Chris Alemany🇺🇦🇨🇦🇪🇸1d ago

“Wang Chuanfu, BYD’s CEO, barely slept for weeks. Three passengers, all in their twenties. His chemistry. His cell. His company’s name on the casing. He had not built it to kill anyone, but it had. He pulled his engineers together with one question: What is the mechanism by which this cell fails, and how do we make that physically impossible”

Someone needs to get this article in front of Mark Carney and Doug Ford and then the stupid limits on Chinese cars need to be eliminated so Canada can start building these things immediately.

This is the future.

China is leading that future and we need to come to terms with it and use our influence to make it, and them, better.

https://www.fastcompany.com/91519302/byd-nail-test-why-this-54-billion-innovation-is-terrifying-western-auto-executives?utm_source=flipboard&utm_medium=activitypub
#climateEmergency #climatechange #byd #china #canada #canpoli

The Nail Test: Why this $54 billion innovation is terrifying Western auto executives

The practice of reproducing failure on purpose until the physics revealed itself became the bedrock of BYD’s entire operation.

Fast Company
Show threadvxo

@chris oh yeah, lithium iron phosphate and lithium titanate battery cells are remarkably boring - you can't make them go FWOOMP.

Lithium titanate will probably not make it as an EV battery due to low energy density (though it may remain an option for short-range, opportunity-charging things like transit vehicles!). LiFePO4 is ready to rock in common EV applications. What's odd is seeing that more EV manufacturers aren't using it

Apr 5 at 4:08pmWeb
Show threadChris Alemany🇺🇦🇨🇦🇪🇸1d ago
@vxo i can only speculate that it is a supply chain issue
Show threadvxo1d ago
@chris I think it's just the challenge of making it in a competitive energy density to keep the range comparable with cars using ICR lithium-ion cells that do have the Surprise Self-Oxidizing Blowtorch failure mode. LiFePO4 does have lower energy density for comparably manufactured cells
Show threadvxo1d ago
@chris I could still be surprised by it actually being a supply chain thing... I thought the only real raw material challenge was the lithium and that's common to both sets of chemistries, but I admittedly haven't been following news on EV cell development as much as I've been watching it with regard to things useful for offgrid solar/wind energy storage where big heavy battery banks are not a disadvantage
Show threadNicole Parsons17h ago

@chris @vxo

Like the financialization of slavery, as described in Banking on Slavery by Sharon Ann Murphy, the fossil fuel industry's finances & politics are as deeply entrenched.

We still live with the legacy of slavery on behalf of the Epstein Class nearly 200 years later.

Disentangling the fossil fuel industry is equally daunting.

The oil industry amplifies each difficulty of the EV industry & is relentless in its payoffs to political parties & business leadership.

Malign influence.

Show threadAmgine16h ago

@chris @vxo

One of the issues is new technology.

Solid-state batteries is one tantalizing edge. Another is a substantial change away from silicon.

And many of the break-throughs are patented by fossil fuel industry. And no, they are not letting anyone develop them.

So the current bleading edge is literally patenting ways to work around the newly claimed patents.