If the battery industry is so secretive, how do you find out where jobs are?
Regarding how people specifically hire me, I've been lucky enough to never really need to search for work; it just finds me. Either through HN, or from people I've worked for before.
By the way, my email's in my profile; anyone in this thread feel free to contact me. You should especially contact me if you're involved in any project that uses batteries, I always love to hear what people are making.
Another example is when a company needed a 10kW output for just a few seconds. I was able to reduce their already-optimized battery pack (the largest weight part of the system) to one twentieth of its original weight.
Given a random company that hired me, I could probably accomplish one or two of the below:
- Increase battery capacity by 20-120% (average maybe 50% improvement or 1.5x original, for example 900mAh -> 1400mAh)
- Increase battery max output power by up to 70x (for example output power 15W -> output power 1000W)
- Decrease battery weight by 20-100% (average maybe 40% improvement or 1.4x original, example 500g -> 350g)
- Increase cycle lifetimes by 10x (example 300 cycles to 3000 cycles)
- Increase or decrease operating voltage of battery
- Make a lithium-ion battery extremely safe (not dangerous after extreme drops, heat, cold, short circuits or punctures)
- Change battery form factor into something much more convenient
That list is of course assuming that they're already using semi-decent lithium-ion batteries. If they're not using li-ion or using bad li-ions, the improvements are (usually) much more drastic than above.
If anyone reading this is working on any project requiring batteries, shoot me an email (it's in my profile.) I can reduce cost/weight/charge time and increase power/capacity/durability (whatever you choose) - and the worst case is that I tell you your batteries are already optimal.