Comment by nickik | Hacker News Reader

Comment by nickik | Hacker News Reader

For those interested 'TheLimitingFactor', the best channel on youtube about batteries has just released a long video on this.

https://www.patreon.com/thelimitingfactor/posts

It will be like a week or so until it will come out.

There is an older video on the topic as well. About Clay mining and potential processes:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SdvE-UA-xw4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YuCK1SJG5gc

And an interview with somebody in the industry: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfffip_4C80

There are certainty people in the industry skeptical of this. No commercial lithium is currently produce from Clay and not with DLE processes. Tesla process will likely require both. While the process Tesla outline is likely possible, if they can do it as cheaply as existing process is questionable.

Other companies work on process along the same line, but generally use ACID instead.

Joe Lowry from Global Lithium Podcast is very skeptical. He is a industry veteran having worked with Tesla in the past as well. If you want to learn about the lithium industry, I would suggest:

https://www.globallithium.net/podcast

You do realize that has been the standard response of the "experts" to industries the Elon starts to enter. And then "experts" find there are details they overlooked because they knew they were right.

Can Elon be wrong? YES. But can the experts be wrong? Happens all the time.

Elon does not have a long history of process/domain breakthroughs though. SpaceX is doing some very innovative things that ULA never had incentive to do. But otherwise, it’s the same rocketry. Tesla largely same, bucking the expert opinion with Autopilot which seems to be going rather horribly. The Boring company has yet to prove his claims there.

> But otherwise, it’s the same rocketry.

I get that Elon is a bullshitter who occasionally delivers which makes him insanely polarizing, but this feels like a bit of a ridiculous statement.

Landing the first stage of the rocket isn’t the same rocketry.

You left out the first part, "doing innovative things that ULA never had the incentive to do", i.e. land/re-use the rocket.

You say they never had the incentive to innovate, and then follow up with but otherwise it is the same rocketry. Those statements are contradictory - either there was market incentive for cheaper, reusable rockets, or there wasn't. ULA couldn't even imagine a world where SpaceX was successful at what they've done, which is a different type of rocketry, and as a result, SpaceX isn't doing "the same rocketry."

Ah ok, no history of breakthrough... Disrupting the entire aerospace and automotive industry doesn’t count obviously.

Tesla bucked expert opinion on electric vehicles and lithium ion batteries and charging speed and vehicle speed and… on and on.

And SpaceX bucked industry opinion hard on many other things as well. People dismissing SpaceX’s rockets as “just the same rockets” have no idea what they’re talking about.

Industry experts dismissed Falcon 1/9, they dismissed Dragon, they dismissed Falcon Heavy, they dismissed landing rockets, they dismissed reusing rockets, they dismissed landing rockets on drone ships, they dismissed Starlink, Raptor, Starship, etc. there’s almost nothing that SpaceX does that wasn’t dismissed at some point by industry experts.

Yes. And often its good to listen to them and ask why the believe what they believe. Often they can be wrong, but we should still listen to them and evaluate.

Tesla tried to get into lithium extraction before and it didn't work.

I think Tesla will eventually get this working, but not sure if its actually gone compete with Western Australian spodumene or Atacama brines.

However I think the process looks pretty promising.

GM, Ford, and every other car company enter the chat. "It's impossible to make electric vehicles work. There is no charging network, it's too difficult to build, no one likes it". Blah blah blah. Boing enters the chat "rockets that land on their arse are impossible. it can't be done." blah blah blah blah.

Excuse me if I could care less what old industry experts have to say - time and time and time and time and time again, he has proven them wrong.

Relax. It made sense to listen to them and evaluate. I'm just trying to give the information that help answer the question.

"rockets that land on their arse are impossible. it can't be done." No one said that about spacex.... clearly it was possible since it was done in the 90s...

"It's impossible to make electric vehicles work." Really ? What did we drive before ICE engines ? what did humans drive on the moon?

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