Love being a genius inventor and saying things like "uhh let's make batteries better by doing physics." What a novel idea!
(emh what is wrong with that statement tho, i mean other than the fact that his underpayed research team is gonna do it not him in the slightest)
The problem is that he gets heralded as some sort of genius by his stupid fanboys for saying something incredibly simple.
He gets heralded by his stupid fanboys because he offers them the most comforting lie there is in this world, an easy fix to capitalism's problems that works entirely within the status quo. Techno-messianism is the last tiny beacon of hope that people can cling on to when they have bought into the core assumption that there must be no alternative to how things are.
Batteries are a bottleneck for a ton of technologies in both efficiency and energy density. They are extensively researched. "Rethinking the fundamental physics" is dumb marketing speech, what is he gonna (pay his employees to) do, reinvent solid-state physics?
Unless he has an actual idea (which he doesn't because he's not a physicist), this is like saying "to make a space elevator, we just need to invent a stronger material", as if it was just a matter of trying.
here's a good video on space elevators
the engineering challenges have been known for a long time now, but there are ways around it. there are also other technologies that are viable, some, like the skyhook, are most of the benefit but possible with current tech. others, like orbital rings, are straight up better but have a high upfront cost to build
this is my special interest, so ask away
I hate to break it to you, but they've always been unfeasable.
...on the Earth. We could make a Moon elevator with currently-existing materials.
its unfeasible because capitalists would definitely fuck it up and you dont want something that big falling down
Sky hooks are a far more feasible idea and do pretty much the same thing
A lot of it is in the timing. It's not like there isn't a large group of people already thinking about batteries, the fundamentals of potential energy, and its various applications like hydroelectric dams. He's talking as if he's some natural philosopher pontificating and not as if he's some billionaire whose interests just got voted out of a South American democracy despite the US's strong interventions.
putting up trolley wires on every street and having electric cars that tap into them would be solarpunk as fuck
This is photoshop, but it would be cool as fuck: https://i0.wp.com/boingboing.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/NewImage1.png?fit=600%2C350&ssl=1
Holy shit. I never had respect for Elon, but what the fuck is this?! Yea, let's reinvent physics. How much can that cost? A million? 10 million? Just, you know, get it done.
It's too much to hope, but just imagine someone grifting him like this. "No Elon, we haven't quite finished the prototype of the nu-physics battery yet, turns out the math is really complex, you know how math is, right? Like, we gotta do sine waves and shit here. Yea. Super complicated. Don't worry though, if you wire me a hundred more million dollars we can go to stage four!"
i dont want to be a shitass elon stan but everybody in this thread is acting kinda weird on the semantics of what he said. there are some chemical limits to how well any chemical can store energy. there are only so many elements in the periodic table. people just went and said ok the best ones are kinda unfeasable lets settle for lithium, but really you could do better than that.
Well, no, actually. Lithium is literally #3 in the list of elements. We are using it because it is lighter then the other elements we could use from it's group and because it is not completely unsafe.
There are other potential elements for storing energy, yes. Liquid aluminum is one that people are looking into for storing energy from solar for night-time use. But that is completely impractical for what Elon cares about: electric cars. Pound for pound, lithium is the best we got and that ain't soon changing.
The most nicest take I can make here is that Elon had to say something so his shares don't tank. There is no magical solution to this. Literally everyone wants better ways to store electricity and has wanted them for as long as we have been using it. If Elon had even an inkling if a sliver of an idea on how to 'revolutionize batteries', we would know about it not in an abstract statement but because investors would be showering him in money to develop it. He has nothing.
Just put huge flywheels in the backseats, easy. And extremely safe too
i watched a video about it some time ago. basically, no, lithium batteries are basically the most efficient you get in chemistry, unless we figure out how to make batteries out of oxygen or having to rely on other types of energy storage.
Lets just start putting RTGs in Teslas, Mars rover style. What could go wrong?
god i miss when we could just pop some radium all over the place.
The government is going to have to start putting it into the water supply in the US with how much rates of depression and self harm has gone up over the last two decades to keep citizens "productive"
your welcome. he's made other tesla-skeptical videos before, like the one on the tesla semi truck
