Patrick Soon-Shiong on 'holy grail' zinc-air battery

[@ryccoh]

Okay, 18lb per car, no, Cobalt is now down to 8% in any NMC 811 chemistry which is 8lb per car roughly and Tesla is close to getting 3%. The 100kWh holy grail is the same threshold that Tesla is about to break but it's calculated on a per cell level not sure if that is the same for NantEnergy. I'm skeptical since everyone touts the latest battery breakthrough and 90% of the forward looking battery developers are focussed on solid state. From the sound of Patrick talking about "size" I suspect energy density cannot be matched yet of Li but energy density doesn't even matter in utility systems. I wish them best of luck.

[@wind5250]

What are you on about ? 1:)The man clearly said estimated 18lbs per car. To estimate a per car basis you have to take all electric car makes and models in to account and average them for a sum that would be higher or lower on a specific manufactures basis because they are not the sole target of measure . For the record the model 3 uses just under 10 lbs , model 2 and model s used 15.4 and the roadster 24.2 lb of cobalt respectively . (www.teslarati.com/tesla-battery-tech-cobalt-mining-industry/) 2:)Tesla does not make batteries they buy the full output of the Panasonic plant inside the gigafactory . 3:) Battery developers are focused on many things not a single one is limited to one technology . The first flow battery was created in 1984 and has been shown to be able to hold power at a cost of less than $30 per kWh That does not mean you can power a car with it or make it easy to mass produce which is why we have lithium batteries in cars today. Tesla's or anyone else's claims of cost per kWh mean nothing until it's produced and sold on mass. In short you can't rebut his unsubstantiated claim with an unsubstantiated claim simply because Tesla said so .

[@badbrain8279]

Rechargeable zinc air has been on the market for several years. Why has it never been mentioned on lists of promising new batteries? The answer I learned other than the dendrite problem (which seems to be solved) is although they have a much higher energy density with much lower cost its slow getting that power out of them. Some chemical reactions take time. Now I know what he's doing. He uses the slow zinc air one to charge up the Li-ion one which can be used for more instantaneous power.

[@LenHarms]

I'm relieved he's described as "Billionaire owner", I was really concerned about that.

[@Wombah-rc6zz]

5 years & 30,000 cycles - amazing!

[@peter8488]

5 years later, where is it, pipedream as long as monetization is the only goal.

[@Terra_Lopez]

Wow, this is wonderful!

[@rubikfan1]

So what is the energy dencity of the zink-air battery? Non rechargable zink-air have 400wh/kg(li-ion=200). So what dencity is this rechargable?

[@badbrain8279]

I read theoretically 350wh/kg.

[@RobSomeone]

Lithium-Titanate and Lithium-air batteries don't require cobalt and the godfather of the lithium ion battery has recently patented a solid state battery as well.

[@robm2681]

Tesla is working on cobalt free batteries.

[@nuggetsyl]

Tesla is always looking for tech like this. So why have they not heard about it? No one uses more batteries then Tesla and they would absolutely buy the rights to use the chemistry.

[@TheRedmondEthan]

I'm pretty sure Tesla is more of a mass manufacturer rather then a researcher of cutting edge battery tech. Do they have any research based around battery technology?

[@MartinMenge]

As he said alluded, they are years away from scaling it for EV use. Tesla has made it clear that they will adopt proven technology when the economics makes sense. Right now it's hard to see which of a bunch of technologies [from ultracaps (with only 5% energy loss after 22 days) to solid state] who knows what tech will win in the end. Right now, the proven tech that can meet all the requirements for electric vehicles is Li-Ion and that won't change in the near future. Incremental advances in Li-ion and incremental decreases in costs will be sufficient to electrify personal transport. Do not fall for the Fata Morgana of future transport. Tesla is here now.

[@nofurtherwest3474]

@@MartinMenge Do you know if Patrick and Elon are friends? Enemies? It would be cool if they could cooperate to advance things.

[@jayd1008]

zinc prices to rise TREVF !!!

[@Holyinductor]

You own this stock??

[@ivanalarconb.7190]

The news is poor. It say nothing respect to density of energy or number of cycles of life or velocity of recharge. Bad intervew

[@future62]

YEa these guys have no battery knowledge. Zinc air batteries have big fundamental issues with recharging

[@badbrain8279]

@@future62 No they don't. Those problems have been solved. At least one company has been selling these batteries to large power users for 2 or 3 yrs.