Formerly /u/neoKushan on reddit
Sodium batteries are real though. You can buy them today, their big promise was that they would be cheaper than lithium batteries because sodium is abundant and readily available whereas lithium is a rare mineral. Then lithium prices fell through the floor and the value proposition failed, at least for now. They’re also not as energy dense, which is probably what will hold then back from EV use for a while yet, but the claim around being safer holds up.
I’m not entirely sure what the “maintenance burden” even is on a tech that hasn’t changed in decades.
And batteries. Arguably batteries would have the biggest impact out of all of those; turn every household into a virtual power plant and the grid can self balance, especially during peak usage.
The government is also dragging its feet on V2G which would allow your EV to act as an additional giant battery that can feed the grid and your home when usage is high, then top it back up overnight.
There’s been a big storm in the UK, so wind is generating fuckloads of energy right now, to the point where energy providers are having to pay people to use electric - all that cheap power could be filling up batteries instead.
Only because of current RAM prices and artificial scarcity keeping those prices high.
300GB of RAM shouldn’t be that expensive. I have 1/3 of that in my server (bought years ago). If it wasn’t for the AI bullshit, 300GB would be fairly reasonable to buy in a couple of years time.
To be fair, not to defend the CEO at all but when this story first broke it was so wild that you knew someone had to be making up some serious bullshit but it was just so out there, it could have been either side.
Why anyone decided to pick sides is beyond me, this is why courts exist.
We have faster charging speeds with lithium today, 800v cars that can charge at 300KW+ have been on the market for half a decade, BYD has launched cars that can charge at 2-3x that speed. The charging infrastructure is the bottleneck there, even if all new cars could charge at those speeds it wouldn’t mean much because hardly any chargers can support it.
Besides it’s almost moot, most EV owners aren’t charging via fast chargers like you would fill up an ICE car, they’re charging at home at much cheaper rates and only using fast chargers for particularly long trips.