China Starts Solid-State Battery Production

Megalith

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Chinese startup Qing Tao Energy Development Co has reportedly deployed the first solid-state battery production line in the country, leading the way to volume production for what is said to be the successor to Li-ion technology. “Solid-state batteries are thought to be a lot safer than common Li-ion cells and have more potential for higher energy density.”

The production line, located in the city of Kunshan, East China, has a capacity of 100 MWh per year and they plan to ramp it up to 700 MWh by 2020. Right now, they are using the batteries for “special equipment and high-end digital products”, but Nan says that they are talking to “a number of large automobile manufacturers” about using their solid-state batteries in electric vehicles.
 
Meh i want to see even 10 60kwh packs.

Its way too fishy

Startup
battery tech with 50% more density vs current tech
lots of "up to" in production numbers


Pretty sure they have a $144 mill production line setup, that has not produced even 1 official batch of batteries. Notice at no point have they said even one battery has been made or one order fulfilled. “special equipment and high-end digital products” may be code for " we make packs no bigger than a cell phone at this time".
 
The Chinese govt, unlike the US, is pumping increasing amounts of money into their university research programs. They will overtake us in overall R&D spending, too at the current trajectories.

University research programs = hacking into every network in the world and taking their IP.
 
Who did they steal this technology from?

As much as Inwould like to say “they stole it from ....” I can’t, there have been a large number of public papers released over the last 5+ years on solid state batteries and China has enough manufacturing experience in the battery field that they likely developed this in house. Nobody else on the market is making these currently because of various costing issues, if they solved them than good for them!
 
A 30-40% increase in density isn’t particularly exciting, but it’s something, I guess.
In terms of Automobiles that would bring most of them into the 800+ KM range, it would bring even the cheapest if laptops and phones into the 8+ H range while solving a number of heat generation issues and providing better longevity as they don’t suffer from performance degradation as quickly as traditional Lithium Ion batteries.
 
I know it’ll increase range in automobiles, which is the biggest thing holding back EVs right now, I’m just kind of hoping for something significantly more substantial. But I’ll take any improvement at this point. Phones definitely need something better.

If you don't think 30-40% isn't massive, then you don't understand much about battery tech, those are world changing numbers, so much so that it's hard to believe it's real. I will hold my breath.
 
Qing Tao == Tsingtao?

Beer battery, that's the secret.
The "q" is pronounced with a "ch" sound, so it would actually look more like "Ching Tao." If there is someone out there that is more knowledgeable in Chinese pronunciations, and I am wrong, please correct me as I am no expert.
 
The "q" is pronounced with a "ch" sound, so it would actually look more like "Ching Tao." If there is someone out there that is more knowledgeable in Chinese pronunciations, and I am wrong, please correct me as I am no expert.
You're right, and wrong.
There is a 'ch' sound in Chinese, more or less, and it would be written in pinyin (official romanization of Mandarin per the CPC) as 'ch'. We produce the sounds differently though.
The 'q' sound is not the same and many people find it difficult to distinguish between the two.

Tsingtao = Wade-Giles romanization of 青岛. That form of romanization was created well before Pinyin. In Pinyin, it is written as Qingdao.

Without seeing the Chinese characters for QingTao, I can't tell you the meaning with any degree of certainty. If I had to guess, it's just the name of a different city in China. Not Qingdao.
 
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If true, it's a huge leap, at least as far as density is concerned. I'm interested in charge rate.
 
University research programs = hacking into every network in the world and taking their IP.

Honestly they don't even have to try that hard. There are many chinese state sponsored Phd students at the best universities under the best programs "stealing" IP and research for basically pennies. I've seen it personally when I got my masters, read and hear about it and lately the chinese have somehow magically come up with almost identical products that my company just launched.
 
The Chinese govt, unlike the US, is pumping increasing amounts of money into their university research programs. They will overtake us in overall R&D spending, too at the current trajectories.
The Soviets tried to outspend us too. Look where that got them.
 
Honestly they don't even have to try that hard. There are many chinese state sponsored Phd students at the best universities under the best programs "stealing" IP and research for basically pennies. I've seen it personally when I got my masters, read and hear about it and lately the chinese have somehow magically come up with almost identical products that my company just launched.


the chinese are great at the long game.
 
I hope this is real. I wonder why they're going with just a single line throughout 2019. I know it's a startup but maybe uncle Chan (get it? I am so clever) should put some money in this company.

And how the fuck does one "steal" technology? Don't US companies have backups?
 
I hope this is real. I wonder why they're going with just a single line throughout 2019. I know it's a startup but maybe uncle Chan (get it? I am so clever) should put some money in this company.

And how the fuck does one "steal" technology? Don't US companies have backups?

Fine, its not stealing, its pirating.
 
This sounds great but, how many others have we heard about doing some new battery tech? Each time they either fizzle out or it's nonexistant. I'll wait until they actually show some.
 
Are they defining solid state battery as a polymer Lion? A battery we already produce in certain applications? Anyone got a better article on this where they go into exactly WHAT they are producing? A journalist won't know the difference between polymer Lion and true solid state.

Also to anyone who thinks "if they stole it who cares x company should have gotten it into production faster". I counter with the statement that stealing omits things like billions in research. If you actually have this mentality you effectively should walk away from every North American and European company. The major difference between us and China is that we WILL check our math and plan things out FIRST. They will just slap crap together and fix it later. Screw safety and product quality.

Even the Chinese realize this.. That is why they are funding actual research budgets. They fully understand they haven't innovated in decades and the current model is unsustainable. Additionally, they cannot surpass NA/EU research quality for quite some time even if they outpace it volume wise. China always plays the long game.
 
History?


The better question is what have they not stolen(gunpowder?)

History is not proof that someone will act a certain way in the future.

At any rate, even assuming the tech was stolen, who cares? If the inventor was serious about bringing the product to market they would have almost certainly beaten this company to the punch.
 
In terms of Automobiles that would bring most of them into the 800+ KM range, it would bring even the cheapest if laptops and phones into the 8+ H range while solving a number of heat generation issues and providing better longevity as they don’t suffer from performance degradation as quickly as traditional Lithium Ion batteries.


haha completely wrong actually what they will do is just make batteries smaller and give you the same or less range and call it an ultra car, then they will pocket the extra profit margin.
 
haha completely wrong actually what they will do is just make batteries smaller and give you the same or less range and call it an ultra car, then they will pocket the extra profit margin.
Well even if they did that then it would drive the price down on most products. Laptops and most of the cellphone market has razor thin margins it would also go a good way towards decreasing the costs on electric cars as the batteries make up a sizeable portion of the manufacturing costs.
 
The Chinese govt, unlike the US, is pumping increasing amounts of money into their university research programs. They will overtake us in overall R&D spending, too at the current trajectories.

It wont matter. Soon thier despot govt will just go all Mao and kill 500 million of them once they revolt from the social credit tyranny they rammed down thier throats.
 
It wont matter. Soon thier despot govt will just go all Mao and kill 500 million of them once they revolt from the social credit tyranny they rammed down thier throats.
Except for Chinese themselves, most of them seem to agree with social credit scores. Over there social class is very important. You can fail in an interview for having the wrong clothing, car, phone, shoes, etc because they might denote you are low class. I have friends in Bejing who tried to tell me how awesome it is that they can go to a nice restaurant and be guaranteed to only have good people eating there with similar interests because of the social score. They really just don't understand why > I < find it horrific because their culture and moral code is different from ours with different priorities.
 
I have friends in Bejing who tried to tell me how awesome it is that they can go to a nice restaurant and be guaranteed to only have good people eating there with similar interests because of the social score.
AFAIK it's not implemented in Beijing yet. It may be on a limited scope, I'm a few hours away from Beijing so not sure. That said, I can understand their desire to avoid some people. China is a strange place. When I lived in the US, I didn't fully grasp what the word 'peasant' meant. After living in China, I certainly do. It's not about wealth, it's about class and manners or complete lack thereof. It's completely common for people to spit fish/chicken/whatever bones right out on to the table. Yelling across the place to get the attention of staff or just screaming "another beer!" or whatnot. I've seen people at restaurants with pajamas on and men with no shirts or their shirts pulled up over their bellies. I've seen children pee on the floor of a place more than once...with assistance from grandma. The sound of people clearing their throats to hock a loogie straight on the floor and the sound of snot rockets flying in random directions turns into a kind of 'white noise' after you've lived in China for a time. Yes, that happens in restaurants. I could go on for hours about the crazy shit I've seen outside of restaurants.

TL;DR - I completely understand where your friends are coming from.
 
History is not proof that someone will act a certain way in the future.

At any rate, even assuming the tech was stolen, who cares? If the inventor was serious about bringing the product to market they would have almost certainly beaten this company to the punch.

Huh? Stealing patented manufacturing technologies so you can pay people peanuts to copy other patented items is just a "who cares" in your book?

Yikes.
 
Especially the part where they fell asleep for a few thousand years.


i wouldnt say "fell asleep" more like they were internally focused, which makes sense.. the chinese land area is HUGE, and as such, was very hard to maintain way back when when communication was very limited and the quickest one could get a message to a far off place was literally an early version of the pony express style setup, which was persian in origins if i am recalling correctly. china did send some very massive fleets out to explore which had ships much, much bigger then anything the west had at the time to explore and truly impressed those ports it sailed into, but they were short lived.
 
Huh? Stealing patented manufacturing technologies so you can pay people peanuts to copy other patented items is just a "who cares" in your book?

Yikes.

Doesn't even rate as high as a 'who cares?' to be honest.

Yikes indeed.

But again, nowhere in this article did it say the technology was stolen.
 
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