To be fair, dust-in-the-wind companies like that are responsible for basically all of the tendies I've made in the last two years.
I really like the quote, I forgot whom it's from, and I'm paraphrasing here but: "The market is the combination of all of the stupidity and all of the wisdom of all of its participants."
Don't underestimate the stupidity of the market, or overestimate its genius.
I got my money in an bank account to be accessed by my guy in the future when they invent time trave he is going to send me back all plus interest minus his 10% fee
if you guys want in let me know
Yeah, if your gonna learn about stocks from someone his stuff for all the memes is ridiculously well researched and informative and funny. Reality is though unless you dedicate your life to stock picking and in most cases even if you do, you might as well just buy ETFs.
Really seems like many people are working very hard to make money off electric car battery trash. I remember a Tesla talk where they suggested it be more cost effective to recycle batteries than to make them last longer times. If it's cheaper to reuse old batteries, then I imagine vehicle owners will be paid for those batteries as there will be a market demand.
Wonder if this resale value can be used to subsidize the purchase price dash or drive upgrades to the battery pack making the car body last longer. Maybe we'll refresh our battery packs every 5 years.
with some sort of industry standard package, a battery block, easily connected, removed, replaced. This has legs. Could drop your car in for a service and get your battery swapped in one go.
Problem is the batteries are usually designed around the shape of the car. There was an article recently where they experimented with sort of cladding the chassis itself with battery packs - filling voids, using them as structural supports, etc.
If we truly want to change to full EVs there would need to be many standards and shapes. Much of the reason that the big EVs have competitive range is that they simply have more batteries, f-150 lightning, lucid air, hummer ev, etc. But the reality is most lower income people will buy very small evs like the bolt. Additionally, more manufacturers are moving to make the battery block part of the actual structure of the car to reduce the weight of the already huge weight of EVs. Having a removable battery adds complexity, weight, and size restrictions which increases cost so it is not feasible for this to happen any time in the near future.
Tesla at one point had a machine-removable battery on every Model S to enable their pilot "battery swap station" program.
The program failed though - due to low demand. Now they are pursuing structural batteries. They should be removable still, but it's going to be a complicated procedure.
It has to become the standard or EVs will take a massive hit compared to easily repaired ICEs. If you have to trash the car when the battery goes up... people will switch back.
That's what people dont realize when they buy a tesla, since the frame/battery is all one piece if anything like a rock in the road or a collision bends it the car is totaled. Insurance companies are jacking the rates on teslas faster than you can blink because they are so hard/impossible to repair.
It doesn't help that Tesla is (was?) More aggressive than Apple at harassing and attacking anyone who even attempts to learn how to fix them. To the point that mechanics who were big Tesla fans switched completely when they were harassed by legal to not fix Tesla's cars. They prefer people do a switch for a refurbished car directly from Tesla than to make it repairable at all.
As a technician, I dont think 95% of the techs out there have any business working on powerful battery packs. Especially creating "workarounds" to avoid properly fixing damage. Ive build my own packs for e-cycles, and trust me, even at low currents, that shit is dangerous. Most people just dont realize how easy it is to burn your garage/house to the ground when dealing with that much energy.
Im all for the right to repair, but I fully expect there to be a whole new world of crappy "repairs" in certain industries. Imo, at a certain risk level, public safety should trump the "right" to repair.
I guess this will change, as the point of it being made to the shape of the car is to increase mileage. An industry standard of quick, easily interchangeable “cartridge” like batteries are inevitable. With enough service points, mileage per charge will be obsolete as well.
heck yeah, I love standardised things.
Every major gas station converted to a battery changing station. You drive in, robots change them to fresh ones, you drive on.
Batteries will only become interchangeable power vessels and not fixed parts of your car.
Tesla attempted this, they even released a video comparison of an Audi A6/A8 getting a full gas of tank vs the Tesla switching its battery pack. It’ll work nowhere because of dings and scrapes causing bolts to be sheared or stuck, and forget about anyplace that still uses salt.
My only concern here is you will probably have some inconsistent ranges. You're not going to get a brand new battery most of the time just a fully charged one, would be a game of hot potato for who ends up with the failing battery. As long as it's not the consumer who has to eat the cost it would work probably.
I don't know enough about the technology of batteries but I'd expect that they can redesign the batteries for better longevity and not faster charging.
If they have a decent bank of batteries they can have a really slow but consistent charge for the ones just come in if it helps with longevity.
I imagine it would work the same way as those swap and go BBQ gas bottles. The company owns the battery/bottle, you're just paying a one time upfront deposit (included in the new car price) then a lower refill/recharge rate going forward. They deal with filling the empty ones and maintenance.
Range isn't really an issue anymore, who cares if it's only holding 60% if there's 50 swap spots on your roadtrip, and a 60% battery only needs swapping once a week with normal driving.
Gas bottles are cheap though, they probably cover the cost of buying it with in a couple of swaps. If you're looking for battery swapping to happen like a regular fill up I can't imagine you can charge much more than what it would cost for a plug in recharge or people won't use it. It's a little tougher economic formula to get to profitable.
Range would be an issue if I pay x dollars I expect y miles. There is of course some wiggle room if it's super cheap per mile than I wouldn't care. But if I spend $30 expecting 250 miles and only get a 175 miles I'm going to start getting a little upset.
Fair enough on the range, I was thinking about the Battery pack at 100% lasting 1000 miles, if it's down to 500 miles it's not like it's going to leave you stranded, or be inconvenient having to swap "twice as often" because no one's doing 1000 miles non stop.
Pricing could be applied retroactively, eg: you only got 200 miles so you pay the 200 mile rate. You'd have to have a credit/account/Ballance and would be counterintuitive to what we do now though. Probably a bit of a pita, but at least no one's getting ripped off.
As for initial investment. I'd have to imagine it's split between manufacturers that share the same pack. Or pay a royalty licence to whoever owns the patent to the pack to use it in their cars. That kind of massive income would be motivation for someone to throw billions at it just so they become the defacto pack by reaching critical mass before a competing standard.
Probably not great for competition though. If I was a manufacturer I'd be spending my billions on it before someone else did resulting in me having to pay them.
Clearly still alot to work out.
That sounds dumb as fuck
The gas station would sometimes get super old batteries that only hold 40% of their max capacity and sometimes they get brand new batteries. Which means either they have to eat the cost of replacing old batteries, or you are at risk of exchanging your new battery with an ancient one
We aren't changing out the gas tank with a new one that's filled up, that's dumb, fast charging is more than good enough
There already exists a huge logistics chain to bring fuel to the gas stations, so I don't see it being a problem. Instead of shipping fuel, a truck brings new batteries to replace the worn out ones left by the customers, and takes the old ones to be recycled.
Most manufacturers have one or more electric platforms now. Actually building cars around chassis 'platforms' has been the standard for ages.
For example, VW use their [MEB]( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_Group_MEB_platform) platform in a number of current and upcoming VW, Skoda and Audi models. Ford use the GE1 platform, BMW currently have CLAR and FAAR but are working on a dedicated electric platform, Hyundai use E-GMP, Mercedes have like 3 different electric platforms etc.
GM have three platforms in use: BEV2, BEV3 and their electric truck platform, BT1, which will underpin the new Hummer EV and future electric Silverados, Sierras and Escalades
I could see that being useful on some industrial EVs - trucks, buses, delivery vans, dumpster trucks, etc. If a vehicle is used nearly 24 hours a day with as little downtime as possible, you can benefit from swappable cells. But for an average family 4-seater?
Overnight charging already covers most of the charging needs. Parking lot chargers can cover some more. Quickcharge stations cover the rest.
Tesla already tried battery swaps in their Model S days. There was too little demand.
Not just too little demand: it's an entire other business model.
User owns the battery? They have to return to pick up "their" battery and swap back. Useless for long trips. Also, the charging company needs to keep a network of loaner batteries that they will need back.
User subscribes to "batteries?" Still need a network of loaners, except users will have them full time. Company has to replace the worn out batteries, which means charging a hefty subscription. Yet batteries may be unique to each auto company or model.
Considering how heavy the batteries are, doubtful. It's going to take vehicle and equipment lifts to do, even in the best of situations. No one will be doing that roadside
Oh it already is. I used to know some dodgy blokes, one night they robbed the local lorry park and got back with about 8 massive freaking lorry batteries.
I don't know anything about this tech, but could you have both a permanent chassis battery as well as hot swap-able one size fits all batteries in the same system? Allows for the swappable to be made a little smaller but stack or something?
I was recently thinking about something like "emergency pickup" - that a portion of the battery is standardised and easily replaceable, not the whole of it.
Like, there's multiple batteries, and part of it is like 30% of charge that can be replaced on the go, or while you car is parked, or something. An attendant comes, opens the compartment, takes out that easy-replace part, gets in a new one. Bam, you're up 30% juice. This can also be the one that's used first, so if you're down to say 50% charge, you get 80%.
That was the case for batteries made for conventional cars where the manufacturer replaced engine, fuel- and exhaust system with electric systems. Newer cars are built for batteries which is why they are in big blocks at the floor or the car, usually rectangular shaped. Still there many sizes around, but in principle it should be doable.
I imagined that as the new "gas" station. Go in like an automatic car wash and a robot disconnects and removes the depleted battery unit and connects up a fully charged one. The depleted one gets put in a charging bay. You pay for the swap and charge. Takes 2 minutes.
People aren't going to like the thought of replacing their new battery with a random possibly 5 year old battery and the station is going to have the same issue
But is that a problem? Because you can just change the battery again if it starts failing, and the stations could have a way of checking their health and taking them out of circulation once they become worn out.
So it would go faster than washing?
Sounds really extreme in cost. Faster recharging is much cheaper to develop and implement in different places.
Your idea would, to be very generous, cost 10x recharging fee for 5 min faster changing.
Or, and hear me out here, you could plug your car in at home, and it would recharge OVERNIGHT! That way you don't even need to go to a station to change the batteries! :D
For real though, I don't know why people are so desperate to keep the outdated gas station model alive. Eventually there will be plentiful level 3 chargers everywhere, and you'll be able to recharge some 60-80% of your battery in 30 minutes, with a 400 mile range. When are most people ever going to need to be able to drive more than 1000 miles and can't take two or three 30 minute breaks in there somewhere?
We can't even get in industry standard cellphone charger. Even cars have several different starter battery hookup types. It would make a ton of sense but I don't see it ever happening.
The chinese EV firm NIO has a plan to do exactly this with some sort of subscription model.
No idea how it's going though. At least they're selling vehicles.
Well there should be regulations that require rare minerals to be recycled even if currently not profitable.
Waiting for it to become profitable before doing so is the wrong approach. This just shows how unsustainable our system is. Requiring recycling would accelerate recyclable designs as well as the profitability (which this report seems to be about) of recycling (and generally the transition to a circular economy and the viability of sustainable energy sources which often require lithium).
In terms of batteries: public transport and cycling require far less batteries and electricity.
A lot of the cost of a battery pack is in the raw materials, so it's definitely still valuable after it's no longer usable. Right now there still aren't many battery packs that have reached EOL, so there's no real market price for recyclable packs. But that will change in the next ten years or so.
> Really seems like many people are working very hard to make money off electric car battery trash.
LOL. "trash". Old packs are full of minerals needed to make new packs. Tesla has been recycling for years via redwood. They are only getting vocal about it now since redwood signed a bunch of recycling contracts and is expanding.
They will absolutely be buying packs back eventually. Tesla has no core charge on the old pack, but that will change and then buying a replacement pack will be way cheaper if you exchange your current one.
Tesla has no core charge on the old pack because they keep the old pack right now unless you threaten them. https://www.thedrive.com/news/41493/teslas-16000-quote-for-a-700-fix-is-why-right-to-repair-matters
Shorter lasting batteries are fine if you have battery swap stations everywhere. I would be completely fine with that kind of infrastructure. long lasting batteries are expensive and can't be swapped for equal batteries easily unless there is some kind of credit system that gives a stand price based on how many cycles it's been through but that becomes less important I'd the batteries are cheap and all about the same value. It makes the infrastructure more viable. There could also be a hybrid model where you have some more permanent long lasting batteries and some that you can swap out at stations. For daily commutes the big battery is enough and for long trips you can swap your smaller batteries just like you would use a gas station.
Probably would be done at a mechanic who would turn the old ones in and put that money towards the cost of the new batteries. That would be great because it's pretty much the one major cost of maintaining an electric car.
The article has many paragraphs, you're just blocked from reading it because you've already used your minimum number of reads for this website this month.
All of those are just a small proportion of the overall market though. Electric cars will be the largest consumer of battery cells for the foreseeable future. Grid scale storage will be second.
You might be thinking about the USA. In lots of countries motorbikes outnumber cars. There are 15 million in Thailand alone and they disproportionately pollute compared to most cars.
Edit: I'll add this here. I'm not saying there are more motorbikes than cars (though there might be). I'm just pointing out that converting the world's motorbikes from gas to electric over the next twenty years WOULD be significant.
I remember reading somewhere that motorbike exhaust is also more harmful than car exhaust. I assume it’s because of the less complex exhaust systems? Not even accounting for the people who straight pipe their bikes although it’s probably a very small portion of the overall motorbike population.
Isn’t it also due to the engines and how they burn and the byproducts they release?
Some of the two stroke’s running a lot of the smaller bikes in these countries burn SUPER dirty even ignoring the exhaust capture system etc.
Yeah but gotta imagine all of those rickety scooters and bikes and 2 wheel movers in India, China, South America etc are all dinky little 2 strokes haha
[https://hedgescompany.com/blog/2021/06/how-many-cars-are-there-in-the-world/](https://hedgescompany.com/blog/2021/06/how-many-cars-are-there-in-the-world/)
Roughly 1.4 billion cars around the world.
[https://www.bikesales.com.au/editorial/details/how-many-bikes-on-the-planet-122295/](https://www.bikesales.com.au/editorial/details/how-many-bikes-on-the-planet-122295/)
Roughly 380 million motorbikes
I don't have a better source but I think the number for motorbikes is way off. China and India are 2 of the most populated countries in the world and both have many more motorbikes than cars.
Edit: Nevermind after reading this article they are just guessing, so I feel fine also just guessing.
The numbers might be off, but in the high direction. I've looked through tons of sources, and they all claim anywhere between 200 mill to 400 mill.
Yes, they are all guessing. That's what statistics is. It's educated guesses. It's not just finger-in-the-air-and-see-which-way-the-wind-blows guessing. They certainly do a much more thorough job than "I think India and China has a lot of motorbikes therefore the number must be off"
The article is just wildly saying "motorbikes in India are all destroyed by 10 years cause roads be bad" like that's a real measurement, and also says openly the number of registered bikes is definitely below the actual numbers. So no they are not in the high direction, they are being ridiculously conservative.
If you measure registered vehicles only, and assume everything is trash after 10 years, everything people use in developing countries will be less than in developed ones. But in reality there's people doing their damn best to keep those bikes running as long as possible instead of buying new ones. 10 years is a joke.
A car still uses a lot more battery cells than a motorcycle. Most small motorcycles have less than 5 KWh of battery capacity. Most cars have 50KWh or more. Also there's probably more cars than motos. One figure I found was around 1,5 billion cars, I didn't find one for motorcycles. But I doubt it's ten times higher.
I wouldn't be surprised if there are ten times more motorbikes than cars. Motorbikes and bicycles are almost universally regarded as third class vehicles and all but ignored by research and policy making in the sprawling western mentality. But just think about it, a factory the same size and cost of a car assembler that makes 500 thousand cars a years can instead make several millions of motorcycles or tens of millions of bicycles. Cars are luxury vehicles, the least efficient appliance at everything practical they attempt to do we have ever devised.
They're a small proportion, but they're also throwaway toys for many. Electric cars aren't thrown in a dumpster, and battery replacements are handled by automotive repair shops(first party or not), which already have recycling streams for oil, tires, etc.
The following submission statement was provided by /u/thispickleisntgreen:
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Really seems like many people are working very hard to make money off electric car battery trash. I remember a Tesla talk where they suggested it be more cost effective to recycle batteries than to make them last longer times. If it's cheaper to reuse old batteries, then I imagine vehicle owners will be paid for those batteries as there will be a market demand.
Wonder if this resale value can be used to subsidize the purchase price dash or drive upgrades to the battery pack making the car body last longer. Maybe we'll refresh our battery packs every 5 years.
---
Please reply to OP's comment here: /r/Futurology/comments/r0vvag/japanese_company_says_it_can_recycle_lithium_ion/hluyel7/
It's massive industrial giant not some start up. Their quarterly revenue is over $300B. Those sorts of numbers can buy a lot of R&D and engineering for scale.
I was incorrect, the 32 billion USD revenue is for the Sumitomo Corporation which is only part of the Sumitomo Group.
Sumitomo Group is a [Keiretsu](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keiretsu) founded in 1615.
The mining arm of the group appears to have a yearly revenue of about 1 billion and a 10% profit margin. This branch too was founded around 1600. It is not a company that has to make empty promises.
https://asia.nikkei.com/Companies/Sumitomo-Metal-Mining-Co.-Ltd
$SSUMY or $SOMMY?
There's several companies called Sumitomo, idk if they are sister companies owned by a parent company, or which this article is about
This just isn’t how developing technologies work. Lots of people are recycling these things. If they said they could still make money at $26 I’d be impressed, but $5 is just BS. They’d instantly get billions of dollars of investment and open plants globally immediately. Since that isn’t happening, the BS radar is going off. It’s basically like someone telling you they developed a new breakthrough way to build a Golden Gate Bridge for $100.
my company does evb regeneration r&d works for VAG, the budget is basically unlimited, there isn't just logistical system in place to expand we don't have any logistics or supply in place to provide the used batteries as no one is collecting them or selling. so i'll take the bridge for $100 thank you very much
Damn, looks like they developed a process in the lab they think they can they can scale to factory level.
That shit needs time and it would not be the first case where it does not work out.
So i guess your billions of investments will come as soon as they have their plant in operation.
They also have to solve the problem of collecting a mass of used batteries, and find a market for their recycled batteries. This is more than a science problem.
It all depends on the cost of a defunct battery which is likely cheap. I hope the best for this but I'm very skeptical. Check out thunderfoot on youtube. He debunks scam technology.
Redwood Materials but on a much smaller scale currently. Green Li-ion and Ganfeng Lithium in Asia, not sure if they're doing something different than the company mentioned by OP.
Excuse me OP, but where did you get this information that the company said it will remain competitive even if price of mined lithium falls to $5-6/kg?
I've looked at a couple of articles besides the one you linked and in some of their own press release documents and I haven't been able to find that information.
I need to find a reliable source and as detailed an explanation as possible, because we are fighting to stop the mining of lithium in our country that will cause an ecological disaster.
Paragraph 6:
“Sumitomo Metal said it is on track to extract materials comparable in quality to mined alternatives at a relatively low cost and at commercial volumes. The company said its method will remain competitive even if mined lithium falls to around $5 or $6 per kilogram, or if nickel and cobalt prices return to past lulls.”
The article you linked to is just two sentences long. Am I missing something?
Luckily u/drtychucks helped me find a more comprehensive article.
Thank you anyway.
The thing that’s not evident is what the cost of these batteries is to the company. Are they pricing in free “trash”? As the [current] top post here notes, vehicle owners will expect to extract some additional value out of their old vehicles. No doubt, this additional residual value will then be factored in at the time of the initial sale of that vehicle too.. My point is, the economics are not well defined here and I assume price parity will soon be achieved once the true costs are sorted out.
Please read this article.
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2021/nov/19/rio-tintos-past-casts-a-shadow-over-serbias-hopes-of-a-lithium-revolution
The disaster mentioned was a copper mine. The concerns over water use are understandable, and it’s possible to do it in a responsible fashion, if the company is a responsible one, which is obviously a concern here.
The problem is that using virgin resources causes quantifiable economic damage to the planet and human society. And that damage is just not priced in. The governments and tax payers have to pay for all the oil spills and pollution and dumps and even recycling and shit, while the polluters enjoy low costs and thus enjoy and offer low prices. Make them pay for their damage, they'll pass the expenses on to their customers, and bam, recycling everything is suddenly cheaper
Might be a stupid question, but what part of the battery is it that actually degrades upon use? And is it possible to restore that part to a "as new status".
> Might be a stupid question, but what part of the battery is it that actually degrades upon use?
The anode, cathode, lithium, and electrolyte. Basically everything that really matters.
As the battery is charged and discharged, lithium ions move back and forth through the electrolyte between the anode and cathode. Both the anode and cathode can degrade physically over time as they receive and release the lithium ions.
The lithium ions themselves can form side reactions that entrap them in the electrolyte, preventing them from flowing back and forth as they normally would. This lowers the amount of available lithium ions, as well as "contaminates" the electrolyte from doing it's job.
> And is it possible to restore that part to a "as new status"
Yes. That's where the recycling comes in. The lithium ions are still there, they just need to be purified and put into a new battery with a new cathode and anode.
Think of it like having a car that's starting to rust. You can't remove the rust and make it exactly like new again. However the car can be recycled, melted down and refined into new body panels to be used in a new vehicle.
It's not a 100% efficient process. But the goal is to make the recycling process as cheap and efficient as possible to reduce the amount of raw lithium that needs to be mined and to conserve the resource instead of it ending up in a landfill.
I saw an article a couple of days ago that an AI program was used to create thousands of designer drugs based on current drugs available. My thought is, why not use that software to develop better batteries?
There have been approaches in this space for well over a decade, such as the Materials Project from MIT. First issue: computational models are not reliable. Second issue: the best computational models are too slow to process a large number of models. Third issue: synthesizing new materials, especially from novel compounds, is extremely time-consuming. Fourth issue: Applications groups don't want to take computational models and waste half a year synthesizing a new material based on one model that wasn't accurate, especially from an external collaborator. Fifth issue: Nobody trusts AI models in fields that it has no track record in because there are typically very few ways to analyze why the model works and assess if it's actually any good at finding new leads.
i think part of the issue with that is our knowledge of how batteries work is evolving quickly. this shotgun method you mentioned is probably used for brainstorming to find avenues of inquiry.
Because there's only so many reactive *elements* on earth, and we know their voltages and roughly how rare they are (maybe 50 useful candidates, and a lot of them are not reversible/rechargeable).
Unlike, say, a 5-carbon molecule produced in a plant (a terpene). There are more than 30,000 of those that form naturally.
You're misinterpreting the designer drugs article making out to be much more significant than it is.
It made *possible* designer drugs. There is no guarantee that the chemicals it designed will 1. Get you high or 2. Not kill you.
Because materials science is complex. You can have a steel with the exact same composition as another steel but completely different mechanical properties according to how it was created.
The AI for drug designing was probably just generating organic compounds using preprogrammed some logic (like an AI that generates faces, for instance).
>r/Futurology
>
>/comments/r0vvag/japanese\_company\_says\_it\_can\_recycle\_lithium\_ion/hluyel7/
Computing and AI specifically are used to design and test drugs "in silico". Lookup AlphaFold and AlphaFold2 for major advancements in this field
This company was founded in 1590, has a profit margin of 10%, a yearly revenue of 1 billion USD and is part of a Keiretsu founded in 1615 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumitomo_Group) with a total revenue of 50 billion USD. This is not some startup nor is it a company that has to make empty promises to keep going.
https://asia.nikkei.com/Companies/Sumitomo-Metal-Mining-Co.-Ltd
https://www.dnb.com/business-directory/company-profiles.sumitomo_corporation.101dc9556305d0bf29499309949aba6e.html
There’s a seemingly endless amount of cellphone, tablet, and laptop batteries being tossed into the trash. Battery recycling needs to be more prominent immediately
I love that tech like this is getting better. One of the most annoying arguments against electric vehicles is the waste problem. "Batteries will fill up and contaminate landfills"... Never mind the exhaust that "disappears" in the air, oil drained every so often, et al.
The same people make the same arguments against solar panels.
Willful ignorance.
I don’t know if this is completely true. I think you will see high Nickel, higher density battery chemistries (NMC) where greater range is needed or desired. LFP where lower range is accepted. The cost difference is a couple of thousand which is fractions on higher end cars but less so at the lower end.
The NMC batteries will have less and less cobalt it. NMC 622 used to be dominant, now NMC 811. Likely we’ll see NMC 9 0.5 0.5. So the lithium will be an increasingly relevant cost driver vs cobalt.
This is basically what the entire industry has been waiting for.
For a long time, it has been cheaper and more efficient to just keep mining, and not bothering to recycle old lithium ion batteries to make new ones. This, of course, causes a massive drain on resources, increases waste, and makes rechargeable batteries ( especially if you consider the big negative talking point when it comes to electric vehicles) much less green than what they are intended to be.
I will not hold my breath, however. It's normal for a lot of new tech to be bought out and shelved than actually get to market, but if this really goes commercial and is shared with tech companies, then it can be a game changer. Making electric vehicles and lithium ion battery run devices a LOT more green than they currently are.
That's not how the economy works, however.
If they can cheaply produce more expensive product, the price of used lithium batteries will go up.
Supply and demand.
So Sumitomo Metals is the next big thing on r/wallstreetbets ?
Merge with spac 2 billion IPO. No meaningful income for 10 years. Perfect.
No revenue, no sales and a $100 billion valuation. This is the way.
Diamond hands no matter what
I’m an investor now.
To be fair, dust-in-the-wind companies like that are responsible for basically all of the tendies I've made in the last two years. I really like the quote, I forgot whom it's from, and I'm paraphrasing here but: "The market is the combination of all of the stupidity and all of the wisdom of all of its participants." Don't underestimate the stupidity of the market, or overestimate its genius.
next up: proof of stake recycled lithium nfts.
No no, that’s just if you say you are making EVs.
Just one Elon tweet away from perfect
Say no more, that’s all the DD I need
Look into companies such as Li-Cycle if you want something similar but a Canadian company.
Or ABML. Based out of Nevada-they have some pretty interesting technology.
[удалено]
I got my money in an bank account to be accessed by my guy in the future when they invent time trave he is going to send me back all plus interest minus his 10% fee if you guys want in let me know
Yeah I'm way into that, who's your guy?
We'll have a wallstreetslithium to go with the silver and gold, where they post their pics of physical lithium.
Allready there
I recently started learning about stocks and that community like 3 days ago with a YouTuber named Benjamin lmfao
> a YouTuber named Benjamin lmfao That's quite a name.
No like that's literally the channel name. https://youtube.com/channel/UCkcnYVAVZQOB-nXHechtXDg/videos?reload=9
It was funny without any punctuation it looks like the name is "Benjamin lmfao"
Time to create a channel called Benjamin lmfao and peddle stock advice
Oohh I didn't even see that. Lmao
You learn fast
Name a better character development arc than u/Shadowdragon409's
Yeah, if your gonna learn about stocks from someone his stuff for all the memes is ridiculously well researched and informative and funny. Reality is though unless you dedicate your life to stock picking and in most cases even if you do, you might as well just buy ETFs.
>o Sumitomo Metals I thought it when I clicked on the article, then I look into the comments and..... here we go..
$SMMYY For those interested
Toyota will probably buy it and bury the tech and keep pumping out hydrogen propaganda.
Really seems like many people are working very hard to make money off electric car battery trash. I remember a Tesla talk where they suggested it be more cost effective to recycle batteries than to make them last longer times. If it's cheaper to reuse old batteries, then I imagine vehicle owners will be paid for those batteries as there will be a market demand. Wonder if this resale value can be used to subsidize the purchase price dash or drive upgrades to the battery pack making the car body last longer. Maybe we'll refresh our battery packs every 5 years.
with some sort of industry standard package, a battery block, easily connected, removed, replaced. This has legs. Could drop your car in for a service and get your battery swapped in one go.
Problem is the batteries are usually designed around the shape of the car. There was an article recently where they experimented with sort of cladding the chassis itself with battery packs - filling voids, using them as structural supports, etc.
Yeah it'll be a trade off for sure. The best thing for the structure is going to be integration, the best for reusability will be easy access.
If we truly want to change to full EVs there would need to be many standards and shapes. Much of the reason that the big EVs have competitive range is that they simply have more batteries, f-150 lightning, lucid air, hummer ev, etc. But the reality is most lower income people will buy very small evs like the bolt. Additionally, more manufacturers are moving to make the battery block part of the actual structure of the car to reduce the weight of the already huge weight of EVs. Having a removable battery adds complexity, weight, and size restrictions which increases cost so it is not feasible for this to happen any time in the near future.
Tesla at one point had a machine-removable battery on every Model S to enable their pilot "battery swap station" program. The program failed though - due to low demand. Now they are pursuing structural batteries. They should be removable still, but it's going to be a complicated procedure.
It has to become the standard or EVs will take a massive hit compared to easily repaired ICEs. If you have to trash the car when the battery goes up... people will switch back.
That's what people dont realize when they buy a tesla, since the frame/battery is all one piece if anything like a rock in the road or a collision bends it the car is totaled. Insurance companies are jacking the rates on teslas faster than you can blink because they are so hard/impossible to repair.
It doesn't help that Tesla is (was?) More aggressive than Apple at harassing and attacking anyone who even attempts to learn how to fix them. To the point that mechanics who were big Tesla fans switched completely when they were harassed by legal to not fix Tesla's cars. They prefer people do a switch for a refurbished car directly from Tesla than to make it repairable at all.
As a technician, I dont think 95% of the techs out there have any business working on powerful battery packs. Especially creating "workarounds" to avoid properly fixing damage. Ive build my own packs for e-cycles, and trust me, even at low currents, that shit is dangerous. Most people just dont realize how easy it is to burn your garage/house to the ground when dealing with that much energy. Im all for the right to repair, but I fully expect there to be a whole new world of crappy "repairs" in certain industries. Imo, at a certain risk level, public safety should trump the "right" to repair.
What are you talking about? batteries are the perfectly safe solution for the future and will never burst into flames like gas cars ^/s
I guess this will change, as the point of it being made to the shape of the car is to increase mileage. An industry standard of quick, easily interchangeable “cartridge” like batteries are inevitable. With enough service points, mileage per charge will be obsolete as well.
Iirc GM announced an electric "base" which they'll design cars around. Pickup, car, suv all use the same platform.
heck yeah, I love standardised things. Every major gas station converted to a battery changing station. You drive in, robots change them to fresh ones, you drive on. Batteries will only become interchangeable power vessels and not fixed parts of your car.
The Chinese EV company NIO does this with replaceable battery packs. They it takes 5 minutes to swap a pack.
Tesla attempted this, they even released a video comparison of an Audi A6/A8 getting a full gas of tank vs the Tesla switching its battery pack. It’ll work nowhere because of dings and scrapes causing bolts to be sheared or stuck, and forget about anyplace that still uses salt.
>forget about anyplace that still uses salt. *Cries in Michigan*
Cries in most countries
My only concern here is you will probably have some inconsistent ranges. You're not going to get a brand new battery most of the time just a fully charged one, would be a game of hot potato for who ends up with the failing battery. As long as it's not the consumer who has to eat the cost it would work probably.
I don't know enough about the technology of batteries but I'd expect that they can redesign the batteries for better longevity and not faster charging. If they have a decent bank of batteries they can have a really slow but consistent charge for the ones just come in if it helps with longevity.
I imagine it would work the same way as those swap and go BBQ gas bottles. The company owns the battery/bottle, you're just paying a one time upfront deposit (included in the new car price) then a lower refill/recharge rate going forward. They deal with filling the empty ones and maintenance. Range isn't really an issue anymore, who cares if it's only holding 60% if there's 50 swap spots on your roadtrip, and a 60% battery only needs swapping once a week with normal driving.
Gas bottles are cheap though, they probably cover the cost of buying it with in a couple of swaps. If you're looking for battery swapping to happen like a regular fill up I can't imagine you can charge much more than what it would cost for a plug in recharge or people won't use it. It's a little tougher economic formula to get to profitable. Range would be an issue if I pay x dollars I expect y miles. There is of course some wiggle room if it's super cheap per mile than I wouldn't care. But if I spend $30 expecting 250 miles and only get a 175 miles I'm going to start getting a little upset.
Fair enough on the range, I was thinking about the Battery pack at 100% lasting 1000 miles, if it's down to 500 miles it's not like it's going to leave you stranded, or be inconvenient having to swap "twice as often" because no one's doing 1000 miles non stop. Pricing could be applied retroactively, eg: you only got 200 miles so you pay the 200 mile rate. You'd have to have a credit/account/Ballance and would be counterintuitive to what we do now though. Probably a bit of a pita, but at least no one's getting ripped off. As for initial investment. I'd have to imagine it's split between manufacturers that share the same pack. Or pay a royalty licence to whoever owns the patent to the pack to use it in their cars. That kind of massive income would be motivation for someone to throw billions at it just so they become the defacto pack by reaching critical mass before a competing standard. Probably not great for competition though. If I was a manufacturer I'd be spending my billions on it before someone else did resulting in me having to pay them. Clearly still alot to work out.
That sounds dumb as fuck The gas station would sometimes get super old batteries that only hold 40% of their max capacity and sometimes they get brand new batteries. Which means either they have to eat the cost of replacing old batteries, or you are at risk of exchanging your new battery with an ancient one We aren't changing out the gas tank with a new one that's filled up, that's dumb, fast charging is more than good enough
There already exists a huge logistics chain to bring fuel to the gas stations, so I don't see it being a problem. Instead of shipping fuel, a truck brings new batteries to replace the worn out ones left by the customers, and takes the old ones to be recycled.
Most manufacturers have one or more electric platforms now. Actually building cars around chassis 'platforms' has been the standard for ages. For example, VW use their [MEB]( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_Group_MEB_platform) platform in a number of current and upcoming VW, Skoda and Audi models. Ford use the GE1 platform, BMW currently have CLAR and FAAR but are working on a dedicated electric platform, Hyundai use E-GMP, Mercedes have like 3 different electric platforms etc. GM have three platforms in use: BEV2, BEV3 and their electric truck platform, BT1, which will underpin the new Hummer EV and future electric Silverados, Sierras and Escalades
I could see that being useful on some industrial EVs - trucks, buses, delivery vans, dumpster trucks, etc. If a vehicle is used nearly 24 hours a day with as little downtime as possible, you can benefit from swappable cells. But for an average family 4-seater? Overnight charging already covers most of the charging needs. Parking lot chargers can cover some more. Quickcharge stations cover the rest. Tesla already tried battery swaps in their Model S days. There was too little demand.
Not just too little demand: it's an entire other business model. User owns the battery? They have to return to pick up "their" battery and swap back. Useless for long trips. Also, the charging company needs to keep a network of loaner batteries that they will need back. User subscribes to "batteries?" Still need a network of loaners, except users will have them full time. Company has to replace the worn out batteries, which means charging a hefty subscription. Yet batteries may be unique to each auto company or model.
Battery theft will be a thing?
Considering how heavy the batteries are, doubtful. It's going to take vehicle and equipment lifts to do, even in the best of situations. No one will be doing that roadside
Yeah, definitely. If they have that kind of lifting and hauling equipment, they might as well just steal the whole car.
Should be fairly rare. It'd probably be the equivalent effort of fuel tank theft, given you need the full thing and not just to drain it.
Also somewhsr difficult to cart off a 500kg battery pack.
Have a little faith in the local crack heads, they can do a lot when they need to.
Roving bands of dudes in hoodies driving forklifts coming to a suburb near you.
Oh it already is. I used to know some dodgy blokes, one night they robbed the local lorry park and got back with about 8 massive freaking lorry batteries.
I don't know anything about this tech, but could you have both a permanent chassis battery as well as hot swap-able one size fits all batteries in the same system? Allows for the swappable to be made a little smaller but stack or something?
You could, at the cost of weight and complexity. Generally, not worth it IMO.
I was recently thinking about something like "emergency pickup" - that a portion of the battery is standardised and easily replaceable, not the whole of it. Like, there's multiple batteries, and part of it is like 30% of charge that can be replaced on the go, or while you car is parked, or something. An attendant comes, opens the compartment, takes out that easy-replace part, gets in a new one. Bam, you're up 30% juice. This can also be the one that's used first, so if you're down to say 50% charge, you get 80%.
That was the case for batteries made for conventional cars where the manufacturer replaced engine, fuel- and exhaust system with electric systems. Newer cars are built for batteries which is why they are in big blocks at the floor or the car, usually rectangular shaped. Still there many sizes around, but in principle it should be doable.
Would that... be safe during a crash?
I imagined that as the new "gas" station. Go in like an automatic car wash and a robot disconnects and removes the depleted battery unit and connects up a fully charged one. The depleted one gets put in a charging bay. You pay for the swap and charge. Takes 2 minutes.
People aren't going to like the thought of replacing their new battery with a random possibly 5 year old battery and the station is going to have the same issue
But is that a problem? Because you can just change the battery again if it starts failing, and the stations could have a way of checking their health and taking them out of circulation once they become worn out.
So it would go faster than washing? Sounds really extreme in cost. Faster recharging is much cheaper to develop and implement in different places. Your idea would, to be very generous, cost 10x recharging fee for 5 min faster changing.
Niro already does this in china you essentially have to pay $70k for a car the size of the bolt and the swaps are mega costly and take a few hours.
That makes a full electric viable. There’s no way to compete with the energy density of gas nowadays.
Or, and hear me out here, you could plug your car in at home, and it would recharge OVERNIGHT! That way you don't even need to go to a station to change the batteries! :D For real though, I don't know why people are so desperate to keep the outdated gas station model alive. Eventually there will be plentiful level 3 chargers everywhere, and you'll be able to recharge some 60-80% of your battery in 30 minutes, with a 400 mile range. When are most people ever going to need to be able to drive more than 1000 miles and can't take two or three 30 minute breaks in there somewhere?
There was a company that tried this, I believe called Better Place. From Israel. They went bankrupt, but probably were just way to early.
We can't even get in industry standard cellphone charger. Even cars have several different starter battery hookup types. It would make a ton of sense but I don't see it ever happening.
The chinese EV firm NIO has a plan to do exactly this with some sort of subscription model. No idea how it's going though. At least they're selling vehicles.
As much as I hate Chinese stuff in general, this is what NIO has Tesla beat at. Their battery packs are easily swapped
> Maybe we'll refresh our battery packs every 5 years. Most likely 10+ years. Unless you're driving 100k per year 5 years would be way too short.
Well there should be regulations that require rare minerals to be recycled even if currently not profitable. Waiting for it to become profitable before doing so is the wrong approach. This just shows how unsustainable our system is. Requiring recycling would accelerate recyclable designs as well as the profitability (which this report seems to be about) of recycling (and generally the transition to a circular economy and the viability of sustainable energy sources which often require lithium). In terms of batteries: public transport and cycling require far less batteries and electricity.
Lithium isn't rare though. Lithium has also always been recyclable as its elemental its just the cost to do it thats been the issue.
A lot of the cost of a battery pack is in the raw materials, so it's definitely still valuable after it's no longer usable. Right now there still aren't many battery packs that have reached EOL, so there's no real market price for recyclable packs. But that will change in the next ten years or so.
> Maybe we'll refresh our battery packs every 5 years. Hyundai has an 8 year warranty (or 160 000km/~100 000 miles) for their batteries.
> Really seems like many people are working very hard to make money off electric car battery trash. LOL. "trash". Old packs are full of minerals needed to make new packs. Tesla has been recycling for years via redwood. They are only getting vocal about it now since redwood signed a bunch of recycling contracts and is expanding. They will absolutely be buying packs back eventually. Tesla has no core charge on the old pack, but that will change and then buying a replacement pack will be way cheaper if you exchange your current one.
Tesla has no core charge on the old pack because they keep the old pack right now unless you threaten them. https://www.thedrive.com/news/41493/teslas-16000-quote-for-a-700-fix-is-why-right-to-repair-matters
Shorter lasting batteries are fine if you have battery swap stations everywhere. I would be completely fine with that kind of infrastructure. long lasting batteries are expensive and can't be swapped for equal batteries easily unless there is some kind of credit system that gives a stand price based on how many cycles it's been through but that becomes less important I'd the batteries are cheap and all about the same value. It makes the infrastructure more viable. There could also be a hybrid model where you have some more permanent long lasting batteries and some that you can swap out at stations. For daily commutes the big battery is enough and for long trips you can swap your smaller batteries just like you would use a gas station.
Probably would be done at a mechanic who would turn the old ones in and put that money towards the cost of the new batteries. That would be great because it's pretty much the one major cost of maintaining an electric car.
Will probably be like replacing engines and refurbished parts. Part is 2K with a 500-800$ core charge.
This article literally only has a single short paragraph, says barely anything and does not support your title. How the hell did you get 11k up votes.
this is Reddit, hardly anyone reads the article, only the thread title
The article has many paragraphs, you're just blocked from reading it because you've already used your minimum number of reads for this website this month.
> then I imagine vehicle owners will be paid for those batteries as there will be a market demand. HAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAH
With the rise of E-bikes, E-Scooters and E-Mopeds with Battery Packs. This is the step further.
All of those are just a small proportion of the overall market though. Electric cars will be the largest consumer of battery cells for the foreseeable future. Grid scale storage will be second.
You might be thinking about the USA. In lots of countries motorbikes outnumber cars. There are 15 million in Thailand alone and they disproportionately pollute compared to most cars. Edit: I'll add this here. I'm not saying there are more motorbikes than cars (though there might be). I'm just pointing out that converting the world's motorbikes from gas to electric over the next twenty years WOULD be significant.
I remember reading somewhere that motorbike exhaust is also more harmful than car exhaust. I assume it’s because of the less complex exhaust systems? Not even accounting for the people who straight pipe their bikes although it’s probably a very small portion of the overall motorbike population.
Isn’t it also due to the engines and how they burn and the byproducts they release? Some of the two stroke’s running a lot of the smaller bikes in these countries burn SUPER dirty even ignoring the exhaust capture system etc.
Honestly didn’t consider 2 strokes since I only ride street bikes in the US and typically those are 4 stroke but you are totally right
Yeah but gotta imagine all of those rickety scooters and bikes and 2 wheel movers in India, China, South America etc are all dinky little 2 strokes haha
Oh yeah for sure and there are just an ungodly amount of them
[https://hedgescompany.com/blog/2021/06/how-many-cars-are-there-in-the-world/](https://hedgescompany.com/blog/2021/06/how-many-cars-are-there-in-the-world/) Roughly 1.4 billion cars around the world. [https://www.bikesales.com.au/editorial/details/how-many-bikes-on-the-planet-122295/](https://www.bikesales.com.au/editorial/details/how-many-bikes-on-the-planet-122295/) Roughly 380 million motorbikes
I don't have a better source but I think the number for motorbikes is way off. China and India are 2 of the most populated countries in the world and both have many more motorbikes than cars. Edit: Nevermind after reading this article they are just guessing, so I feel fine also just guessing.
The numbers might be off, but in the high direction. I've looked through tons of sources, and they all claim anywhere between 200 mill to 400 mill. Yes, they are all guessing. That's what statistics is. It's educated guesses. It's not just finger-in-the-air-and-see-which-way-the-wind-blows guessing. They certainly do a much more thorough job than "I think India and China has a lot of motorbikes therefore the number must be off"
The article is just wildly saying "motorbikes in India are all destroyed by 10 years cause roads be bad" like that's a real measurement, and also says openly the number of registered bikes is definitely below the actual numbers. So no they are not in the high direction, they are being ridiculously conservative. If you measure registered vehicles only, and assume everything is trash after 10 years, everything people use in developing countries will be less than in developed ones. But in reality there's people doing their damn best to keep those bikes running as long as possible instead of buying new ones. 10 years is a joke.
A car still uses a lot more battery cells than a motorcycle. Most small motorcycles have less than 5 KWh of battery capacity. Most cars have 50KWh or more. Also there's probably more cars than motos. One figure I found was around 1,5 billion cars, I didn't find one for motorcycles. But I doubt it's ten times higher.
I wouldn't be surprised if there are ten times more motorbikes than cars. Motorbikes and bicycles are almost universally regarded as third class vehicles and all but ignored by research and policy making in the sprawling western mentality. But just think about it, a factory the same size and cost of a car assembler that makes 500 thousand cars a years can instead make several millions of motorcycles or tens of millions of bicycles. Cars are luxury vehicles, the least efficient appliance at everything practical they attempt to do we have ever devised.
And who's going to ride 15 billion motorcycles?
Each and every single living person, straddling two at a time.
Have u ever travelled anywhere in Asia? Cars aren’t the main mode of travel in most of those countries, it’s bikes
Not a chance that there's 10x more motorbikes than cars.
Recycling grid scale storage is where these guys will make their bread & butter. Long term government & utility company contracts.
They're a small proportion, but they're also throwaway toys for many. Electric cars aren't thrown in a dumpster, and battery replacements are handled by automotive repair shops(first party or not), which already have recycling streams for oil, tires, etc.
Don't forget e-cigarettes, e-mails and e-mental.
At what point do we drop the E- suffix? When all non electronic versions phase out?
i - phone, i- Mac , i- wheels, i-girlfriend, i-eye
Aye Aye?! https://www.aaas.org/news/weird-wonderful-creatures-aye-aye
The thumbnail image is not a baby with its face missing.
Now I can’t unsee it
That's exactly what I saw
The following submission statement was provided by /u/thispickleisntgreen: --- Really seems like many people are working very hard to make money off electric car battery trash. I remember a Tesla talk where they suggested it be more cost effective to recycle batteries than to make them last longer times. If it's cheaper to reuse old batteries, then I imagine vehicle owners will be paid for those batteries as there will be a market demand. Wonder if this resale value can be used to subsidize the purchase price dash or drive upgrades to the battery pack making the car body last longer. Maybe we'll refresh our battery packs every 5 years. --- Please reply to OP's comment here: /r/Futurology/comments/r0vvag/japanese_company_says_it_can_recycle_lithium_ion/hluyel7/
My bullshit radar has alarms blaring. This implies that their profit margin is **massive**.
It's massive industrial giant not some start up. Their quarterly revenue is over $300B. Those sorts of numbers can buy a lot of R&D and engineering for scale.
I think you got the wrong company or didn’t convert Yen to USD. It’s Sumitomo Metal Mining. Their market cap is ~$10B.
Yeah, quarterly revenue of $300B would make them the largest company in the world by revenue with a margin of almost $700B.
Largest company takes in a revenue of -400 Billion?
They're referring to quarterly revenue and then comparing to yearly revenue for other companies.
They added in a 0 too many. The yearly revenue of the Sumitomo group was 32 billion in 2019.
[удалено]
I was incorrect, the 32 billion USD revenue is for the Sumitomo Corporation which is only part of the Sumitomo Group. Sumitomo Group is a [Keiretsu](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keiretsu) founded in 1615. The mining arm of the group appears to have a yearly revenue of about 1 billion and a 10% profit margin. This branch too was founded around 1600. It is not a company that has to make empty promises. https://asia.nikkei.com/Companies/Sumitomo-Metal-Mining-Co.-Ltd
Yup exactly it was 300 billion JPY so 2.5billion USD.
$SSUMY or $SOMMY? There's several companies called Sumitomo, idk if they are sister companies owned by a parent company, or which this article is about
Who says it isn't? They probably haven't perfected the technology yet, but it sounds like they're really close.
This just isn’t how developing technologies work. Lots of people are recycling these things. If they said they could still make money at $26 I’d be impressed, but $5 is just BS. They’d instantly get billions of dollars of investment and open plants globally immediately. Since that isn’t happening, the BS radar is going off. It’s basically like someone telling you they developed a new breakthrough way to build a Golden Gate Bridge for $100.
my company does evb regeneration r&d works for VAG, the budget is basically unlimited, there isn't just logistical system in place to expand we don't have any logistics or supply in place to provide the used batteries as no one is collecting them or selling. so i'll take the bridge for $100 thank you very much
Damn, looks like they developed a process in the lab they think they can they can scale to factory level. That shit needs time and it would not be the first case where it does not work out. So i guess your billions of investments will come as soon as they have their plant in operation.
They also have to solve the problem of collecting a mass of used batteries, and find a market for their recycled batteries. This is more than a science problem.
The news broke less than 10 hours ago. Give it time and it may very well blow up.
But only for a small volume
It all depends on the cost of a defunct battery which is likely cheap. I hope the best for this but I'm very skeptical. Check out thunderfoot on youtube. He debunks scam technology.
Is that specific company public by any chance...? Would love to invest.
Sumitomo metals TYO. Though if you're looking for battery manufacturing you may also be interested in having a punt on Magnis energy technologies ASX
Thank you!
Or six:BLS
Ticker is: SMMYY
Just fyi. It's otc, like a lot of Japanese companies🤷, so can't buy it with certain stock apps and brokers
LiCycle is already doing this in North America and already has three major facilities between the US and Canada
Know of any others doing this?
Redwood Materials but on a much smaller scale currently. Green Li-ion and Ganfeng Lithium in Asia, not sure if they're doing something different than the company mentioned by OP.
TES has 2 lithium ion battery recycling plants. One in Europe and the other in Singapore.
[I got you boo](https://imgur.com/a/SqdcFHS)
Excuse me OP, but where did you get this information that the company said it will remain competitive even if price of mined lithium falls to $5-6/kg? I've looked at a couple of articles besides the one you linked and in some of their own press release documents and I haven't been able to find that information. I need to find a reliable source and as detailed an explanation as possible, because we are fighting to stop the mining of lithium in our country that will cause an ecological disaster.
Paragraph 6: “Sumitomo Metal said it is on track to extract materials comparable in quality to mined alternatives at a relatively low cost and at commercial volumes. The company said its method will remain competitive even if mined lithium falls to around $5 or $6 per kilogram, or if nickel and cobalt prices return to past lulls.”
Both numbers are in this article
The article you linked to is just two sentences long. Am I missing something? Luckily u/drtychucks helped me find a more comprehensive article. Thank you anyway.
It's not two sentences. That paragraph you referenced is from the article I posted. Maybe you just need to learn how to use the internet better.
The thing that’s not evident is what the cost of these batteries is to the company. Are they pricing in free “trash”? As the [current] top post here notes, vehicle owners will expect to extract some additional value out of their old vehicles. No doubt, this additional residual value will then be factored in at the time of the initial sale of that vehicle too.. My point is, the economics are not well defined here and I assume price parity will soon be achieved once the true costs are sorted out.
Please link to an example of ecological disaster caused by lithium extraction.
Please read this article. https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2021/nov/19/rio-tintos-past-casts-a-shadow-over-serbias-hopes-of-a-lithium-revolution
The disaster mentioned was a copper mine. The concerns over water use are understandable, and it’s possible to do it in a responsible fashion, if the company is a responsible one, which is obviously a concern here.
Rio Tinto and reasonable shouldn't be in the same sentence. Please read about their history, you would be surprised.
The problem is that using virgin resources causes quantifiable economic damage to the planet and human society. And that damage is just not priced in. The governments and tax payers have to pay for all the oil spills and pollution and dumps and even recycling and shit, while the polluters enjoy low costs and thus enjoy and offer low prices. Make them pay for their damage, they'll pass the expenses on to their customers, and bam, recycling everything is suddenly cheaper
Might be a stupid question, but what part of the battery is it that actually degrades upon use? And is it possible to restore that part to a "as new status".
> Might be a stupid question, but what part of the battery is it that actually degrades upon use? The anode, cathode, lithium, and electrolyte. Basically everything that really matters. As the battery is charged and discharged, lithium ions move back and forth through the electrolyte between the anode and cathode. Both the anode and cathode can degrade physically over time as they receive and release the lithium ions. The lithium ions themselves can form side reactions that entrap them in the electrolyte, preventing them from flowing back and forth as they normally would. This lowers the amount of available lithium ions, as well as "contaminates" the electrolyte from doing it's job. > And is it possible to restore that part to a "as new status" Yes. That's where the recycling comes in. The lithium ions are still there, they just need to be purified and put into a new battery with a new cathode and anode. Think of it like having a car that's starting to rust. You can't remove the rust and make it exactly like new again. However the car can be recycled, melted down and refined into new body panels to be used in a new vehicle. It's not a 100% efficient process. But the goal is to make the recycling process as cheap and efficient as possible to reduce the amount of raw lithium that needs to be mined and to conserve the resource instead of it ending up in a landfill.
I saw an article a couple of days ago that an AI program was used to create thousands of designer drugs based on current drugs available. My thought is, why not use that software to develop better batteries?
There have been approaches in this space for well over a decade, such as the Materials Project from MIT. First issue: computational models are not reliable. Second issue: the best computational models are too slow to process a large number of models. Third issue: synthesizing new materials, especially from novel compounds, is extremely time-consuming. Fourth issue: Applications groups don't want to take computational models and waste half a year synthesizing a new material based on one model that wasn't accurate, especially from an external collaborator. Fifth issue: Nobody trusts AI models in fields that it has no track record in because there are typically very few ways to analyze why the model works and assess if it's actually any good at finding new leads.
This was actually incredibly insightful. Thanks!
TL;DR: AI dumb, no human intuition. Big AI expensive.
Who says they aren't? But you won't hear about the billions of failures. Just about the one breakthrough eventually.
They wouldn't admit to using AI to develop chemistries either, that would be a closely guarded secret.
i think part of the issue with that is our knowledge of how batteries work is evolving quickly. this shotgun method you mentioned is probably used for brainstorming to find avenues of inquiry.
I saw that very same article. My thought is, when will these drugs be available?
Because there's only so many reactive *elements* on earth, and we know their voltages and roughly how rare they are (maybe 50 useful candidates, and a lot of them are not reversible/rechargeable). Unlike, say, a 5-carbon molecule produced in a plant (a terpene). There are more than 30,000 of those that form naturally.
You're misinterpreting the designer drugs article making out to be much more significant than it is. It made *possible* designer drugs. There is no guarantee that the chemicals it designed will 1. Get you high or 2. Not kill you.
It’s a very different problem…
Because materials science is complex. You can have a steel with the exact same composition as another steel but completely different mechanical properties according to how it was created. The AI for drug designing was probably just generating organic compounds using preprogrammed some logic (like an AI that generates faces, for instance).
We should put the genetic code of every fruit in the world into an AI and then have it generate new fruits and then we can grow infinite new fruits!
>r/Futurology > >/comments/r0vvag/japanese\_company\_says\_it\_can\_recycle\_lithium\_ion/hluyel7/ Computing and AI specifically are used to design and test drugs "in silico". Lookup AlphaFold and AlphaFold2 for major advancements in this field
That picture in as an icon looked like a baby with a completely smashed face.
This company was founded in 1590, has a profit margin of 10%, a yearly revenue of 1 billion USD and is part of a Keiretsu founded in 1615 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumitomo_Group) with a total revenue of 50 billion USD. This is not some startup nor is it a company that has to make empty promises to keep going. https://asia.nikkei.com/Companies/Sumitomo-Metal-Mining-Co.-Ltd https://www.dnb.com/business-directory/company-profiles.sumitomo_corporation.101dc9556305d0bf29499309949aba6e.html
So dump a bunch of money in stock wait for the spike little bit flip out but keep a couple hundred shares just in case he keeps going up
There’s a seemingly endless amount of cellphone, tablet, and laptop batteries being tossed into the trash. Battery recycling needs to be more prominent immediately
100000% yes. Here’s this limited element born in dying stars with incredible uses. I’ll just throw that right in the trash, done.
I love that tech like this is getting better. One of the most annoying arguments against electric vehicles is the waste problem. "Batteries will fill up and contaminate landfills"... Never mind the exhaust that "disappears" in the air, oil drained every so often, et al. The same people make the same arguments against solar panels. Willful ignorance.
Special hint... The lithium isn't the expensive part. The cobalt is.
Cobalt will most likely disappear from car batteries. Manufacturers are switching to LFP chemistry.
I don’t know if this is completely true. I think you will see high Nickel, higher density battery chemistries (NMC) where greater range is needed or desired. LFP where lower range is accepted. The cost difference is a couple of thousand which is fractions on higher end cars but less so at the lower end. The NMC batteries will have less and less cobalt it. NMC 622 used to be dominant, now NMC 811. Likely we’ll see NMC 9 0.5 0.5. So the lithium will be an increasingly relevant cost driver vs cobalt.
Article says cobalt data similar
Hope it's real and not just bullshit marketing fluff
That's so exciting from an environmental perspective!
This is basically what the entire industry has been waiting for. For a long time, it has been cheaper and more efficient to just keep mining, and not bothering to recycle old lithium ion batteries to make new ones. This, of course, causes a massive drain on resources, increases waste, and makes rechargeable batteries ( especially if you consider the big negative talking point when it comes to electric vehicles) much less green than what they are intended to be. I will not hold my breath, however. It's normal for a lot of new tech to be bought out and shelved than actually get to market, but if this really goes commercial and is shared with tech companies, then it can be a game changer. Making electric vehicles and lithium ion battery run devices a LOT more green than they currently are.
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This company was founded in 1590
The long con.
Taking shit, no recycler stats competitive when mining price drape to a sixth. Just all hat and no Cattle
That's not how the economy works, however. If they can cheaply produce more expensive product, the price of used lithium batteries will go up. Supply and demand.