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Comment by idiotsecant | Hacker News Reader

Solid state batteries and fusion power, always 3 years away.

I wouldn't equate solid state batteries with fusion power. Solid state batteries do exist and work well, they are just very expensive. Meanwhile fusion power is still entirely within the experimental stage and there are no fusion plant prototypes that can produce power at any price.

It’s always 20 years away until it isn’t. Self driving cars are…I guess they are here already. AGI? Well, we have to move the goal post on that constantly.

Self driving cars have had many incremental improvements. I think fusion power is actually making progress, not clear about solid state batteries. Seems more companies closing than making solid progress.

Fusion is one of those things that will probably not be done in my lifetime (the hype cycle on that has been forever, remember cold fusion from U of Utah?). I'm much more optimistic about solid state batteries.

The obvious fraud from the 90s?

But, the real issue seems to be that fusion has a large nuclear waste problem. Ironically, probably more so than fission reactors. It can be fixed, but probably not in first gen reactors. However there are companies pushing designs that solve it already

>Self driving cars are…I guess they are here already.

They may be where you are, but they aren't generally here.

If by here I meant planet Earth I think it is well qualified. Yes, they aren't using self driving car tech for ice trucking during winter down from Purdhoe Bay yet (another form of goal post moving), but the biggest challenges have already been solved and only capital and societal barriers remain.

I think it depends on what you mean by big challenges. City driving is maybe the easiest 80% of driving. There’s a long tail of odd challenges you run into in less controlled environments, and I’d call that the biggest challenge.

Wouldn’t ice trucking be in that long tail? I mean, ya, there are lot of niche cases that companies like Waymo haven’t worked on yet, but…the money is in the cities so that’s where they start. Interstate trucking might come next, ice trucking might be one of the last use cases covered.

Anyways we’ve gone from “this won’t happen in our lifetime!” to “it doesn’t handle X niche use case yet.”

There are self driving trucking companies.

I think city driving is the worst — people popping out from nowhere, roads that shouldn’t be but are because they have always been. Suburban and highways seem easiest.

In the hills of LA you have sharp blind corners where people have installed public fisheye mirrors to help you see around, then you have crazy people in Hollywood throwing furniture in front of your car, and non-stop traffic and people passing on the wrong side of the road between blocks even when there is a median, school kids and crossing guards, emergency vehicles trying to through and people doing otherwise illegal things to help get out of the way…

I'm an avoid motorcyclist and have followed additional safety courses. These placed 90% of all accidents in cities. What do you mean by city driving being the easiest?

In a city, you'll never have to worry about the "road" you're supposed to follow being a dirt track that barely looks different than the muddy fields on either side.

In a city (especially in SoCal and the American Southwest, which is, AIUI, where all the self-driving cars are today), you can be nearly certain that the various mapping companies have accurately plotted the roads and destinations, and if you're trying to get to a popular Finger Lakes winery, you won't be directed down a limited-use seasonal road that's entirely covered in ice.

In a city, you can be pretty well guaranteed that there are speed limit signs anywhere the speed limit actually changes.

Just off the top of my head, as someone who's lived 40 years in the rural Northeast.

Solid state batteries seem to work, but the price of prototypes is very high. Samsung says they will soon be shipping earbuds and watches with solid state batteries, but the cost is too high even for phones. Xaomi showed an $800 phone battery. Mercedes has one prototype car with solid state batteries. Honda has one motorcycle. EHang has one flying car. Nobody seems to be past one-off demos.

I am happy to pay extra $100 for Solid State Battery on Apple Watch. I am not sure if other brands could get this advantage.

And yet Apple just isn't interested any more.

Solid state batteries and fusion might in the end suffer from a similar economical problem. That they turn out to simply be too expensive.

Add Affordable at the start of that sentence and it's accurate.

Does look as if ssb are close.. Esp Japanese ones.

If your source on that is a Toyota press release, take it with a huge grain of (lithium) salt.

Toyota has been saying similar things for a very long time. But they continue to make extremely poor bets, except for their hybrids. There's something really odd about their management culture that prevents them from finding the common and easy path of lithium ion batteries that everybody has already taken.

Toyota does have a conventional BEV, so they can do it if they want. They just don’t seem to be enthusiastic about it.

Toyota's CEO and upper management seemed to be oddly fixated on hydrogen powered cars for a very long time. I think it was just in the last 2-3 years where they finally gave up and started looking at BEVs.

If it's not like those rare earth ( or watch movement saga with Swatch) that China will simply refuse to supply to other OEM, old car makers like Ford, Toyota with brand image and solid engg in rest of car making can just buy. Maybe that's their thinking?

Bonus if there's leap frog tech that obsolete all the CATL investments..

Those false supply chain concerns really only work within the right wing US political milieu. "Rare earth" with batteries really only works with the Republican set of propaganda.

I'm sure Toyota management has their own set of false beliefs about supply concerns, or perhaps about competitive edges, or perhaps about biases towards fluid fuels.

Yes it was that plus iirc another by Nissan as well. One site reported Chinese are walking back on some of the more optimistic claims and now it's 2030+ not next 2 years. By then I guess Na ones will be old news.

I too felt Japs were taking EV quite casually pushing all others but I wouldn't underestimate their ability to move once they decide that's what it is. They have the same concept as China, move as one nation but much higher tech depth

Btw anyone ever heard of those fuel cell ones? Toshiba hyped it like you slot in a fuel cartridge and have months of use etc.

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