Comment by mtgx | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mtgx | Hacker News Reader

I remember SolidEnergy. We discussed it here on HN before. It was one of the, if not the most promising companies to have made "battery breakthroughs", a few years ago. And they also seem to be launching right on time (I believe they promised a 2016-2017 release date a few years ago).

What's strange though is that Tesla always brags about how it has a list with "hundreds" of such battery breakthroughs, and that they know everyone in the industry working on new tech, but none was anywhere close to coming to market, which is why they chose to go with normal Li-Ion batteries for Gigafactory.

And now we have this announcement? Was SolidEnergy that secretive with their battery tech evolution or why would Musk keep saying that then? I would imagine SolidEnergy would kill for a deal with Tesla. So I wonder what else is going on. Perhaps the battery is 2x as dense, but 4x as expensive, making it not useful for Tesla cars anytime soon?

There are many import properties of battery, which I don't see mentioned. They talk only about energy density and safety.

- What is the Power Density? If it can only charge and discharge slowly, then your Tesla becomes slow and not fun to drive, and you can't fill it up quickly at a supercharger, or maybe even overnight at home.

- What is the longevity of the cell? How fast does it degrade with usage?

- What are the temperature effects on the cell? Will the cell require a new thermal management system to get full capacity, power, and longevity?

- What is the cost?

This tech will take at least a few years to reach the point where they can start supplying enough batteries that Tesla would need for its cars.

...or Musk saying "Lets make those in our Gigafactory instead".

You realize that Tesla is not making the batteries in the gigafactory. That'd be Panasonic.

It may have something to do with patents? Or maybe Tesla realizes making the cars is enough, leave the batteries up to others? Or, they have the market momentum now, so lets go for it, the world will bend to our will.

SolidEnergy is going to make its own batteries, so I meant why isn't Tesla buying their batteries instead of Panasonic's batteries? But my best guess is it has something to do with price per Kwh being much higher or simply not being confident in SE's ability to scale up to 50GWh per year in the next 2-3 years, which is what Tesla is going to need for the Model 3.

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