Who wants this battery in their blank Slate?

[solartogo]

 

[E90400K]

Chris Barman does!

 

[JoeUser]

There is a lot I can say about this ... I'll just leave it at: I would be very surprised that a boutique motorcycle company with no background in battery manufacturing was the one to crack solid state, which has been the focus of billions of R&D dollars by dozens of companies over the last decade.

 

[ScooterAsheville]

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

This announcement will be pounced on like a rabbit in the middle of a pack of hungry wolves. If it's the world's best ever April Fools joke, we'll know really soon.

BTW, the video link on the Donut Labs website has already been hacked to redirect to a video game commercial. Not promising. Also, they released zero technical details. Compare to QuantumScape and others who have published exhaustive test results and samples.

I ain't getting excited until Sandy Munro tears it apart and says "Hmmmph" in an approving manner.

 

[TexasSlate]

I just want LFP for longevity and thermal safety.

 

[E90400K]

And the 21" automotive motor weighs in at 88 pounds? Holy unsprung weight Batman!

 

[ScooterAsheville]

As a lifelong motorcyclist, I'm still trying to figure out how one goes about dismounting the rear tire from the hub-less rim. With 737 pound-foot of torque I'd imagine a rear tire will last about 5,000 miles at best. Harley's $30K Livewire did not sell very well and had pretty much the same speed specs.

I'm still waiting for the Michelin "Tweel" to hit automotive. I think they're on side by sides now. But I'm awaiting the day when flat tires are something you read about in history blogs.

 

[cadblu]

Put this guy on Shark Tank and see how they react.

 

[1yeliab_sufur1]

Bold claims very bold of say but if true does not matter how scratchy it sounds if it actually works now that would be something and who knows they could have cracked it by accident you can have all the r&d in the world if one person doesn’t think the one thing at the right time it’s fails could just be luck on there end

 

[1yeliab_sufur1]

There also making the claim that it is cheaper then lithium batteries and lighter. I’m very curious if slate would look into this since if it is truly better it wouldn’t make since to stick with the nmc battery for the slate from a cost standpoint but who knows

 

[bartflossom]

This might be the next "cheap" battery replacing LFP

 

[solartogo]

There is a lot I can say about this ... I'll just leave it at: I would be very surprised that a boutique motorcycle company with no background in battery manufacturing was the one to crack solid state, which has been the focus of billions of R&D dollars by dozens of companies over the last decade.

The motorcycle company is the first user, not the developer.

 

[phidauex]

There also making the claim that it is cheaper then lithium batteries and lighter. I’m very curious if slate would look into this since if it is truly better it wouldn’t make since to stick with the nmc battery for the slate from a cost standpoint but who knows

Their claims are not true - if it was cheaper, lighter and real, I'd be buying them by the GWh today. Usually they mean "could be" cheaper (if global manufacturing is scaled by 10,000%, no problems are found, and all raw material pricing stays at the 2018 level which is the last time they did the calculation), "could be" lighter (if the energy density scales linearly, the fire testing goes perfectly, etc.). The proof of the pudding is in the eating - if it did all those things I'd place a PO tomorrow (but guess what...).

I work in this industry, and one of our sayings is "there are liars, damned liars, and battery suppliers". You can't trust a single thing they say until you have units in hand.

That isn't to say that solid state batteries don't have a future, or that there are applications for NaIon or other options, but they have a massive scale-up to do, and are competing with extremely well established and refined NMC, NCA and LFP products.

 

[Sojourner]

I work in this industry, and one of our sayings is "there are liars, damned liars, and battery suppliers". You can't trust a single thing they say until you have units in hand.

That isn't to say that solid state batteries don't have a future, or that there are applications for NaIon or other options, but they have a massive scale-up to do, and are competing with extremely well established and refined NMC, NCA and LFP products.

I know nothing about the battery industry, but from my limited/outsider perspective, battery tech today seems to be just like the RAM and HD advances in the 80s and 90s. What supposedly was impossible or just too difficult turned out to be neither.

I started on a Tandy 4k color computer with cassette tape storage in the early 80s and within ten years had computers that dwarfed that original TRS-80 Color Computer.

So I wouldn't be surprised if the dude in the video is legit.

(As an aside, I still have my 128k TRS-80 Color Computer with Multi-Pak and dual Floppy Drive in their original boxes! Wonder what it's all worth.)

 

[E90400K]

I know nothing about the battery industry, but from my limited/outsider perspective, battery tech today seems to be just like the RAM and HD advances in the 80s and 90s. What supposedly was impossible or just too difficult turned out to be neither.

I started on a Tandy 4k color computer with cassette tape storage in the early 80s and within ten years had computers that dwarfed that original TRS-80 Color Computer.

So I wouldn't be surprised if the dude in the video is legit.

(As an aside, I still have my 128k TRS-80 Color Computer with Multi-Pak and dual Floppy Drive in their original boxes! Wonder what it's all worth.)

Not all technology scales the same, especially batteries and electric motors as compared to computer processing chips. There was a huge opportunity to advance the state of the art in transistor technology for the last 70 years.

In-wheel electric motors are not a new idea by any stretch, and the idea was prototyped as far back as the mid 1980's as I remember it.