[djrogers]

If even 10% of the battery 'breakthroughs' we've seen on these pages in the past 5 years had come to fruition, we'd have 20Kw batteries that charge in 10 minutes on our phones. Oh, and they'd be 100% recyclable but that wouldn't matter because they'd last for 100k cycles.

[jacquesm]

It's the exact same thing with solar panel technologies. But then if you look at the long term, 10 or 20 years, you see that there really is an underlying current (...) of steady improvements that eventually make it to the market or that reduce cost. But the vast majority are hype.

[mark-r]

"We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next ten." - Bill Gates

[njarboe]

Most humans seem to understand linear growth pretty well. It is hard to get an intuitive feel for exponential growth.

[wickawic]

"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function.”

- Al Bartlett

[lovemenot]

That was a powerful observation in 1999 when he said it: thousands of times more so now.

[marblar]

At this rate, in 2025 it will be at least 10 times more powerful.

[SomeStupidPoint]

It's because we think in 3D, so we only really see three steps of exponential growth.

If we thought in 100D, we might have a better sense for it, because we'd be able to see a hundred of them.

Hypervolume grows exponentially.

One way to get a really rough idea is to try and control each and every joint individually.

Close your eyes and try to imagine that each joint, each muscle is a dimension along which you can move (by moving it), and your posture at any given moment is a point in that space. When you move, you make a line through it. Don't picture it, just feel it.

What is the shape of that space?

You can get an idea of what exponential growth is like by exploring how the shape of that space changes as you add more and more things you're controlling.

[baddox]

Doesn’t hypervolume just grow geometrically as dimension?

[flatfilefan]

An interesting way to look at human thinking patterns. Is there any book on it?

I never completely figured out Aikido with it’s joint locks and levers. Maybe talented aikidokas have a grater capacity to visualize/fill this type of activity?

[philipkglass]

There can also be a very long lag between initial research and industrialization. PERC cell technology for high efficiency solar has been growing rapidly to multiple gigawatts of manufacturing capacity over the past couple of years. It's expected to account for over half of all monocrystalline cell manufacturing within the next few years.

10 years ago PERC cells weren't available on an industrial scale, even though the technological basics were discovered, explored at the lab scale, and published in the 1980s. It took a lot of manufacturing advances and market evolution before PERC technology was both practical and profitable to manufacture for large scale use.

http://www.aleo-solar.com/perc-cell-technology-explained/

Likewise, I expect that some battery ideas that are published and "go nowhere" will eventually reach industrial scale, but only much later.

[BurningFrog]

Part of it is that even if 100% of them come to fruition, it takes a few years at least for the tech to be in batteries you carry around.

We have been spoiled by the web to expect a whole other time scale, but physical technology still takes the time it has to take.

My - not very informed - impression is that battery technology actually is moving very fast, considering the timescale constraints.

[userbinator]

but that wouldn't matter because they'd last for 100k cycles.

That's precisely the sort of thing that most manufacturers don't want, because a battery designed to last effectively forever means less recurring revenue on replacements.

"100% recyclable" is good for them (and "biodegradable" even better), because they can act "green" while continuously making products that don't last and have to be recycled, expending even more energy and creating profit in the process. "The best kind of planned obolescence is environmentally friendly planned obolescence."

[aphextron]

>That's precisely the sort of thing that most manufacturers don't want, because a battery designed to last effectively forever means less recurring revenue on replacements.

That's ridiculous, tinfoil hat thinking. Longer cycle life = cheaper battery = higher profit + happier consumer.

[mark-r]

In an ideal world with infinite competition and perfect knowledge about competing products, perhaps you'd be right. But in the real world where we live, it happens all the time.

Start by reading about the Phoebus cartel: https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-history/dawn-of-electronics/t...

I remember my first electric razor. It failed after a couple of years, so I took it apart to find out why. I discovered that the electrical contacts to the motor were just little pieces of graphite, and when they wore down to nothing the razor was finished. Definitely planned obsolescence in action!

[kqr]

Are you saying there are reasonably priced long-lasting equivalents to graphite brushes? I'm asking out of ignorance. Because that would be really good to know when buying any appliance that has a rotating part. My impression is that they all use graphite brushes.

[userbinator]

Large appliances like washers and dryers use brushless motors, although the newer ones are likely to be inverter/VFD-based instead of the older induction type, where the control electronics will fail long before the motor itself wears out (bearings etc.)

(Search YouTube for "vintage induction motor" and you'll find plenty of century-old(!) examples still in good running condition. I don't think the same can be said of the brushless motors today.)

[mark-r]

There must be, certainly there are no graphite brushes in your spinning hard disk. That might not have been a common motor design back when I had that razor though, but they certainly could have used a beefier piece of graphite.

[clort]

hard disks have brushless motors

  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brushless_DC_electric_motor

they are usually more expensive but have been around for a long time.

AFAIK there is no substitute for graphite in a brushed motor, it is needing to transfer power to different sections of a rotating part in turn and does so by rubbing over a set of copper strips. That the graphite is soft is why it works well but also why it wears out rather than the commutator, which will survive several sets of brushes.

[stretchwithme]

I agree. You can charge more for products that never wear out and outsell your competitors. If you're cornering the market, you don't care if it shrinks a bit.

[mplewis]

I'm not so sure. If Apple came out tomorrow and said "no more battery swaps, ever," they'd have a consumer advantage over Samsung and Google phones.

[baddox]

That’s probably true for smartphones, which would still have other significant improvements every year or so (like displays, performance, and networking) to incentivize owners to upgrade.

[jp555]

You mean if journalist’s versions of research come to fuition?

Those breakthroughs, when applied to scaled up battery manufacturing give us the 5%-10% compounding annual improvement we see. A doubling at least every 15 years is pretty good!

[make3]

Well at least it's not a Wired article, so the chances are much better

[ngold]

And you would be able to stab and cut them without exploding. The tech exists but I would imagine patents are doing their magic lawyering.

[fmihaila]

If the absence of vastly superior batteries were only due to patents, someone would be producing them right now and enjoy the exclusivity. While there are numerous promising approaches, usually announced with great fanfare, they tend to only work in the lab. The hard step is scaling them up to mass production such that the economics make sense.

[madengr]

Yep, solar cells are similar. So many 20% efficiency increases, they should be at 200% by now.

[icebraining]

If every year you lose 20% of your money, how long does it take until you're in the negative?

[madengr]

If you have a solar cell that starts with 20% efficiency, how many years of “20% increase claims” does it take to reach 200% ?