# 24M Update



## PhantomPholly (Aug 20, 2008)

I haven't actually seen a new announcement, but I've reviewed some of the old articles and discovered some things I missed before. Mostly good news, but some disappointment that their first design will probably not be suitable to vehicles.

Apparently, 24M's battery will have up to 5x the energy density of traditional LiIon with their very first product, and while that factors into their expectation of 80%-90% drop in price to produce it is equally astonishing. Below are two rather lengthy articles which give greater details, but the gist of it is that their process results in the incorporation of what I have previously described as "a better cathode" - an innovation I believed to be at least 5 years away - which accounts for a good deal of their projected savings in cost. The other observation here is, as I have previously pointed out, if someone does perfect one of these superior cathodes for traditional LiIon batteries then Musk's GigaFactory will be back in the game.

First, here is an article which outlines the current cost of making LiIon batteries. Interestingly, labor is already a very small percentage of the cost but overhead is high because of the old-technology tape plants used to manufacture them. It makes one thing abundantly clear - if you can get the energy density up, your cost will undoubtedly go down a great deal because the cost of materials makes up the lion's share of the battery cost.

Next, here is the first of the two articles I mentioned above - it really is lengthy but very interesting. It goes through almost everything about the battery, including the goal of creating a "machine" which will cost about $11 million (ridiculously cheap compared to current battery plants) which can create 79 megawatt-hours of batteries per year at about $160/Kwh, a price which they expect to further improve upon.

I don't know that it offers much more than the above article, which was very thorough, but here is a second article with more details than the average press release.

This is all fantastic, and means that prices will drop even more quickly than I had previously projected. But alas, it seems that no story is all upside. The initial process for making the batteries is only suitable for stationary installations - apparently the goo jiggles around enough to make their current design unsuitable for vehicles. Well, we can simply hope they overcome those obstacles quickly!


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## Karter2 (Nov 17, 2011)

An interesting quote from one of the comments to that last article you linked...



> ......in ‘The Powerhouse’ by Steve LeVine, he quotes a scathing criticism of Dr. Yet-Ming Chiang by former MIT professor John B Goodenough, father of the Lithium Ion cell.
> 
> “For the third time—first with cobalt-oxide, then with manganese spinel, and now iron phosphate—Goodenough’s lab had produced a major lithium-ion cathode with commercial possibilities.
> 
> ...


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## PhantomPholly (Aug 20, 2008)

Karter2 said:


> An interesting quote from one of the comments to that last article you linked...


Yep. Every industry has its shysters. Politics doesn't seem to have any other kind; thankfully at least some in the business world are for real.

We shall see concerning 24M. If not them, one of the many companies seeking a better cathode for traditional LiIon will succeed.

Off subject - An acquaintence of mine had dinner with Goodenough a few weeks ago - told him I was jealous.


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## Karter2 (Nov 17, 2011)

^^^
??? Was this just a missplaced post, ...or a cheap plug for some service joint ?


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## PhantomPholly (Aug 20, 2008)

If it's not related to the thread, it is spam. Mods please remove this urchin.


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