America's First Sodium-Ion Battery Manufacturer Ceases Operations (wral.com) 85
Grady Martin writes: Natron Energy has announced the immediate cessation of all operations, including its manufacturing plant in Holland, Michigan, and plans to build a $1.4 billion "gigafactory" in North Carolina. A company representative cited "efforts to raise sufficient new funding [being] unsuccessful" as the rationale for the decision.
When previously covered by Slashdot, comments on the merits of sodium-ion included the ability to use aluminum in lieu of heavier, more expensive copper anodes; a charge rate ten times that of lithium-ion; and Earth's abundance of sodium -- though at least one anonymous coward predicted the cancellation of the project.
When previously covered by Slashdot, comments on the merits of sodium-ion included the ability to use aluminum in lieu of heavier, more expensive copper anodes; a charge rate ten times that of lithium-ion; and Earth's abundance of sodium -- though at least one anonymous coward predicted the cancellation of the project.
Not the point. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Not the point. (Score:4, Funny)
You do have to like how the editors give shoutouts to obvious troll posts.
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Literally Slashdot not respecting its own moderation system, promoting a post in summary (which is very rare) that has been downvoted to a 1.
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/. doesn't belong to us. It belongs to them.
They are not us.
Re: Not the point. (Score:4, Insightful)
Based on what evidence? There must be something more than the comment of an anonymous troll on /. to make you claim corruption.
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"It would be politically convenient to me so it must be true".
The truth, though, is that this is the kind of strategic industry that China wants to have operating from home, so any competitor that wants to build up needs to get clear policy support. That's gone, so these industries are going.
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China is way ahead in sodium batteries, and it's too late for the West to catch up, even with massive subsidies.
Top battery manufacturers in China [batteryswapcabinet.com]
Chinese sodium batteries are mostly going into their own grid backup, but exports are growing fast.
Re: Not the point. (Score:5, Interesting)
They'd never catch up, but with the right support they could stay in the game simply by supplying high security needs, such as backup power supplies in military bases and even secure data centers. The fact there are ten manufacturers in China says there's plenty of space in the market as long as you have high automation and reasonable costs. I can't comment about this specific company, but if America as a whole ends up without any sodium battery manufacturing, that's a failure of belief caused by a failure of policy.
Re:Not the point. (Score:4, Insightful)
Naw, once "Are you my daddy?" Trump was elected, renewables were an endangered species. Big Oil pumps too much money into his campaign and Crypto Con.
If I were building a battery manufacturing plant, I would also pause for the next four years until the climate improved.
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Trump Derangement Syndrome???
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Need full accounting (Score:2)
Need a full accounting of all of the government subsidies, grants, research handouts, whatever plus all of the lobbying money spent by the company, its executives, their families, and any affiliated non-profits.
The headline should be X million in government money wasted on handouts to a failed Y startup.
Blame Trump and his administration (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Blame Trump and his administration (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh the batteries will get investment just not in the US, that was kind of their whole point.
Re:Blame Trump and his administration (Score:5, Insightful)
In other words, it's just handing the technology over to CATL in China.
CATL got tons of Chinese government money to do big R&D and are currently the leaders in sodium ion technology. And the batteries are to be cheaper (lots of sodium ions around - we have oceans full of it, and the anode and cathode materials are cheap and plentiful).
Government investing in new technology helps promote use of that technology. Trump is basically handing China the next generation battery technology and likely to be able to sell it stupidly cheap suppressing research in the technology by any other nation. Even if the next administration restores funding, the time lost could basically mean there's no way you could catch up to China's advancements and cost.
Re:Blame Trump and his administration (Score:5, Interesting)
there's no way you could catch up to China's advancements and cost.
Why is it always the case that China is always ready to catch up to and surpass us, but there is "no way" we could catch up to China if they do?
Re:Blame Trump and his administration (Score:4, Insightful)
Uhhh, because the Chinese government is willing to throw piles and piles of money at any new technology that they can sell at some future date, and the U.S. typically won't. At least not for something that can't be weaponized anyways.
If the U.S. would put even a fraction of the military budget into research, the scientific / invention fields would be so far ahead of everyone else that it would be decades if not centuries before anyone else would have a hope to catch up.
A lot of that could even be weaponized, so defunding tons of research is so fucking counterproductive that it's absolutely insane that government people are actively trying to fuck the country over for a half dollar saved today, instead of gaining 10 in a few years.
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Uhhh, because the Chinese government is willing to throw piles and piles of money at any new technology that they can sell at some future date,.
It's not just that. They have been hugely investing in STEM education, education generally and making sure that the next generation of basic research has huge connections with China. If you are a climate scientist, building satellites to see what the truth is, then right now China is going to be much more friendly. Given that the US universities have been using Chinese and other foreign researchers, this becomes much easier for them.
In the end, though, that all comes down to what you say. Money thrown at R
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Theoretically possible (Score:4, Interesting)
Well, it's theoretically possible, but consider the following factors:
At 1.4B people, they have roughly 4 times our population. That means that they can theoretically put 1/4 as many people, proportionally, and still match any development effort we undertake.
They are much better, at least currently, at keeping trade secrets and production techniques secret, as well as espionage against the rest of the world for technology. This means that it'd be tough for us to steal advances like they did to catch up with us.
They're currently better at us already in a bunch of aspects. We just got batteries down to ~$100/kWh, CATL has announced a $10/kWh battery type. They have a battery they're warrantying for 1.5M km and 15 years, which is 940k miles.
The million mile battery Tesla talks about? They already have it.
Now, yes, assuming we fix our shit, we might be able to catch up in select fields. Kind of like how Japan came to dominate in optics. But what are the odds that China will let us in something as important as batteries?
I believe that Trump will eventually be viewed as one of the worst presidents, who pissed away much of what technological lead we had in some sort of vague popularity contest.
Re: Theoretically possible (Score:4, Insightful)
Reducing my post to 'orange man bad' says more about you than me, I thing. It's just cherry picking.
Is Trump defunding science or not?
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Instability is an anathema to business. It's impossible to invest well if tomorrow there might be 100% tariffs on importing raw materials, and tariffs on importing competitive finished goods cut to zero.
Business isn't great at making long term strategic decisions, but those circumstances make it basically impossible. Out would you like to share the wisdom of your orange Jesus and how this will magically make businesses invest. Assuming the great TACO doesn't in fact chicken out on some aspect of another...
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So...thank you for proving my point a second time?
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rather than realizing we have an excellent position against the totalitarian, innovation-stifling Chinese government.
No, you could have an excellent position. The crazy amounts of instability and randomness are hurting the position you do have.
You didn't address any of that but went after Trump again.
It's the same shit, bro.
Not all about Trump (Score:2)
I write about how China outnumbers us, their ability in espionage and counter-espionage, how they've already managed to get the lead in some aspects, have some stuff about Japan, and finish with one sentence about him. That sentence alone makes the post 'all about Trump'.
That's more on you than me.
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Picking winners and losers with government-industrial-complex liberalism was unstable
You can just say "winners and losers". There's no need to engage in the spamming of meaningless long words that the right is so enamored with. They don't make you sound or be smart.
Anyhoo winners and losers...
That's why China is losing
If China is doing so badly then how are they living rent free in your head?
and Kamala lost.
Your claims don't hold up to scrutiny. Strategically supporting companies is something that for good
Re:Theoretically possible (Score:4, Interesting)
The second thing I'd add is time scale. US exec's/political leaders think maybe one quarter ahead. China thinks years/decades. I don't see how the US turns this around. We will be relevant for a few more decades, much like Russia is still relevant. We just won't be number one.
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You think you're going to bring a new supply of rare earths to market? Watch the supply from China suddenly flood the market, crash the price and make your mine a money loser for as long as it takes for you to go under. You think
Re:Blame Trump and his administration (Score:5, Insightful)
Why is it always the case that China is always ready to catch up to and surpass us, but there is "no way" we could catch up to China if they do?
The Chinese government is run by engineers who see their job as making things happen.
The American government is run by lawyers who see their job as stopping things from happening.
Re:Blame Trump and his administration (Score:4, Informative)
Fear of anything remotely socialist, unless Trump does it. A broken system of democracy.
The Chinese government sets long term goals, which give businesses there certainty, and investors confidence. That's how they get ahead. In the US, you have wild policy swings every 4 years. From pro rewewables and battery tech, to anti renewables and battery tech. Why would anyone want to invest in anything when there is a decent chance that in a few years the next government will decide it's ideologically opposed to it and withdraw all licences and support?
When the US does socialism, it works. Tesla was born out of socialist policies of funding "green" startups, for example. That whole programme made a nice profit for the government. Fear of anything remotely resembling socialist ideas makes it extremely difficult to do anything like that now, unless it's Trump taking a stake in Intel - although there it's less about improving the economy and securing the country's future, and more about Trump thinking he knows better.
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Tesla got investment from the government in the early days, and then enjoyed the benefit of subsidies on zero emission vehicles. Musk's new targets look unrealistic unless Trump leaves office and whoever replaces him pushes EVs again.
That said the tariffs on foreign vehicles do help Tesla, because their tech is not that great and their cars aren't that competitive now. Blocking the superior and cheaper competition should boost their sales a bit, although maybe not enough to offset the damage Trump is doing.
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You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
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It's more like Americans don't know what socialism means.
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Well, they are 1.4 billion and have built factories to do cheap stuff nobody wants to make. And with that industrial base moved on to stuff that only they can make, and then making it almost impossible to catch up due to their economy of scale.
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there's no way you could catch up to China's advancements and cost.
Why is it always the case that China is always ready to catch up to and surpass us, but there is "no way" we could catch up to China if they do?
China is copying and improving on everyone else tech while US is stuck in the patent/copyright fuck up
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"Why is it always the case that China is always ready to catch up to and surpass us, but there is "no way" we could catch up to China if they do?"
China has Near-slave labor, no EPA, no OSHA, no Fair Labor Standards Act, no child labor laws, no Endangered Species Act, no Clean Water Act, no Clean Air Act.
That's probably not a complete list. It takes longer to get the permits than to build the factory. Even if you have the permits some environmental or civil rights group will sue to stop the project on some g
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but there is "no way" we could catch up to China if they do?
Because we're not investing or supporting this industry and we have a government (not just the current one) with vested interests in not doing so. The Chinese government directly picks winners and losers and pours a shitton of money into their local industries. The west mostly decides to give subsidies to the biggest lobbyists which ultimately is the traditional businesses threatened by the change, that is when we're not actively fighting against that change by making such projects even by private industry
You know I was thinking (Score:3, Interesting)
Then it dawned on me that they were hoping Trump would destroy the American economy so that they could supplant us as a global power.
It's an extremely dangerous game. I don't think the world realizes just how absolutely batshit crazy America is. And we still have the largest military on the planet. Plus failing empires usually engage in military conquest to shore up emptying coffers from incompetent leadership..
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Why didn't Europe counteract the Russian propaganda so the Trump didn't become president.
One reason might be because it didn't really do anything. The main reason you think it does is that you yourself are highly susceptible to exactly this kind of thing, so you're just used to believing that it's highly effective.
I don't think the world realizes just how absolutely batshit crazy America is. And we still have the largest military on the planet. Plus failing empires usually engage in military conquest to shore up emptying coffers from incompetent leadership...
I'm sure they're counting on nukes but like I said we are so much crazier than the rest of the world thinks we are. We honestly do not care that you have nukes. About 40% of us think God or the golden dome will protect us... And the other 60% is too busy trying to survive another day to do anything to stop that 40% from doing crazy shit anymore
See what I mean?
Found the useful idiot (Score:1)
The surest fire way to let everybody know that you are completely in the thrall of right-wing propaganda is to tell everybody that you are not in the thrall of right-wing propaganda....
Anyway cool story bro
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Trump's win had nothing to do with Russia, rather, it's because your kind refused to back any candidate that wouldn't promise to exterminate the Jews, and you know it.
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Why didn't Europe counteract the Russian propaganda so the Trump didn't become president.
If there's a thumb on the scales you don't solve the problem by putting another on the other side.
Re:You know I was thinking (Score:5, Insightful)
Why didn't Europe counteract the Russian propaganda so the Trump didn't become president.
How do you counteract propaganda that aligns with people's feelings and tugs on their hearstrings? We have seen the same story play out time and time again, truth and logic do not trump feel-good lies. Just look to Brexit as an example. No amount of telling people that Britain was only a small player compared to the EU was able to resonate with people who were told "We hold all the cards on the negotiating table". That message resonated with the base despite how ludicrous it was.
You hear the same thing in the USA. Trump was going to save America by kicking out immigrants who caused the housing crisis and are murdering and raping everyone. They are eating the cats and dogs. The counter to that was obviously "well that's insane, there's no evidence people ate cats or dogs, the person who reported their cat missing found it in their basement, oh and those immigrants statistically aren't any more violent than anyone else" doesn't help much. Not when the person just saw a story on Fox News about someone getting raped / killed and the perp wasn't a white republican. So Trump must be telling the truth, right? - That's how propaganda works and why it's impossible to counter.
What do you suggest as the alternative? The problem with extremism propaganda is that it's hard to be more extreme than point out what was going to happen.
Republicans: "The Dems are going to take your guns away!" People: "Over my dead body. Fuck the Dems!"
Democrats: "The Republicans are going to take away you bodily autonomy!" People: "No that can't be right we have Roe vs Wade!"
Republicans: "The Dems are destroying your lives by giving them to the immigrants, just look at the price of eggs!" People: "I can't afford eggs, Fuck the Dems!"
Democrats: "The Republicans will overthrow our institutions, just look at Project 2025!" People: "LOL common, that's a fantasy piece, we have checks and balances and a constitution! Also where is Hunter Biden's laptop!"
Brandolini's Law ... (Score:4, Interesting)
You are perfectly right, unfortunately ...
The observation that is known as Brandolini's Law [wikipedia.org] rings true ...
Debunking misinformation takes a huge amount of time and effort, far more than the misinformation itself.
Misinformation has the advantage of spreading faster, being much simpler, and not needing any facts nor logic.
That is what we are up against ...
It's called flood the zone (Score:1)
Propaganda just works. It doesn't matter though what the call to action is in the propaganda. You could have just as easily done the same propaganda but demanding voters vote for Kamala Harris and they would have because well, if you lack the critical thinking skills to vote intelligently and you are falling for widespread Russian propaganda on social media then you can easily be made to do anything.
Europe absol
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You flood the zone with the same kind of propaganda but which calls for different action.
Except that's my question to you. One side is resonating with voters in horrible ways. What's your counteracting propaganda? Let's try this:
"Immigrants are eating cats and dogs and raping everyone, we will deport them all!"
Go, let's hear it. Resonate with the voters who are attracted to that message, and try and do so sounding like a democrat rather than a psychopath. It's insanely difficult to counter hate with love.
Bonus rounds:
"We hold all the cards for negotiating, during Brexit the UK will leave the EU
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>"Then it dawned on me that they were hoping Trump would destroy the American economy so that they could supplant us as a global power. "
Riiiiight, because he was already President for 4 years before and was responsible for "destroying the economy"... oh, wait...
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Re:You know I was thinking (Score:5, Insightful)
It's the same situation with the Orange Pedophile: People want to believe there must be some conspiracy around him, because the alternative - there are enough degraded, horrible people to elect such an absolute monster to the Presidency not once but twice - says some extremely ugly things about America.
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says some extremely ugly things about America.
Not really. On the one hand we like to point and laugh. Sure America is in a ludicrous position right now, but how ludicrous is it really? Even sensible democracies are pivoting to the right, mostly along the same messages: Your life sucks because of immigrants, vaccines bad, we need to take back control of our country, etc, etc.
The Netherlands elected Wilders - Trump but without the financial chops to bankrupt everything.
In Germany the AfD is rising in the polls - Actual neonazis who want to deport German
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Wealth inequality is a big cause of the problems in the west. Same thing happened in the '30's. People, especially the young, are stressed out by their finances and simple populists with their simple solutions sound good. Immigrants are taking your jobs makes the problem simple and easy to fix by getting rid of immigrants. Throw in some culture war and unrealistic promises and win elections, if not this time, then next time as things aren't improving under the mainstream. The wealthy have so much power that
Vladimir Putin is not a stupid man (Score:2)
He is absolutely terrible at running a country in the people of Russia are suffering terribly for it. He could not for example maintain Russia's military so that they could do something as simple as taking over a country 1/5 their size...
What Putin is good at is information control. That was literally his specialty in the KGB. The internet made Putin one of the most powerful men on Earth. The ability to instantly cram propaganda into the skulls of eve
It's easy to blame the people that voted for Hitle (Score:2)
But Hitler also needed voter suppression to win. He also need it the Allies to punish Russia ruthlessly in the wake of world war II. He also needed the backing of the church. And it doesn't other things I'm not going to get into here.
The point is Hitler didn't just happen. He represents a complete breakdown in every single system meant to protect society and civilization. And the same goes for Trump.
Take any one of the dozens of s
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Put away your tinfoil hat and realise that Europe was hoping for anyone but the orange shitgibbon because when the US economy goes down, it will take the whole first world economy down with it. Europeans know this perfectly well and were reasonably happy with the status quo.
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AI which needs a mountain of upgrades to the electrical grid
This is actually the single reason why I want to see more AI investment, especially for companies like fecebook, apple, and amazon, who are going basically nowhere with it but still need to invest heavily into the grid in order to have it. I honestly don't think AI is going to deliver on much of what it promises any time soon. But in the short-to-mid term, throwing a lot of investment into e.g. nuclear power (which we're incredibly behind on because the surrounding regulations are borderline insanity here)
Instability hits all industries (Score:1)
People do not want to invest when there's instability.
I posted this previously, I work for a company which has cancelled just over $1bn of future investment in the USA covering multiple projects. A bit of it was wind, (one wind farm included local storage), but also 2 gas projects, one being an energy project, the other an export project (LNG liquification plant). The latter was especially lucrative to the current administration which wants to maximise gas exports, especially to Europe.
The reason for the cancellation? Investment risk. We knew Trump had a hateb
CATL beat them to the punch (Score:2)
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Not relevant. The world doesn't give up when one company produces something. In the mean time investment is going ahead elsewhere. CATL hasn't stopped Germany from confirming a $54million grant with Altech to build a sodium battery production facility in Saxony only a few days ago. But you need a government actually interested in investing in local production for that to happen.
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Wanna bet... (Score:1)
Wanna bet that their business plan, much like Solyndra's business plan back in the day, was based on nearly endless supplies of government-backed money to fund their business when rational investors wouldn't...
A company representative cited "efforts to raise sufficient new funding [being] unsuccessful" as the rationale for the decision.
Once Trump got into office, the money spigot got turned off, and lots of otherwise risky/speculative projects like this one will struggle to find funding.
(As a reminder, the government allowed Solyndra to solicit their final round of funding (before going out-of-business) by guaranteeing the final-rou
Re:Wanna bet... (Score:5, Informative)
Fun fact, the DOE program that funded Solyndra.....made MILLIONS in profit.
https://www.npr.org/2014/11/13... [npr.org]
Total loaned $34.2 billion
Losses $780 million 2.28% default rate is damned good.
Repayment $810 million in interest payments
$30 million profit
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Wanna bet that their business plan, much like Solyndra's business plan back in the day, was based on nearly endless supplies of government-backed money to fund their business when rational investors wouldn't...
Their business plan was to develop sodium-ion batteries. This requires a lot of speculative research, which requires time and money. Meanwhile, Chinese CATL launched a new sodium-ion battery line. And BYD is building a $2B sodium-ion factory right now.
In 5 years, the US will face international battery competition from two fronts: solid-state batteries for high-performance cars and electronics, and sodium-ion batteries for grid-scale projects and cheap cars. With thousands of patents protecting all the imp
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Exactly; if their plans were not profitable without endless supplies of tax money flowing into their pockets, they never really intended to build anything.
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if their plans were not profitable
Virtually all pilot projects / early creations relying heavily on R&D investment aren't profitable. Clearly Tesla didn't intend to build any cars right? I mean they showed no path to profitability without government support, hell they showed no path to profitability for most of the first decade *with* government support. Should the government have pulled the plug there too?
The point of government investing in moon-shot projects like this is to create an industry. The first players usually aren't profita
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Once Trump got into office, the money spigot got turned off, and lots of otherwise risky/speculative projects like this one will struggle to find funding.
You seem to be thinking that the purpose of government programs like this is to turn a profit. That couldn't be wildly incorrect. The whole point about such investments is to foster an industry that leads to dominance in a market and a position of power in the world. Tesla brought out the first EV. Tesla built the first grid scale lithium battery. And yet you look to many countries China, a country who at the time had no car industry of significance, whose biggest local car companies were Volkswagen and Aud
Well, the anonymous coward was right !!! (Score:2)
Anybody surprised? (Score:2)