportation, for general energy usage, for third-world development, a better battery will reap enormous societal benefits. It's amazing how far Li-Ion cells have progressed, but we need more and better yet still. I'm glad to see someone is pouring huge resources into this problem. Hopefully Musk is not the only one.

The major leap happened, and it is Li-Ion technology. It improved by magnitudes on any important metric over previous battery technology.

Are you sure about that? I don't recall my battery life increasing by "magnitudes" when li-ion became widespread.

I'm guessing Li-ion batteries were always the battery tech used in smartphones, so it might have been harder to notice. I know once I put some Li-ion AA batteries in an old camera I realized I may never need to replace those batteries again.

That's because product designers used the improved performance to reduce package volume and weight.

See this graph of energy density over time:

http://electronicdesign.com/site-files/electronicdesign.com/...

from http://electronicdesign.com/power/here-comes-electric-propul...

Where does Li-ion plateau on that chart? The two preceding technologies (NiMH, NiCd) also "doubled every ten years" until they didn't.

The plateau seems to happen once a technology is no longer the winner, and research moves on to the next.

You clearly never used a NiCd camcorder.

Unfortunately batteries require advancements in chemistry, materials engineering, and manufacturing processes... all in sync. While there might be capacity for a 10x improvement at some point, it's far more likely that progress will continue to happen in smaller jumps, as decent improvements are made in each of those three elements.

Straubel actually suggests that a massive leap in cost/efficiency may not needed due to the large market size:

"Mr Straubel counters. “They don’t understand the tight linkage between cost and volume. We’re at this crossing-point where a small reduction in cost is going to result in a ridiculously big increase in volume, because the auto industry is so big."

A downward spiral as it were, but in this case, a positive one.

What about hydrogen? Because of the energy required to isolate hydrogen it's hard to consider it a true "energy source". But as a dense, portable source of clean energy it seems like it could be poised to trounce existing battery technology. The only problem, of course, being the explodey thing.

In what sense is hydrogen more "dense" than most current battery technologies in storing energy? By volume? By mass? I thought that several battery technologies are already better than (economically) stored hydrogen for storing energy, but I would be delighted to see some participant here on Hacker News "show the work" to compare storage of electrical energy through different means and discuss the trade-offs.

Per unit mass. Here's a handy chart of chemical energy density (which I guess ignores containment and conversion):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Energy_density.svg

Lithium ion batteries are barely on it.

The biggest obstacle to using li-ion for stationary storage is not density. It doesn't really matter if the batteries weigh a ton if you're never going to move them. And hydrogen is roughly on par with batteries in terms of energy/volume.

Cost and efficiency are much bigger factors. Batteries completely destroy hydrogen in both of these measures.

I think the downside for hydrogen storage is the inefficiency of electrolysis. Last time I looked at it, you lose about 50% of the energy when making hydrogen. The plus side is that the fuel cell side is very efficient.

It'd be practical to have hydrogen split from water at a large scale at solar farms or at existing power plants, and delivered to homes as backup power. (like propane?)

The energy density of hydrogen might be very small? So inefficient to store and move around.

The hydrogen fuel chain is very inefficient [1]. Building up a fuelling infrastructure would very expensive compared to a fast charger network, by about a factor of 5 to 10. The fuel itself is still rather expensive [2].

Only a few Japanese and Korean car companies are pushing the fuel cell. Car companies in Europe are rather reluctant about it, including Renault and VW.

[1] http://phys.org/news85074285.html

[2] http://cleantechnica.com/2014/12/01/fuel-cell-economics-vs-b...

Describing hydrogen as "dense" is a bit fraught. It is very dense on a joules per kilogram basis, but it is sparse on a kilograms per liter or joules per liter basis. And the design constraint in cars is the volume of the tank, not the weight of hydrogen it carries.

From wikipedia, compressed hydrogen (690 bar at 15°C) has 3x the specific energy (MJ / kg) but 1/8 the energy density (MJ / L) versus gasoline.

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

Downside to hydrogen is that it's either created from hydrocarbons, or has a very poor cycle efficiency.

> Not all the cells made by the gigafactory are destined for vehicles. Some will end up in the company’s Superchargers, allowing Tesla to cope with sudden bursts of demand should multiple vehicles need to recharge at once. Others will be used at Tesla’s assembly plants to store energy when it is cheap, typically at night, and release it when the price rises.

This surprised me, but Wikipedia says Li-Ion efficiency is 80-90%, so I can see that being worthwhile.

I'll wager that JB Straubel will be Tesla's CEO in 3-5 years and Tesla will no longer be a car company but a battery/infrastructure company.

Likely it will be just a battery company. The supercharger network is still proprietary i.e. it isn't a standard and there is no evidence that car companies are planning to adopt the Tesla connector. Especially with governments rallying around standards and directly competing with Tesla.

And for me personally I am dubious about electric being the future solution. The world can live without Tesla and even BMW. Far harder without Toyota.

> supercharger network is still proprietary

Tesla opened up their patents but I doubt current non-Tesla electric cars can actually be charged by them without over-heating.

I also doubt they will just let anyone use their superchargers because they are currently paying the power bill... but you'd have to be on the pay from some dubious source to turn this fact into anti-tesla spin.

There is a local company where I live that is making chargers that will work on anything from Tesla to Leaf's

http://www.zaptec.com/home/zapcharger/

> I also doubt they will just let anyone use their superchargers because they are currently paying the power bill

Yup, Tesla would love for other companies to use and pay for their superchargers.

http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/184141-tesla-reveals-plan...

I'm starting to also question a lot of the pro-electric propaganda. Gas is still too cheap and too plentiful and battery tech is still too terrible. All the breathless Elon Musk PR pieces don't change that.

Even if the future is eventually electric, which I think it is - just when is the question. Who is going to win? The guy selling pricey luxury cars or Toyota, Chevy, and others who are already beating him on price today, let along 5-10 years from now.

2020 is the "when" according to Elon Musk, so it's a good idea to begin before 2020 as it takes a few years to build up a car company.

There's also issues with building out the grid.

Last time I checked, California electric companies were concerned that a neighborhood that got more than 1 electric car needed a new transformer, since they're sized to cool down during the night when they're normally under a minuscule load.

> Gas is still too cheap and too plentiful and battery tech is still too terrible.

Please don't get any ideas that this is the case. Most of OPEC requires $100/barrel or more to balance their budgets. The only reason we're seeing oil prices plummet is because OPEN is attempting to play chicken with US tight oil ("fracking") plays. Fracking in the US, in some cases, is profitable all the way down to $42/barrel.

Several tight oil companies have already cancelled their dividends, and there are concerns they won't be able to obtain financing to continue operations (depending on the company).

This ignores the elephant in the room that is China, that is ramping up filling their strategic oil reserves at these low prices.

Sidenote: Tesla adds 1-3 Superchargers to their network per day.

electric, or some other zero or positive emission option, has to be the future

this is more than an issue of financial costs it is also a quality of human life cost

do you live in a city? i live in downtown sf and if i leave the windows of my apartment open for an hour the sill and any items inside will begin to have a coated layer of what i assume is a combination of exhaust particulate and dirt kicked up from tires

if you live in a city then the next time you are walking down the street rub you fingers on a leaf of a sidewalk tree and you will see what i am talking about

zero or positive emissions need to be here now

i am waiting with bated breath

(Interstitial advertisement: "[Wrist watch brand] values your time". Indeed.)

Nice piece. This is apparently the guy making things happen (at least) in the battery front, while Musk takes care of the public dog and pony show.

A few technical, rarely mentioned, tidbits thrown in, too.

"..panels leased from Solar City, another company owned by Mr Musk" - just make it up as you go, I guess.

According to Wikipedia, Musk is not only chairman of Solar City but also "remains the largest shareholder" - so the line from the article while lacking detail, is mostly correct.

Well, the article also says that Musk & JB are cofounders of Tesla, so, you know.. Not expecting much accuracy from the rest of it.

How do you define a co-founder? Tesla was just an empty shell before Musk and JB arrived, so I think they are co-founders of Tesla, but not the only co-founders.

I'd say it was more than an empty shell. Eberhard got a lot of the way there developing the product. From what I've read he wasn't the guy to grow the company but he got it through the initial startup.

I'd agree with you and say they're all cofounders (as, Wikipedia tells me, they settled out of court to agree on). But I think the media really emphasizes Musk, and in this article Straubel, as the co-founders while eliding Eberhard's contribution (ie. actually STARTING the company with Tarpenning).

It's a good risk distribution strategy to split your various investments into separate corporations and then do business deals between the component organizations. But it can also be a profitable tax strategy when there are differing tax implications or accounting rules depending on how deals are structured. The rules surrounding the tax and reporting implications of buying versus leasing are actually one of the current major topics in the US accounting governance world. (My wife teaches Theory of Accounting which goes deep into the frustratingly fascinating details of how to appropriately and clearly represent expenses and earnings for management, investor, and government audiences. It's fascinating stuff, but confusing for an outsider.)

Posting here as breadcrumbs for when I inevitably need to explain this to someone.

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