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Comment by cowmix | Hacker News Reader

Better: * can charge to 100% all the time * no rare earth minerals * stable

Worse: * not as energy dense * US doesn't make a lot of this type of battery

The US doesn't make a lot of this type of battery because there is a consortium of patent-holders who charge enough to make LFP less economically viable that wasn't able to secure all the needed patents in China.

I think the main patents that haven't expired yet are about to expire in 2022.

Why charge so much to license that no one will bother? Is it sunk cost thinking? Some money from licensing is better than nothing at all isn't it?

To create monopoly, the answer is always to create a monopoly.

All of this was set in our future when corporations were not prohibited from having patents.

> To create monopoly, the answer is always to create a monopoly.

That doesn't answer the question. Having a monopoly is only a means to an end (ie. making money), not an end unto itself.

It's amazing how broken of a system it is. The theory is ok but I today's world they don't work. Change the time scale to 10 years at least. Or require active use even better

It's crazy to think of the economic damage that patents cause

Climate mitigation depends on patent reform, sounds like.

Patents have a 20 year lifetime. US5910382 and US6514640 have already expired. It might speed up climate mitigation, but it's not strictly required for it to happen.

Didn't this also happen with airplanes in like the 1910s? Can't we fix it in a similar way?

A123 systems make LiFePO4 batteries without paying the royalties but they're still even more expensive than normal Li-ion.

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