Matt and Sean talk about recent breakthroughs in Zinc batteries, and how it may not be soon that we see any of this on the store shelves.
Watch the Undecided with Matt Ferrell episode, How Zinc Batteries Are Defying Limits https://youtu.be/lWd6I2og-e0?list=PLnTSM-ORSgi7uzySCXq8VXhodHB5B5OiQ
YouTube version of the podcast: https://www.youtube.com/stilltbdpodcast
Get in touch: https://undecidedmf.com/podcast-feedback
Support the show: https://pod.fan/still-to-be-determined
Follow us on X: @stilltbdfm @byseanferrell @mattferrell or @undecidedmf
Undecided with Matt Ferrell: https://www.youtube.com/undecidedmf
And as I mentioned before, we’re going to be talking about Matt’s most recent, which is about zinc batteries, a recent research breakthrough. And yes, we can already hear you in the comments. No, it’s not available yet. No, it might not be available for a while, but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth talking about.
So yes, here we go. Matt, as always, is with me. And as always, I am about to ask Matt, how’s he doing today, Matt, how you doing today?
And as always, I’m going to say, I’m doing pretty good, Sean.
How about yourself? I am doing well. I’m readjusting to the fact that I have to do job, like I have to get up morning, go job because I just spent the last week in Puerto Rico.
It was fantastic. It was a complete mental disconnect from normal life. And this is after having taken a couple of weeks around the holidays, but holiday time off, like it, I have to every once in a while rediscover that taking time off, legitimately taking time off means taking time off and doing things that don’t include any kind of obligation.
Or ownership of a result like taking time off to help your son move to college is not taking time off taking time off to do stuff around the house and repair stuff and do upkeep is not time off and time off around the holidays when you are traveling to or having. Hosting guests is not necessarily the same as time off because it brings a lot of stuff with it.
There’s a lot of energy that goes out in a way that’s not recuperative. So spending a week where I got to turn on my lizard brain and say, where’s the nearest hot rock? And then climbed up on the hot rock,
just sat there. It was fantastic. It was fantastic. Yeah, we came back on Friday. And spent the day yesterday, just kind of like tootling around the house, not really doing anything of particular importance, but it started to creep into the back of my mind, like, Oh wait, what do I, what do I have to do?
There’s something I have to do in a couple of days. What is it like, Oh yeah, I have to. I had to go to work.
How, how do
I,
how do I,
where, where am job at?
It’s going to be an interesting week. Yeah. So before we get into our discussion about Matt’s most recent, we always like to take a look at the mailbag before, before we get into the mailbag, I wanted to say, and I know Matt will feel the same way I do, uh, sending out. A message of support to everybody in California and other parts of the West that have been dealing with such horrendous fires and listening to reportage around it, listening to some podcasts where people have talked about it, there is a level of fame that is impacted by this, that is typically not something that we see, and that’s bringing a special kind of attention to it. And I hope that all of us can remember that it’s not just, uh, those of the platform who can talk about it and bring our attention to it, that matter, that there are it’s impacted. Every level of the cities and towns in California that have been devastated by this and we need to keep them all in our thoughts and prayers and reach out to organizations that are doing things to support them.
I’m sure organizations like Habitat for Humanity, um, American Red Cross, they can use everybody’s support right now. So I’m hopeful that all of us together can help those who are struggling, get through this and a message of support to everybody who might be a listener or a viewer, uh, we’re thinking about you and we hope that you’re all safe.
On now to taking a look in the mailbag for comments that you all had about our most recent episode. We have an ongoing discussion about the Brussels effect. This was something that came up a couple of weeks ago where we talked about the ability for one governmental body in one particular place to actually have an impact beyond its borders.
The Brussels effect is named for the de facto headquarters for the European Union. And we were talking a few weeks ago about how EU regulations have had impacts on changing production of Goods, no matter where they are made, because having to adjust for EU regulations, it’s better for the company just to simply change the product overall, instead of trying to make one version for the U. S. and one version for the E. U. John Seberg jumped into the comments to say, something for the Brussels effect conversation. Air conditioners must also function as heat pumps. I heard this from a self proclaimed. Conservative guy. I don’t want to guess at his name, but I think he is an influencer in the residential HVAC space.
He acknowledges this is probably too heavy a lift to ever happen in the U. S. I get the impression that air conditioners and heat pumps are actually being produced on the same production line in some cases. The cost could be around a hundred dollars more for a heat pump. This seems more viable to regulate in a place where the fossil fuel industry is not as influential.
This is the kind of change, Matt, that we talked about around the, uh, air you see heat pump wall units that you talked about from the New York city housing authority, where they helped develop what we kept shorthand discussing as a flip phone. Design that would fit within a window and provide heating and cooling for New York City apartments that are built along a 1950s, 1960s, 1970s design, where the cost of going in and installing new things was just going to be prohibitive.
So this was viewed as a way of improving efficiency. And not having a debilitating cost. And so I think that what John is pointing out here is if something like that could be enforced as a building option, then it could have that wider impact. But do you see right now in the U S the possibility for that kind of regulation to go into place of saying, okay, he pumps AC need to be one on one combined. I don’t know that I see this kind of thing coming in the U. S. Nor do I necessarily see it coming out of the EU. Do you think that there’s a possibility there’s another part of the world where they could actually be making that argument?
No, I think part of the problem is it’s not like, as he points out, I don’t think it’s less than a hundred dollars for a heat pump and they’re not being produced on the same line.
Heat pumps and air conditioners, obviously they’re born from the same principle. But one’s a one direction system and one’s a bidirectional system. And so oftentimes people say, Oh, it’s just a reversing valve that they’re adding to it. It’s the same thing. Not really. Cause it depends on the heat pump system.
Cause the condensing unit sometimes has to have a, um, heating elements as part of it, because in the wintertime, as it’s condensing moisture on the outside of the device, it’s hanging outside your window. It’s going to freeze up. Because it’s so cold outside. So you have to have systems that can like heat up and melt off that ice build up so that it can keep working.
So like there’s, there’s more than just a reversing valve inside of a heat pump. Because of that, I don’t think something like this could ever be really done effectively, like what you’re what’s being suggested of like, or you just have a regulation that says it should always be some kind of heat pump system going forward for everybody because there’s going to be pushback because it’s going to be more money, even if it is just 100 more, it’s more money and it doesn’t make sense across the board because it depends on where you live.
Yeah,
I mean,
so there are places where having a heat pump wouldn’t be needed and there are places where having an AC unit is not needed, uh, they’re not necessarily universal in that way.
Correct. So I just don’t see this happening. Um, one because of costs and two, because it’s not a one size fits all solution.
Um, but I could see it may be happening in countries that are, very regional, like imagine in Norway, they pass something like this, a regulation around this. That might make sense because it’s one country that has basically one kind of climate zone that they’re in versus a country like the U S where we have a wide range of climate kind of temperature ranges and stuff like that that we have to deal with.
So It’s not one size fits all solution. Yeah. I just don’t see that happening.
Yeah. The design aspects of a country that has as much geography as the United States, where I lived in a building at one point where I am convinced the building cut corners by putting in windows that were designed for Florida.
They were not winterized. They would bleed. They would, the cold outside when it got to freezing, you could feel all the metal of the window frame would begin to sweat and it would just bleed a cold breeze constantly. And it had nothing to do with the insulation rubber around the windows that were, that were closed.
Uh, they were new windows. It was a new construction. I am convinced somebody was just like, well, we can get these that are basically designed for the South and use those and they’re going to cost half as much because they’re not winterized. It was awful. It was awful. The apartment, we had curtains that during the winter, you could actually watch the curtains blow as a result of the cold air of the, the winter storms that would hit that side of the building.
It would just blow right through the window. It was terrible. Oh man. A little bit on the right to repair discussion that we’ve been having for the past couple of weeks from Danny Sharp. He weighs in with a, I guess you could call this a hashtag bad company. Yeah. John Deere. He says. Is the worst company about the right to repair doesn’t give any details, but I am curious, Danny, if you are listening to this jump back in the comments on this episode, let us know why, what is John Deere doing that is keeping people locked in with using their service instead of being able to repair things themselves.
It’s
not the first time I’ve heard somebody say that about John Deere, but I’m curious about the details too. It’s like, what are they doing?
Maybe a right to repair video should be in your future.
Yeah.
Also, in your future, this one from Babarudra, who says, sadly, I’m a bit behind on Matt’s videos. Life’s been busy.
Babarudra, we make these videos, and we are basically behind as well. We, tell us about life is busy. Oh, yes. Yes, it is. Baba Rudra goes on to say late last year, 2024, my wife and I bought a new to us house, a late 19th century bungalow. I’ve been getting to know about some older building tech, which got me thinking, I know the channel is about emerging tech, but what about a look at newer old tech?
Did you know they still make wood burning boilers for house heating? I sure didn’t. There’s got to be some advances in older tech that would be helpful for those of us that are trying to retrofit older houses, just a thought. And I couldn’t help but think that maybe there is an interesting video in there for you of taking a look at, are there 19th century technologies that you can get the 21st century equivalent of in order to, yeah, I don’t know, live in a more old school way without having to bear the burden of old school breakdown. So
yeah.
Yeah. Something like that. Yeah. What do you think about that idea?
No, I like that. It’s like, it’s one of those like the wood burning stove and a boiler. It’s like, there, there was, I can’t remember how it was maybe a couple of years ago.
There was like this pellet, like wood boiler system that like is crazy efficient at how well it works. I looked into and I was like, that could be interesting. And I can’t remember why I passed on it, but it was just like a, this has kind of bubbled up in the background, but like having somebody like come out and say, Hey, why don’t you do something like this?
It’s like, okay, yeah, I’ll look back into that.
There were also several commenters who weighed in on Aptera, they would like to know more. They would like to see a video focused on it. And some people took issue with Matt’s response to Aptera feeling to him like more of a niche product than something that would catch on more globally.
Dean McManus weighed in with a very thoughtful I thought comment that I wanted to share a large portion of he introduces himself. And then he says, I do understand Matt’s measured skepticism, especially with EVs under fire and EV startups dropping like flies over the last five years. But I think that labeling Aptera as a niche vehicle is selling it short.
All of the legacy automakers openly laughed at the notion that EVs could ever find more than a niche market, let alone ever become profitable. And history bore out their fears as nobody had ever made a profit selling EVs before 2018, which is only seven years ago before Tesla worked on building a car outside of the box from the engineering to the factory to the sales.
And imperfectly it succeeded well beyond expectations. Importantly, it changed the automotive landscape worldwide. Aptera is a paradigm shift like a smartphone in 2000. It does not appeal to everyone. But frankly, I think that legacy autos ongoing plan leaves many holes and opportunities for a super efficient EV.
It took years for hybrids to become a popular choice, and the Aptera is a hybrid of sorts using shockingly little electricity and producing its own fuel daily, even if it only adds 10 miles a day in winter days, it is still likely going to be the most economical vehicle you can buy when production starts.
And in sunny areas, like I live in, the Aptera promises to be a daily commuter EV that only needs to charge maybe one day a month, overnight at home, using a 110 volt outlet. Aptera is currently doing real world efficiency, solar, and track testing over the next month, so we will see how it performs in real life soon enough.
Keep up the good reporting work, guys. So, kind of a long comment, but I thought it was very thoughtful, and I wanted to get your sense of Is this the, is this the glass half full response to your, well, I don’t know if that’s even
a glass, like, I don’t think it’s a glass half full. I think my view on this. I don’t think I did a good job explaining it.
And my new explanation that I’ll kind of build on now still may not do a good job. I’ll use a couple of bad analogies. But in the technology space, it’s kind of like Apple released something called the Apple Newton, like it was in the 1990s. I think. Yeah, yeah. And just an utter flop. It was basically an early iPhone.
Like, it was, it was, it was a great idea ahead of its time that was using technology. That was the best they had available at the time, but it wasn’t good enough. So it was too expensive. It’s kind of clunky, but a good idea. It was just, A little too soon. Then you fast forward a decade, 15 years, and suddenly it’s like, Oh, now we have technology that’s cheap enough and better that makes this thing actually like functional.
And there’s the mobile networks make this thing an internet in your pocket where the Newton was not. So it’s like, there’s things that happen that make a product that kind of failed at first become a huge thing. Same thing with the EVs, EVs, EVs existed in the early 1900s, but they didn’t become a thing.
Um, until now, partly because of, you know, the fossil fuel industry and it’s a whole sort of history to it, but yeah, better technology got better efficiency because of efficiencies, all that kind of stuff actually made EVs a real competitive product today where it wasn’t necessarily in the past. Um, another example would be Google glass.
Um, when Google Glass came out, yes, Sean just rolled his eyes. People were referred to as glass holes. Yeah. People would get into fights and bars of like, I don’t want to be videoed, get that thing off your face. And now we have metaglasses. People are walking around metaglasses that are video everything.
And nobody’s, nobody’s blinking at them. Nobody’s batting an eye.
Yeah.
Right. So Glass, Google Glass was ahead of its time. A product too early, blazed a trail. And kind of set the ground for what came after a decade later. I kind of look at Aptera like that and that’s my concern about Aptera as a company. It’s not the idea of the solar vehicle.
It’s the, they might be a good idea that’s too ahead of their time because the Aptera is dealing with technological limitations around solar panels where solar panels can only be so efficient given our current technologies and capabilities today. In an affordable way. And so, because they can’t, they have these confines for how much space they need to create a solar, you know, generation, they have to then make the vehicle so crazy efficient to make up for the lack of efficiency of the solar panels, they end up with a design of a vehicle that is just shockingly, like, it is shocking how efficient it is.
Like, they have, It’s incredible. Like the teardrop, like everything they’ve done is like amazing engineering work. And it’s all because of the lack of efficiency around the solar panels, trying to get that balance right where the solar panels actually make sense. And in doing so they’ve created compromises where it’s such a weird looking unique vehicle.
It will never be mass market. That’s why I call it a niche product. It’s not because it can’t do what they’re saying it can do. It’s more of a. If you took 10 people and put them in a room, nine people are going to go, I wouldn’t want to drive that. That looks too weird. Like I wouldn’t buy that. And one person out of the 10 will go, yeah, that’s awesome.
I want that. That’s what I’m talking about. It’s, it’s such a unique bespoke, quirky looking vehicle. It’s only going to talk to a specific audience. Yeah. So it’s niche. It doesn’t mean it’s a bad car. It doesn’t mean it’s, you know, they could be a successful company as a niche vehicle maker. It’s just not going to be a mainstream hit in its current iteration. That’s not going to happen like to get vehicles that I think the mass market would want. We have to have solar panels will be more efficient to be able to generate more energy. So that you have the same square footprint of solar panels, but it’s producing more energy. And then you have vehicles that are doing aptera, but not to the extreme where it’s like you have to do More aerodynamic cars and do more efficiency within the car itself to get that balance.
But you don’t have to go to such an extreme that’s a two seater vehicle that looks like a teardrop and all this kind of weird stuff. That’s kind of what I’m getting at. You want to go mass market. It’s not Aptera’s design. So to me, that’s that that’s kind of my viewpoint on it. Of it’s a good idea that might be too ahead of its time.
And I’m, I’m worried for them of not being able to find their market because of that. Uh, and I hope I’m wrong, I’m rooting for them and I hope that niche audience is enough to kind of make them a success because I do agree at some point we will probably see this more and more and more on vehicles into the future.
So I don’t disagree that it might be kind of like the iPhone. But this may not be the iPhone moment. This might be the Apple Newton moment. And then 10 years from now, another vehicle comes out with solar on it. That really is the iPhone moment. So it’s like, that’s kind of my concern. That’s why I’m kind of like, I’m a little skeptical.
Just kind of looking at how some of these technologies kind of play out.
I wonder if it’s a little bit like looking at the Hummer as a vehicle compared to the Tesla truck and you would say, okay, they’re kind of the same, but one company has a foothold in the normal car market because Tesla makes cars.
So the nicheness of their truck is kind of ignored. Because they have another product that fits within the much wider scope of, yeah, people recognize this as a car that they would own and drive. Hummer does not have that. So Hummer is the niche vehicle for those who want a, you know, massive vehicle to do whatever you want to do in a Hummer.
Whereas somebody could say, well, is that going to be commercially viable? And I hear what you’re saying. And I wonder if Aptera maybe is planting a flag to be a little bit more like Tesla than to be like Hummer and say, okay, we’re putting this out and we’re going to have efficiency be our hallmark.
People will associate us with efficiency and that at a certain point as the technology 10, 15, 20 years from now reaches those levels of being able to do all of this on a more normal car, our brand name will be known. We will be a thing. And it’ll be interesting to see if that works for them in that way.
If that is in fact their goal,
it’s like this vehicle that comes out. If it’s a huge success within the niche market that it’s in, I’m like, I’m going to be doing a little cheerleader dance on the side. Like you go guys are like, I’m very excited for that because what makes me more excited than the current Aptera vehicle they’ve got is what is gen two look like what is the, they have that one and they create a second vehicle. It’s like, what is that second vehicle going to be? What is, what is the thing that’s going to look like five years from now? What is that? Cause that’s the one I wonder is it’s the next iteration, the one that could be more mass market than this one.
Be interesting to see what happens when we get there.
And now to our discussion about Matt’s most recent, this was his episode how zinc batteries are defying limits, and we’ve visited zinc batteries before, and I, we’ve visited other forms of battery before. And there’s always a part of the conversation that’s in the comments, which is wake me up when they get here.
Wake me up when they’re, wake me up when they’re in a car, wake me up when they’re in my phone, wake me up when they’re in whatever products I’m going to go buy. Because until that happens, to be honest in the comments and I, and I’m not calling any of our commenters out in a negative way at all, there was a sense of kind of numbness to it all.
Like, like what is there to talk about here? If it’s not something that we can buy. And so I wanted, before we get into taking a look at any of the particular comments, I was hoping you could address that numbness, that idea of what is there to talk about here, if this is not a thing that you are saying. So head on out to your local Home Depot and pick up one of these off the shelf.
What is it that you’re hoping people will take from your video, your conversation about this?
Whenever I talk about these future technologies, it’s always about seeing, uh, what’s the Gretzky quote that’s often overused. It’s like skating to where the puck is going not where it currently is, right? It’s about that.
It’s like looking at where the trajectory is for these different energy storage technologies that are in the still in the research phase, but there is a growing, like, I don’t know if din, like there’s a growing noise and Concophony around all these different battery technologies that is, they’re not as far off as you think, but they’re just, they’re not going to be here next year, but it’s clear that something is coming for a lot of these technologies.
And we’re about to start to hit the period where they start to come out in like rapid succession, like over the next three to five years, because over the past three to five years, We’ve been getting inundated with these breakthroughs that have been happening, and it might take five to 10 years for some of these to start to trickle out.
And so we’re now just starting to hit that phase where some of these are going to start trickling out and that’s going to pick up. It’s going to pick up. It’s going to get more and more and more. So I’m talking about these things from that perspective of like. Look at where the hockey puck is going for energy storage There’s like a like blinders way of looking at things the way they are today is the way they always have been and always will Be and so it’s kind of like that’s part of why I talk about stuff like this and talk about the the polymer That was developed for this zinc battery that makes it go crazy efficient and like yeah gives it all the benefits. It’s like yeah zinc may have not been a perfect solution in the past But here’s the solution that they came up with it actually makes it like crazy cool and amazing. And so it’s like all they have to do is figure out, Can they do this in an affordable way?
And then bam, you’ve got a completely different option in the market from lithium ion. And now you’re to zinc ion. And it gives, it gives more diversity to the energy storage market, which is going because we are the next 10 to 30, 20 years, we’re going to need so much energy storage. It’s like, we need every solution we can get.
So it’s like, that’s why I talk about it. It’s about understanding where this stuff is heading. It’s not about get excited and go get this at home depot for yourself today. It’s more of a, where is this stuff going?
There were some people like Lindsey Siegel who pointed out about the polymer that you just brought up the whole, if it could be produced cost effectively, it could unlock and Lindsey’s point is like these qualifiers make this a story as opposed to news. This is not something that we’re supposed to take. I think their point is we’re not supposed to take this and run outside and say, this thing exists now it’s like, this is your channel is not intending this to be a headline about a new product.
It is about research development and
well, that’s still news. It’s just news does not mean it’s a product that you can go buy news is, Hey, look at this new advance or breakthrough that this research team at this university did. That’s still news. It’s just not news you can go out and buy. So I take issue with saying it’s not news.
It is news. But if you’re talking, looking at it from the viewpoint of, it sounds like Lindsay is making the point of the difference between, is this a reality or potentially vaporware? Like that distinction then. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. This could turn out to be vapor. It could turn out to be nothing. Yes, absolutely.
So in that regard, it’s more of a story that we’re telling each other about what things could be in the future. So yes, in that regard, I would agree with that. Aside
from the efficiency. Issues happy, homicidal hooligan, which is quite a wild username to read out, uh, happily homicidal hooligan points out that zinc mining and refining is less damaging to the environment than lithium mining and refining is.
And that if there is an accident in a zinc plant, a zinc fire is much easier to put out than a lithium fire, which lithium we know can be when things go wrong in a lithium battery, they go, boom, they, they can be pretty explosive in their release of that energy that they’ve stored. So I wanted to ask you, Matt, is this, is, is a zinc battery that never achieves the level of lithium?
As far as how much it can hold, how fast it can release it, whether it could be put into a vehicle is zinc something that you find hopeful on the horizon for these other aspects of it? Namely. Easier to mine, less impactful, maybe not getting into bed with all the same regions of the world that hold a lot of lithium, but are human rights, uh, averse, do you see zinc as like, this is a good goal to go to for those reasons as well, or maybe it may be even alone.
Do you think it’s worth pursuing the zinc battery from those angles, even if it never achieves lithiums use applications?
Yes. It’s worth going after, even if it doesn’t achieve the same energy density that you can get with a lithium system. And it, it’s, it’s, I guess the way to describe what would be my view on all this stuff is I believe in energy diversity.
It’s kind of like in your, your planning, your retirement fund and all that kind of stuff and investments you don’t put. If you have a million dollars, you don’t put a million dollars into one stock, because if that stock goes down, you’re screwed, you’re going to have bonds, you’re going to put in a bunch of different stocks and mutual funds, you’re going to spread it around and do investments in different ways.
So if one part of the thing goes down, it doesn’t take you all down. That’s how I view energy storage. We need to have diversity in our energy storage systems because it spreads it around. It puts less dependence on just mining lithium everywhere. So it removes it from the hands of a few major players in the world into different supply chain markets.
So it’s like diversity there. So it’s like, for me, I’m kind of looking at it from that point of view. Um, but the thing that gets me most excited about this is just the cycle life. Like, even if they can’t get to the exact energy densities that are truly competitive with lithium, it’s still energy dense enough.
And then you have these incredible cycle lives that’s perfect for the batteries on my house or the energy storage systems that would be used for the grid systems because those are hammered day in and day out just like you’re charging it up during the day and draining it at night. Day in, day out, day in, day out.
So thousands and thousands and thousands of cycles very quickly. So it’s, to me, these kinds of systems that have a very robust cycle life and can last a very long time are going to be really appealing for those kinds of systems. And those kinds of systems aren’t like a car where you’re trying to get as small, compact of batteries you need.
Okay. The battery may be a little bit bigger, maybe a little bit heavier. It doesn’t matter. Cause it’s sitting in my garage or it’s sitting out on the ground. So we’ve got space for it. So for me, I think even if it’s just those use cases and not vehicles. It doesn’t matter. It’s, it’s still a very compelling option if, if, if we can get it there.
And what kind of, when it comes to a battery in your home, what kind of warranty does it come with? Because I imagine that this type of zinc battery, if it is going to come into existence and can achieve the levels of hundreds of thousands of recharges, as opposed to thousands, I imagine you’re talking about potentially a warranty where they would say like, this is good for 30 years.
This is like, we’ll stand behind this for your life as opposed to the useful life of
the battery. It’s interesting because when you see, when you buy batteries for your house, depending on what the chemistry is inside, you’ll often find exactly that. Like if you’re getting a battery, that’s a nickel manganese cobalt battery.
Oftentimes you see warranties of eight to 10 years. And then when you get into lithium iron phosphate batteries, which is what I have, my battery warranty is 15 years. And then when you get into things like lithium titanate, there was a lithium titanate battery I looked at for my house. I think it had a warranty of 20 or 25 years.
It was like, I didn’t go that way because it was a very expensive battery, but at the same time, it’s like that battery would have lasted easily 30 years. So it’s one of those, yes, I think if you had a zinc battery system like this, you’d probably be seeing a warranty of 20, 25 year kind of a thing. Like it would last as long or longer than your solar panel system you’re putting in your house.
So it’s like. That’s the kind of thing we’re going to get to with these kinds of energy storage technologies.
Finally, several comments that had an issue with some of the data that you provided in your video. Start first with questions about a chart that was included in the video. Mr. I’m going to try my best to say this.
BN Chirter says at two minutes 38, I am bothered about the chart about lithium demand. It is stated in dollars and not tons. The price per kilogram could increase by five times, yet the kilograms used would not necessarily change. And then there was a bit of a conversation around where this chart may have been sourced.
Was it a chart that was intended for one use regarding prices and then was being presented mistakenly as a measurement of demand. I wanted to find out from you where does this chart land as far as like, does it convey the information you were hoping it would, or does it maybe.
It needs a little more explanation, but also I do, as you see their point, and I’m going to take this into account for future videos, because it does kind of like create that weird disconnect.
This was from a report from, was it fortune business insights? And for anybody that’s watching this, if you’re ever curious about my sources. In every video, I have a link to the full script and citations. You can click over there and you can find the part of the script you have a question about. There’s footnotes and stuff with all the stuff.
So I have this linked to that. Um, but this report is basically a market report. So like, what is the business of this going to look like over the next 20 years, which is why it’s in dollars not kilograms. But in their analysis of it they do talk about the rising demand and how more lithium is going to be needed. So they did take that into account in their factoring of what the value dollar wise was going to be. But because it’s presented as dollars and not kilograms for a video like this I completely understand why people were like and I don’t know about that Um, so yes, I probably shouldn’t have used that as the source and the visual in the video.
So I appreciate the feedback, but that’s what it was. It was from a business insights report.
Also from I love space. There were a couple of people who had joined I love space in this kind of comment, raising the point that the moon is not the distance away from the earth that you implied it was based on saying a car could drive to and back three times based on those number of miles, but the math doesn’t add up, is that just a math error?
It was a, well, obviously it was because what ended up in there was a math error, but here’s a little behind the scenes. My scripts. There’s researchers and writers that help me pull together all the details, a rough draft is put together, I go through the rough draft, add comments, uh, I have, uh, another writer that’s kind of like my head writer that helps go through these scripts and fine tune them.
I have science advisors that go through them. We do basically fact checking and double checking of sources and like, Oh, well that, that number, we can’t find a confirmation of it. So we had to find a different source where we can actually have multiple sources that confirm similar data, that kind of stuff we’re always looking for.
And so it’s some iteration of the script. That my memory is fuzzy on exactly the order that’s happened. I’m I remember the number of miles that can be expected from a Tesla car was higher. So the three times would have worked with the previous number. But when we found different sources that will be able to be corroborated, we reduced it to 300-500 thousand miles.
But forgot to adjust to adjust the three X to two X. Um, so I can just imagine.
Yeah. I can just imagine the viewer of your channel who is like stuck with their family partway back from the moon. Well, what’s and they were just like, Matt Ferrell said I could do this.
Well, what’s the worst for me sean is like, we, we published this and it was like in very quick order.
I can’t, I think it was somebody on my team had said, uh oh, I don’t think that’s right. And I went, oh crap, it’s too late. Like it’s, it’s up. Nothing I can do because YouTube doesn’t let you reupload and do all that kind of stuff. So it’s up, but it wasn’t that egregious of an error to like take a video down.
So in YouTube you can put something called corrections where you can put corrections colon and then you put the time code and then you put a little description of what changed. I put that in there immediately. So that’s been there from the very beginning. Unfortunately. Some people miss those corrections because of the way it pops out.
It’s not obvious. I think, I think
maybe a pinned comment would serve you better. Like pinning a comment, putting in the correction and a pin comment, because I know from my own experience, I see pinned comments. I don’t ever think to look for corrections in, in the text. Uh, but I love space. Like the moon is 238, 000 miles away.
You can’t go back three times. Where did you learn math? And then Mr. Bob jumped in to say government schools. So, yep. Kind of a slam, you got slammed one way, public education got slammed the other way, but I want, yeah, I wanted to give you an opportunity to weigh in and like, okay, what was the thinking there?
So I appreciate your explanation. So viewers, listeners. What do you think about all of this? Do you want to jump into the comments and let us know what you think about our most recent conversation. And as I pointed out last week, and we’ve heard about John Deere now, there may be on the naughty list. Let us know about any companies you think are doing good things out there.
Let us know about any companies who think are doing bad things out there. Let us know. And we’d love to hear details. If you have the details, please let us know what you have to say. Your comments are important to us and a great way to support us. And so too is subscribing, liking, and sharing with your friends.
So those are three easy things you can do to support the podcast. If you’d like to support us more directly, you can go to YouTube or still tbd. fm. Both of those have a join button. It allows you to throw coins at our heads. We appreciate the welts. Then we get down to the heavy, heavy business of talking about how far away the moon actually is.
Thank you everybody for taking the time to watch, listen, and we’ll talk to you next time.