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Title is a bit misleading.
To geeks, "production hell" sounds like "they're in the process of mass producing, and they're running into all sorts of problèms, but we'll see something any time soon." Kinda like the 6 months of crunch before a AAA game is released after 3 years of production.
Except, the rest of the article makes it very clear that as far as production grade, mass marketable models of solid state batteries, we're more in the Hollywood version of "production hell", where no one has anything good to show, everybody is making press release, and we're rewriting the script until it barely looks like anything.
But, hey, we'll get more "breakthroughs" headlines any time now, so that's what matters ?
As an SRE... Production Hell to me is we already have a product in production with paying users and we are breaking things faster than we can fix them. If we don't change something quickly we risk losing our user base.
Basically our Error Budget is approaching 0, fast.
As a geek I disagree with your interpretation of "production hell". I interpret it as a state where things either can't be built or never pass spec and we're outputting nothing but a series of one-offs that we hope won't get us sued with no real end in sight except for some vague "breakthrough" we're sure to hear from R&D any day now.
Essentially your description of Hollywood but with things
production hell for a capitalist is when everyone is buying your product, but it's turned into a commodity that the government has to treat like a strategic resource and contemplates nationalizes, but refuses to buy out and prefers to give just enough incentive that there's no justification to quit.
Post like these always make me go into the rabbit hole of how energy dense gasoline is.
The energy density of gasoline is higher than liquid hydrogen! It does not need to be super cooled and is liquid state at atmospheric pressure and ambient temperature.
Gasoline is an absolute miracle fuel. Sort of feels under appreciated to casually pump it at the gas station ha.
One thing to keep in mind is that the energy density of gasoline is a chemistry measurement.
The energy density of a gasoline power train is a different measurement taking into account chemistry and physics.
Specifically car engines can only turn 33% of gasoline’s stored energy into motion. Which still puts gasoline ahead in terms of efficiency relative to hydrogen or battery powertrains but reduces the difference a lot.
> Gasoline is an absolute miracle fuel.
Yes, it is a 'miracle' fuel, if you ignore these factors:
(a) Global oil, gas, and coal supply chains. The resulting complex network has 6.09mn nodes and 15.70mn edges: https://github.com/Lkruitwagen/global-fossil-fuel-supply-cha.... And the defense budgets of all the countries protecting these assets and supply lines.
(b) Trillions of dollars in subsidies every year: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2023-10-16/climat...
(c) 10 million air pollution deaths/year: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/08/opinion/environment/air-p...
Energy density of gasoline is deceptive because of how inefficient ICE engines are in practice. A Prius getting 50mpg is only the equivalent of 1.5 miles per kWh when many EV’s get ~4 miles per kWh.
Where gas really shines is ultra cold temperatures where you can make use of the waste heat. But even here it’s still not very efficient.
Oil leads to geopolitical destabilization since where it is found just happens to be a very volatile region. Even if the Americans somehow detached from the world market for oil (considering they have enough their own), the Chinese definitely aren't willing to forgo energy security by stopping their much more aggressive EV development programs.
Gasoline got us this far for a hundred years, now we can pursue a different path?
Energy density of gasoline by weight is >3x worse. We just haven't been good about putting that to use. RIP VentureStar.
Personally I'm just tired of this discussion around energy density being brought up every time transportation is mentioned. These conversations almost never surface interesting new points.
Don't forget that you can only extract about 30-35% of that energy via combustion, though. Whereas a battery with an electric motor you get more like 90%
Another knock against gasoline is that you spend about 1 EV battery pack of energy to refine a cars tank of gasoline from crude oil in the first place.
Yes per volume gasoline is impressive.
You would need a tank 4 times the size of a gasoline tank for liquid hydrogen, not to mention the high pressure tank that is needed to store the liquid hydrogen .
Energy density of diesel is higher but it emits more crap. Renewably producible combustibles like methane would be a cool alternative.
Energy density of liquid hydrogen is about 4x more than gasoline.
It seems like battery technology hasn't improved much since the model s was introduced.
A 2012 Toyota Camry was rated around 28 mpg combined. A 2025 is rated at 46 mpg combined. That's a 60 percent improvement.
I don't think the model s has seen anywhere near a 60 percent improvement in range or efficiency during the same time span.
If you think the energy density of gasoline is miraculous, and it is, you should try uranium. Its energy density is a million times higher.
Gasoline may have been a miracle fuel but once affordable EVs have 1000km range with fast charge times we won't use it anymore.
You are right. And honestly, if someone came up with a way to "perfectly" burn it, we wouldn't have this problem.
The biggest thing about EV cars IMHO though is the responsiveness. There's no way a gas engine will ever keep up with that.
Indeed. For all the shit fossil fuels (rightfully) get, they are pretty damn good for storing energy. When you look into this, it really isn't a wonder that it's so difficult to transition away from them.
Graphene Aluminum batteries are going to win this race IMO
When?
For 20-years now we’ve heard graphene, would revolutionize the world.
Not just batteries, but throughout tech.
But unless I mistaken, there’s not a single graphene product on the market yet.
Maybe it’ll be like AI. Where no major advancements happened for 50-years, and then ChatGPT was made.
Just as soon as they get out of the lab...
(graphene being well regarded for being able to do anything but leave the lab for actual real world use)
Against conventional Li ion?
I mean if it's a race they've lost.
I'm aware of the difficulty Aptera has had getting a product done, but I'm also surprised that there isn't more specialization in EV products. Most cars on US roads are used mostly for commuting, but EVs seem to be striving for 1:1 replacement of gasoline cars. That makes then very heavy and expensive. A commute-optimized EV should be cheaper and more efficient than that 1:1 replacement vehicle. It is less likely to depend on cutting edge batteries, too.
Most of my driving is commuting (say 50 miles roundtrip would be sufficient), but I need/want a vehicle to handle the rest. I do not want to own two vehicles unless parking suddenly became free or the commuter only car model was significantly discounted vs anything available today.
Many have tried, all have failed. Safety regulation encourages the design of all-fits-one vehicles. Consumers prefer to pay the premium for a 'proper' car over a simpler vehicle. It is what it is, for now.
> To do the build-out, production, and validation could easily take seven or more years, Galyen said.
Almost any combination of reagents can work as primary cell - even a literal potato!
But designing a secondary (rechargeable) cell is a different story... Every promising chemistry has been investigated for many decades and yet the successes are few. Magnesium, sodium or aluminium-based rechargeable battery can in theory be just as capable as lithium-based one, but we can't just get them to work.
Isn't the potato thing just differential potential caused by using different metals for the electrode? It'll make an LED light up, maybe, but the actual power available is a rounding error.
Didn't Tesla say they were going to start using solid state batteries at the battery day a few years back? Does anyone know if they actually ARE using them? Or not yet - or will use them?
No, they did not.
They promised that they were going to start using a manufacturing technique called dry electrode coating, and they have done that.
I don't think Tesla has ever promised solid state batteries.
These articles are always "Don't buy an EV yet, MUCH better ones are coming soon".
Same article since 2010, always Coming Soon™.
Technology has actually improved massively since 2010. There's nothing wrong with the batteries on the market today. Relative to 2010, they are safer, provide better energy density, use less problematic materials like cobalt, etc. There are also a few new chemistries like LFP and sodium ion.
Solid state is more or less progressing on a time line that hasn't really deviated a lot from what was projected a few years ago. There are a few companies out there that by now have proven that they can build cells that last lots of cycles and generally perform well. Taking those cells to production necessarily involves a series of increasingly larger plants to produce these cells and testing the hell out of the resulting cells. This is a slow process but it seems like a few companies are ramping up production volumes.
Quantumscape is a good example. They are exactly where they said they would be a few years ago. They've delivered sample cells to a few of their customers (VW and a few others) and the tests came back positive. I think this year they are building small production facility to start producing low volumes of cells. If that's successful, we might see some cars from 2026/2027 onwards or so. But I would expect volume production to be dominated by LFP and increasingly sodium ion batteries for cheaper EVs for quite some time. They are good enough. Higher energy density will come at a premium.
they are getting better. every year there's the promise of a new big leap forward in a few years. but in the intervening few years all the previously announced "big leaps" come to market, so by the time an announced technology comes to market, it's just an incremental improvement.
go back to 2010 and show past you the batteries we've got now, you'd be impressed by what huge progress there was.
Where does it say not to buy?
Computers get much better every couple years, but you don't dismiss those as "Coming Soon™".
It's like any product based on a rapidly advancing set of technologies. There's a trade off financially between needing a product now or soon, and when the next major commercially available version is available.
Yup. Meanwhile, if you did something like a 2011 GM Volt when it came out, you'd be several thousand gallons of gas and a rather larger amount of money ahead over "waiting and seeing."
They’re not wrong per se. the tech has been improving quickly.
I've had the same car since 2014 because I don't drive much. From my perspective this is still good advice.
With current EVs I'd have to keep that it a very long time just to break even with the energy used in manufacturing. I think I've heard estimates of about 20,000-30,000 miles to break even.
For a number reasons I don't find the current EV offerings compelling enough to trade in my old Golf yet. Right now I don't think there's anything I need to do for my use-cases that I could do better in a current EV.
Yep and since 2010 I’ve not purchased one. Current EVs are very expensive and I couldn’t really afford one unless it had pretty decent range and was available used for $20k. Notably there is no place to charge them at my apartment complex.
I’m hoping maybe in a few years a 2023 Ioniq 5 will be affordable enough, but we will see.
Just lease for the next 5-7 years - best risk mitigation I can think of
Are you and I reading the same article? There's little about it that implies that one should hold off purchasing an EV for the sake of solid state batteries.
Plenty of reasons right now to hold off buying an EV; upfront or operating costs, lack of at home charging, inability to get access to fast chargers for whatever reason, inability to tow heavy loads to desired destinations, etc. I sincerely doubt solid state batteries is one of the concerns on most people's list.
The same is true for AI at this point. this happens when technological progress accelerates sufficiently.
There is no use in hanging out for solid state batteries in the near future. The volumes will be small, the tech will be bleeding edge, and the batteries will be very expensive. The best fit for these batteries right now is drones.
the fuck up is that they will sell you a full new vehicle instead of a new battery. The same way that you can't put a newer more efficient ice in an old ICE car. It's a shame that cars are not more modular.
production is only hell if management is incompetent