264: Structural Batteries – A Good Idea?

 Today, on Still to be Determined, we’re talking about getting into your battery and going for a drive, or are we talking about getting a charge out of your car? I’ve forgotten which way it works. Anyway, we’re gonna be talking about structural batteries. Welcome everybody to Still to be Determined, I’m Sean Ferrell.

As you probably know by now, I am a writer. I write some sci-fi. I write some stuff for kids, and I’m just generally curious about technology and luckily for me, my brother, is that Matt of Undecided with Matt Ferrell, which is of course the mothership to this podcast. We respond to his episodes, we talk about what he talks about.

Yes, we all get in line and listen to the great Matt. God and with me as always is oh man, the aforementioned Matt. Matt, how are you today?

I’m definitely not the great Matt. I’m doing pretty well. Uh, before we started recording, Sean was talking about how tired he is and I’m tired too. And if both of us fall asleep with the end into this podcast, I apologize, everybody who’s listening.

Yeah. This could quickly turn into a Meditative Green Noise podcast where it’s just the two of us, like, uh.

So our apologies to anybody if this is actually six hours long and we didn’t realize it. Before we get into our conversation about Matt’s most recent way, I always like to take a look at your comments from previous episodes like this one from episode 2 62. That was our discussion about paper batteries, which was new style of battery, viewed as completely compostable and.

There were comments around that that I thought were indicative of setting a very clear and simple goalpost when we talk about where does this technology land, what are we headed toward? And there’s always the build a better mouse trap argument. Yeah, yeah. Which is just build a better mouse trap because a better mouse trap is a better mouse trap is a better mouse trap, and it just goes on add infinitum.

But I thought this, this comment from Patrick McOwen really set a nice goalpost that was easily seen and could be applied to other technologies that we talk about. He writes, good update. We truly won’t have a great battery until one is created well enough for international flight many years away.

Cheers from Canada. I thought that that was a very succinct. Let’s get this one done. Let’s take this as the goal, not just is it more efficient? Does it cost as much? Is it made outta certain things? Can we put it in a plane and fly with it? So yeah, you’ve talked in your channel about other pushes in that direction for flight or for other things like we’ve talked about long haul trucking, we’ve talked about electric vehicles in general.

Do you know of any recent developments in this vein that are taking this kind of simple approach of here’s a technology, it’s used to do this thing, and we’re trying to get a battery to just fundamentally replace the old style of generation of motion or whatever it is to improve that with a, it’s a simple goal.

We swap out X with Y, we succeeded.

Right. It’s exactly what Patrick brought up it’s flight. It’s like there’s several companies that are like trying really hard to figure out how can you get a battery that has enough energy density and it is not gonna weigh more than the plane itself, right? Because it wouldn’t take off.

So the question is, can they do that? Um, there’s a lot of people that think that’s just not possible and it’s, it isn’t with today’s technology, but there’s newer battery technologies that if you look 10 years down the road, 15 years down the road. Maybe, maybe it seems like it’s feasible. Um, I spoke at CES I spoke to a group that is working on just this.

They, they created an electric jet engine, and now what they’re working on is trying to create the battery system that can power that thing so that it can actually fly. Um, and there are, there are battery planes, but they’re like a hundred mile, regional small planes, like that’s all that’s being worked on right now.

If you’re talking like a FedEx flight doing shipping and like international flights, this is one of those where I kind of agree with people who say, wake me up when it’s here because it’s right. It’s gonna be a long time before that’s possible. But that is one of those good examples of, they’re just trying to crack a specific nut and once they’ve figured it out, done.

Got it. And then if they can do that, that is also a sign that that same technology might be able to be used in like dozens of other things, because that’s a crazy efficient battery at that point.

Right. Can you think of any recent examples from, and by recent, I mean like let’s say within the past 50 years where that kind of goalpost, it’s kind of like setting a moonshot.

In the next 10 years, we’re gonna go to the moon. That was a definable goal. That was the North Star. Can you think of any examples in the past 25 years or so where that kind of goal has been set and possibly achieved? Or even if not.

Off the top of my head, no, because like most of the stuff I can think about, like the advances that have happened that have unlocked technologies like electric vehicles.

It’s not like somebody was trying to create a very specific battery that would work for electric vehicles. They were just trying to make a better battery. And they create better batteries that unlocked things for things like EVs and laptops and phones. So it wasn’t like they had a, I don’t think they had a specific goal in mind for what it would be used for.

They were trying to hit better benchmarks. That’s all they were going for. So I can’t, I can’t think of off the top of my head a good example. I’m really curious if anybody who’s listening to this, if they have good examples, I’d love to hear what those examples are. Yeah. Of of things that did that.

I think for me, I mean like, just off the top of my head, I’m, I’m thinking about like the vaccine development around Covid.

The, yeah, there was the, like, we have to do this and they set about doing it using the various technologies, including aspects of AI and like the, the ability to apply that kind of focus to a specific problem. Other than that kind of emergency situation, I can’t think of a, of a case myself other than that, where it was setting the goal as the goal, not because outside forces are forcing us into the corner.

Mm-hmm. But because we’ve chosen that as our goal. So it’s an interesting, it’s, it’s an interesting part of tech development that I think has gone to a certain degree, goes unchallenged that

well. I would say, I would say what I find specific in consumer technology, a lot of times what you find is people create something kind of crazy in, and then it’s like a, it’s a solution in search of a problem.

Yeah. That’s often what you see. It’s not the other way around oftentimes, but I’m talking consumer tech specifically. Like Yeah. Folding phones. Folding phones, yeah. Nobody is like. Clamor for a folding phone, but the industry is trying to make people wanna do it, and it’s like, okay, what, what, what are you trying to solve?

What is the user experience you’re trying to solve with this idea?

Yeah.

Or, or ai. You could say the same thing. Consumer tech, ai. Yeah. It’s like everybody’s putting AI into everything. At CES there were, there was ai, this and, and a stethoscope. Ai and a, it was like, it didn’t matter what it was. Everything had ai, it was like.

It’s a, it’s a solution in search of a problem. It’s like, yeah, AI itself is not a product. It’s how you implement it. Yeah. That can power a product. So o oftentimes this is what you see in the consumer tech space, but I know that’s not the case across the board. It’s definitely not the case.

Yeah. There were also comments on a recent episode in which Matt was talking with Julie Slaughter about magnetically functioning heat pumps. There was this from Dean McManus who jumped in to say thanks to Julie for being a part of the conversation, and also said it highlights the necessary bridge between research of new and existing technologies and the quest to move those technologies or concepts from the research lab into usable, innovative devices.

That will become practical and affordable products for consumers. It goes on to talk about the various products that might come out of this kind of relationship between the research and existing tech. And I was wondering, this is kind of jumping forward in what we usually do in the summation of this podcast, but I’m wondering, do you have any videos coming up that are about that bridge between.

If there’s an existing product and the research seems fairly close to actually bringing it forward. What do you have on the horizon that you’re gonna be sharing with viewers in the future?

Oh man. Uh, pick three. Just three. You mean things that are like on the cusp? On the cusp? ’cause some of the stuff I’m talking about coming up is not necessarily on the cusp.

The one it’s ’cause it’s, it’s fresh in my mind ’cause we’re working on it right now. Wetware. Biological computers. It’s a thing. It is a thing. It’s

a thing. Does that fall the category of what you just described, a solutions looking for a problem? Is anybody out there saying, I, no, I, I need to be able to wear my computer.

This actually is not that. There is a reason for doing it, and there’s a couple of companies in Europe that actually have a product you can use, and when I say you, I don’t mean you and me, I mean like researchers can use, but there are biological computers in existence today. It’s kinda like how there’s quantum computers in existence today and there are researchers using those quantum computers.

So it’s like early days, but they exist and I, I actually just interviewed one of the researchers that’s using one of those computers is a company called Final Spark that has one of them. And I talked to a researcher just yesterday who’s using the final Spark computer asking him. Basically, what the hell are you doing with this thing?

Like, it’s like I, I looked at it, it’s like, oh, you can rent time on this computer. And I looked at it and I was like, I wouldn’t even know where to start because I thought, Hey, if this is something I could use and play with, that’d be really cool. And I looked at it, I was like, I would have no clue even how to approach this.

And so I talked to a researcher about it and they explained what they were doing. I like the idea of you getting ahold of the

quantum computer and you just being like. Do you like to play Pacman?

Yes. Would you like to play a game of chess? Yeah. This technology is not in search of a problem. It is going to solve a problem once they figure out how to make it work reliably.

But that’s like I. A very long ways away.

Right. Welcome to our new podcast, which is called The Sad Part, whispered. Um, yes. We only, we only say the bad part quietly. That’s right. On now to our discussion about Matt’s most recent, this is the Strangest Battery breakthrough yet, which is of course batteries that are the thing, things that are batteries.

Yeah. Peanut butter in the chocolate. Chocolate in the peanut butter. Wait, we’re both right Matt. How long before you end up with a, let’s say a, a phone or a vehicle? I mean, I think we’re already there. The right to repair, and I’m not saying that this goes counter to the right to repair, but it makes right to repair almost moot from the battery angle if you’re like, I’m sorry, but you, there is no separating the phone from the battery. There is no separating the battery from the car. I guess there’s multiple questions here, but the first one that jumps to mind is, do you think this is wanted, or do you think that it’s going to provide such a benefit that it won’t be problematic? Like if you end up reducing the overall cost of a vehicle because the battery is built into the components that make up the vehicle and it lowers the val, it lowers the cost of producing that to a point where you no longer are worried about this kind of separation between the two, does it solve its own problem?

Does that become then the Yeah, you don’t, you stop thinking of it as parts. You just think of it as a thing and when the thing no longer works, you get a new thing.

I mean, this is the right to repair argument that is full on. I mean, like, I mean if you think about like, um, the AirPods from Apple. Yeah. The bestselling earphones on the planet.

And I have a couple sets. My wife has one. They’re fantastic. When the battery dies in that thing, you’re not repairing it. It’s like it’s glued together. It’s like just, it’s a, yeah, it is the thing. There’s no repairing it. The question then comes then down to then, well, what do you do with this e-waste when it hits end of life?

You better have a good way to recycle this or reuse it. Um, that question comes up for me when it comes to structural batteries is that it’s not necessarily. I personally don’t care about it From a right to repair angle, I care more about it from a, well, what do you do with it at the end of life? Because like some of these companies are using carbon fibers, which are notoriously difficult to recycle.

You could shred it up and separate the carbon fiber elements from the, um, battery components and get the battery components, make new batteries. But then you’re still left with this shredded up. Yeah. Carbon fiber. Well, what do you would do that? So it’s, to me, that’s the big question more than necessarily right to repair because there are, there would be ways that you could theoretically make a phone where like the inside can become disengaged from the case, and then you put the new case back together again.

Um, so in a way it wouldn’t be, like, it wouldn’t, wouldn’t be in, in theory that different from replacing a battery in a current phone, it would just, you’d have to design the phone in a different way to make that possible. So there might be ways to work around it, but also like we, in the video, we talked a lot about EVs with this. Yeah. And part of the reason we did is ’cause some of these companies keep bringing that up as that’s the ultimate goal. And then there’s companies like Tesla and others that are already doing a form of a structural battery pack in their cars today already. So that’s why we talked about EVs a lot.

But for this specific, like the carbon fiber examples from these research places, those I don’t see in cars. I just don’t see those in cars. I see those in phones. I see those in laptops. I see those in AirPods. I see those getting into things that would be a lot of consumer tech, which is I think where the right to repair is gonna become of.

Yeah. Hotly. Hotly debated. You just touched on, on practically every comment that I had pulled out to discuss like this one from. It’s funny. Mattson Lar Larson, who wrote, in general, I wish the industry would focus more on recyclability, imagining a car that is a hundred percent recyclable without having to use highly complex and toxic methods to extract the resources.

It might be a less fancy and potent car, but you can repair it and take it apart with ease. Now that’s a future. I would love to see that recyclability. Seems to be the biggest yardstick for a lot of people. Yep. And yet, recyclability is right now treated as the unwanted distant cousin to technology. From a lot of angles, it feels like, oh, we’re building these things and look what we can do with them.

Oh yeah. We’ll figure out what to do with the carcass of it later. Later. Yep. That’s what. Not pointing fingers at any one industry, is there a company out there that you’re like, they really do get it and they’re trying to do the right thing by their recyclability angle or their ownership of what happens to the end of the useful life of this product?

Is there a company out there Yeah. That you feel like is really understanding of this concept?

Yeah. And it’s gonna set a lot of people off when I say it, it’s Apple.

Mm.

I just brought up the AirPods. That is a huge black mark in their lineup of products. ’cause there is not a good use case at the end of its life.

But Apple, for as much improvement as they still have to do, like they’re not like we’re doing it all right. Yeah. But they’re the one massive company that is making significant progress year on year and achieving their goals of, they want to be truly sustainable. They want to be, you know, carbon neutral.

They want to, like, they’re, everything they’re doing, they are clearly on a path to succeeding at what they’re trying to do. They’re recycling more and more of their products. They’re packaging is now fully recyclable. They’ve gotten rid of the plastic from their packaging, like they’re doing everything they can to get more on top of this.

So. Like I said, I’m not holding them up as a, as a, they did it. It’s more of a Right. They’re doing it right. They’re on the path to doing

that. So, and I think if I’m, that’s one of, I’m reading you correctly, this falls into the category of if all everybody out there is doing is lighting dumpster fire after dumpster fire.

The first company that says, you know what, we’re not gonna do, we’re not gonna light a dumpster fire today. They look like they’re good in comparison to Yes, all the dumpster fires. So, yes, I, I, Matt and I have had this conversation before because there was another video that Matt had a couple of months ago talking about green effort in corporations, and there was some pushback from the listeners and viewers, and we had to kind of clarify the needle that we were talking about was not.

As Matt just said, not the, we did it needle. It’s the let’s start doing it needle. That’s how low this was on the list of agenda for corporate, for corporate thinking. Is that like the first one to start actually trying to do it looks like they’re a paragon simply because they started doing it, not because they achieved it.

But there’s also like the difference between a large company and a small company. A large company is like a very slow boat that has to turn very slowly. So it’s gonna take a long time. ’cause I don’t think people understand truly how complex supply chains are. Like it is nuts. Um, there’s a great video out right now.

I can, a gamers nexus that I’ve been watching. It’s a three hour video they just published on how the tariffs are impacting the computer industry. Yeah. And they went. Traveled talking to all these different companies around the world about how the tariffs are impacting them and how, and they’ve got, these companies have basically opened their books showing them, okay, here’s a computer case line items.

Here’s how much it costs to develop a case like this. Here’s what our profit margin is and here’s what it looks like with the tariffs that have changed daily and what it’s gonna look like. And they explain like, this motherboard is made up of like a thousand parts. Like this part is a screw, and there’s a company in Singapore that that’s all they make is that screw.

And then over here in China, they make this thing over here. So it’s like, it’s so complex that if you wanna get to this truly recyclable future, you’re having to get not just one company to shift, but hundreds of companies to kind of adjust how they’re making things to make this truly impactful, which is why it’s taking Apple so long and why other companies are dragging their feet.

So it’s, we, we have to have patience, but we have to hold their feet to the fire to keep, keep them moving in the right direction.

Back to the ideas around right to repair. There were coincidentally a couple of comments right next to each other that I, I thought were perfectly matched. It was kismet. I think that they may have fallen in love as I found them.

There was the cut and dried question from Be creator who says, this is cool, but imagine you had a bad cell in the frame of a car. How exactly would you replace it? Separate from that 35 Manning jumped in to create a little fictional accounting of this by saying, can you imagine the custom car builders of the future; builder one, let’s chop the roof and stretch it into a convertible limousine. Builder two can’t, the entire thing is a battery. We can’t even cut the rust out. So I thought that was a nice depiction of the right to repair argument in a, in a little nutshell. Then finally, moving on to how might a structural battery play a part in a, as a component of a, of a subject or a product instead of being the only part of the product.

Casey Bowles raises this as an issue. Structural batteries seem an ideal secondary battery longevity and structural utility being king here, not density. Use a more replaceable higher density battery and charge rate primary battery and the structural battery works as a booster for range or to offset using a smaller, lighter primary battery.

Yep. This kind of thinking I, I wondered about that. Are you aware of any of these developers that are building these products who are treating it like that? Not the only battery, but a battery?

That was kind of touched on a little bit in the video with, um, the company that has a battery that’s meant to replace on an airplane, the emergency battery system that will open the doors in case of an emergency.

Mm-hmm. So it would take up less space in the plane, reduces the weight, it, you know, would save money. And this is a battery that’s not being used day in and day out and. It would last 30 plus years. It’s like, it’s not gonna be something that you’re gonna have to replace frequently, if at all. Mm-hmm. So it’s like, that’s a prime example of this.

It’s not making the plane fly. It’s a secondary system that could benefit for something like this. So you could see this in the car too. It’s like, what if you didn’t have a 12 volt battery, but it was, the frame of the car was the, you know, accessory battery, but the main battery was still on the floor of the car.

It’s like you could see this becoming more of a helper, to kind of reduce the load on a main system. So it’s like, I think that personally is where you’d start seeing this first on larger format things. You could even see it in a phone potentially where it’s like there’s still a main battery in the phone, but then the case is this carbon fiber case that’s got more battery in it, so your phone lasts even longer.

Yeah. If you were to do that and you had a phone that had a battery that lasted 24 hours, and the phone itself is structurally another battery that gave it another five or six hours, yeah. Then you’re reaching points where the idea of charging once a day or even less than once a day becomes a selling point.

Yep. So listeners, viewers, what did you think about all this? Let us know in the comments. As always, your comments are a huge component of this program, and they also help shape the conversations that Matt has when he’s putting together the main show, Undecided with Matt Ferrell, if you’d like to support the show.

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And I’m forced to look down at a monitor while the camera is higher. I get it. You like eye contact. So do I In the 21st century. Can’t we talk anymore? Thank you so much everybody, for taking the time to watch or listen. We’ll talk to you next time.