Modern Day Gutenbergs

[Departed]

Great Article......

Elon Musk on the Flawed Premise of Tesla and the False Promise of Fuel Cells
May 15, 2014, 3:00 AM PDT
By James Temple
James Temple

Tesla’s Chief Executive Elon Musk didn’t break news during an appearance at the World Energy Innovation Forum on Wednesday, but the outspoken serial entrepreneur delivered a few jabs to rival companies, technologies and business models.

The luxury electric vehicle maker hosted the two-day summit, a gathering of investors, entrepreneurs and policymakers in clean energy, at its assembly plant in Fremont, Calif.

Musk sat down for a discussion with Ira Ehrenpreis, chairman of the forum and general partner with Technology Ventures, an early investor in the company. The interview kicked off with a look back at Musk’s original business venture – he sold a video game at the age of 12 — and soon moved into Tesla’s inauspicious early days.

Musk was characteristically blunt throughout the interview, even when he was his own target.

On Tesla’s early missteps:

In the case of the (Tesla) Roadster … we used a highly modified version of the Lotus Elise chassis.

… We ended up changing everything on the car, something like 7 percent of the parts were in common. Why did we do that?

It’s like if you have a particular house in mind and instead of buying that house, you buy some other house and chop down everything except one wall in the basement.

… That was dumb.

Tesla was created on two false premises. One was that we could easily adapt the Lotus Elise chassis … and two that the [drivetrain] technology we licensed from AC Propulsion would work in a production environment. Those were both totally false.

We ended up having to redesign the whole car and the whole power train.

On a recent conversation with Google CEO Larry Page (which amounted to a humblebrag about Model S battery life):

Most people just charge their Model S’s at home, because it’s got 260 miles of range or thereabouts.

I was having a conversation about this yesterday with Larry Page. He was saying all the chargers at Google are filled with [Nissan] LEAFs and [Chevy] Volts.

I thought, ‘Geez, what are we doing wrong? Do we need to do more to sell Model S’s at Google?’

He said ‘No, there are lots of Model S’s at Google — but nobody bothers charging them at work.’

On the overhyping of fuel cell cars, a theme he has hit upon several times (but which hasn’t stopped others from trying.)

[The] current technology of lithium-ion [batteries, which power Tesla cars] is superior to what the theoretical best possible outcome is for fuel cells. And lithium-ion systems are getting a lot better.

Game over. Why are you doing fuel cells?

On Tesla’s reception in China, where the Palo Alto, Calif., company just began selling cars:

I was actually amazed at how much goodwill there was.

… People really like Teslas there. In fact, it’s probably the most positive reception I’ve gotten anywhere and the sales are doing really well.

… The only sort of negative comment in China is there were some customers really angry that they weren’t getting the cars fast enough. So I had to meet with them and apologize for not getting them their cars sooner.

But mostly it’s because they lived outside major cities and we don’t want to deliver cars until we’ve got service centers and Superchargers in the area.

On the traditional auto dealer system versus Tesla’s direct sales model (which the company is fighting to preserve through a series of state-by-state battles):

Why would you want to replicate the dealer experience? That just seems like a bad thing.

… Really the main reasons for not going with the traditional dealer network is I don’t know anyone who’s had a good experience going to car dealers. I didn’t have a good experience. I had a terrible experience. It always seemed like they were trying to rip me off — and they did rip me off.

Why would we do that to our customers?

http://recode.net/2014/05/15/elon-musk-on-the-flawed-premise-of-tesla-and-the-false-promise-of-fuel-cells/

 

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Intel is 46 this week.

 

[Spursex]

80deg16minW - 14/7/2014 20:34

Intel is 46 this week.

Intel lost it's way around 5-7 years ago. In fact not longer after PO was appointed CEO.

I told Otellini as much; he eventually 'retired'. I hope they may never be the same business again. ARM could end up eating their business out of existance.

 

[Departed]

Spursex - 15/7/2014 07:47

80deg16minW - 14/7/2014 20:34

Intel is 46 this week.

Intel lost it's way around 5-7 years ago. In fact not longer after PO was appointed CEO.

I told Otellini as much; he eventually 'retired'. I hope they may never be the same business again. ARM could end up eating their business out of existance.

I found the passage of time of more note than the company. The company has always been too leader dependent. And they invested too heavily in manufacturing at the wrong time. Bad deployment of capital. If I am not mistaken, Grove was a major contributor to that strategy.

 

[Spursex]

80deg16minW - 15/7/2014 13:10

Spursex - 15/7/2014 07:47

80deg16minW - 14/7/2014 20:34

Intel is 46 this week.

Intel lost it's way around 5-7 years ago. In fact not longer after PO was appointed CEO.

I told Otellini as much; he eventually 'retired'. I hope they may never be the same business again. ARM could end up eating their business out of existance.

I found the passage of time of more note than the company. The company has always been too leader dependent. And they invested too heavily in manufacturing at the wrong time. Bad deployment of capital. If I am not mistaken, Grove was a major contributor to that strategy.

Their investment strategy in fabs and DC's was noteworthy for the way in which you could walk into anyone, anywhere in the World and instantly know your way around -as they were all built to the same basic template.

I'd argue that they invested too heavily; especially when their increasing capacity still couldn't stem the over-demand and worse still fuelled the grey market for years - where they went wrong under Paul was having a leader with no vision - Paul was by profession an accountant, and stupidly took Intel out of the mobile phone chip market (only to see it explode) and the worse still failed to see the tablet market and worse still missed the opportunity to be two in a bed with jobs on the whole Apple devices range.

Where they totally got their chip strategy wrong was with Itanium as it only ever played to the emerging HPC market, and even then needed huge support from Intel's proprietorial compilers.

Trouble is, telling that to a Goliath when they think they own the World either makes you look very dumb or a genius - guess which one I was.. :17:

 

[Departed]

The dumb one? :17:

Too capital intensive for me. Might as well own an airline.

 

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Researchers achieve 'holy grail' of battery design: A stable lithium anode

Jul 27, Technology/Energy & Green Tech


Engineers across the globe have been racing to design smaller, cheaper and more efficient rechargeable batteries to meet the power storage needs of everything from handheld gadgets to electric cars.
In a paper published today in the journal Nature Nanotechnology, researchers at Stanford University report that they have taken a big step toward accomplishing what battery designers have been trying to do for decades – design a pure lithium anode.

All batteries have three basic components: an electrolyte to provide electrons, an anode to discharge those electrons, and a cathode to receive them.

Today, we say we have lithium batteries, but that is only partly true. What we have are lithium ion batteries. The lithium is in the electrolyte, but not in the anode. An anode of pure lithium would be a huge boost to battery efficiency.

"Of all the materials that one might use in an anode, lithium has the greatest potential. Some call it the Holy Grail," said Yi Cui, a professor of Material Science and Engineering and leader of the research team. "It is very lightweight and it has the highest energy density. You get more power per volume and weight, leading to lighter, smaller batteries with more power."

But engineers have long tried and failed to reach this Holy Grail.

"Lithium has major challenges that have made its use in anodes difficult. Many engineers had given up the search, but we found a way to protect the lithium from the problems that have plagued it for so long," said Guangyuan Zheng, a doctoral candidate in Cui's lab and first author of the paper.

In addition to Zheng, the research team includes Steven Chu, the former U.S. Secretary of Energy and Nobel Laureate who recently resumed his professorship at Stanford.

"In practical terms, if we can improve the capacity of batteries to, say, four times today's, that would be exciting. You might be able to have cell phone with double or triple the battery life or an electric car with a range of 300 miles that cost only $25,000—competitive with an internal combustion engine getting 40 mpg," Chu said.

The engineering challenge

In the paper, the authors explain how they are overcoming the problems posed by lithium.

Most lithium ion batteries, like those you might find in your smart phone or hybrid car, work similarly. The key components include an anode, the negative pole from which electrons flow out and into a power-hungry device, and the cathode, where the electrons re-enter the battery once they have traveled through the circuit. Separating them is an electrolyte, a solid or liquid loaded with positively charged lithium ions that travel between the anode and cathode.

During charging, the positively charged lithium ions in the electrolyte are attracted to the negatively charged anode and the lithium accumulates on the anode. Today, the anode in a lithium ion battery is actually made of graphite or silicon.

Engineers would like to use lithium for the anode, but so far they have been unable to do so. That's because the lithium ions expand as they gather on the anode during charging.

All anode materials, including graphite and silicon, expand somewhat during charging, but not like lithium. Researchers say that lithium's expansion during charging is "virtually infinite" relative to the other materials. Its expansion is also uneven, causing pits and cracks to form in the outer surface, like paint on the exterior of a balloon that is being inflated.

The resulting fissures on the surface of the anode allow the precious lithium ions to escape, forming hair-like or mossy growths, called dendrites. Dendrites, in turn, short circuit the battery and shorten its life.

Preventing this buildup is the first challenge of using lithium for the battery's anode.

The second engineering challenge is that a lithium anode is highly chemically reactive with the electrolyte. It uses up the electrolyte and reduces battery life.

An additional problem is that the anode and electrolyte produce heat when they come into contact. Lithium batteries, including those in use today, can overheat to the point of fire, or even explosion, and are, therefore, a serious safety concern. The recent battery fires in Tesla cars and on Boeing's Dreamliner are prominent examples of the challenges of lithium ion batteries.

Building the nanospheres

To solve these problems the Stanford researchers built a protective layer of interconnected carbon domes on top of their lithium anode. This layer is what the team has called nanospheres

The Stanford team's nanosphere layer resembles a honeycomb: it creates a flexible, uniform and non-reactive film that protects the unstable lithium from the drawbacks that have made it such a challenge. The carbon nanosphere wall is just 20 nanometers thick. It would take some 5,000 layers stacked one atop another to equal the width of single human hair.

"The ideal protective layer for a lithium metal anode needs to be chemically stable to protect against the chemical reactions with the electrolyte and mechanically strong to withstand the expansion of the lithium during charge," Cui said.

The Stanford nanosphere layer is just that. It is made of amorphous carbon, which is chemically stable, yet strong and flexible so as to move freely up and down with the lithium as it expands and contracts during the battery's normal charge-discharge cycle.

Ideal within reach

In technical terms, the nanospheres improve the coulombic efficiency of the battery—a ratio of the amount of lithium that can be extracted from the anode when the battery is in use compared to the amount put in during charging. A single round of this give-and-take process is called a cycle.

Generally, to be commercially viable, a battery must have a coulombic efficiency of 99.9 percent or more, ideally over as many cycles as possible. Previous anodes of unprotected lithium metal achieved approximately 96 percent efficiency, which dropped to less than 50 percent in just 100 cycles—not nearly good enough. The Stanford team's new lithium metal anode achieves 99 percent efficiency even at 150 cycles.

"The difference between 99 percent and 96 percent, in battery terms, is huge. So, while we're not quite to that 99.9 percent threshold, where we need to be, we're close and this is a significant improvement over any previous design," Cui said. "With some additional engineering and new electrolytes, we believe we can realize a practical and stable lithium metal anode that could power the next generation of rechargeable batteries."

More information: Interconnected hollow carbon nanospheres for stable lithium metal anodes. Nature Nanotechnology. DOI: 10.1038/nnano.2014.152
Provided by Stanford University

http://m.phys.org/news/2014-07-holy-grail-battery-stable-lithium.html