Considering Lithium ‘semi-solid-state battery’ (SSSB) already does 25% to 45% higher capacity with roadmap at 55% next year and double the battery capacity before 2030. I wonder what could we expect from ‘all-solid-state batteries’ (ASSB).
Most people think current AI development is the most important research, I actually think ASSB ( or any massive battery improvement ) would bring us far more real life, quality improvement with things that previously were not possible.
Am I being too pessimistic to think we would actually get the same electricity costs if we are lucky and 1/3 more profits going up to the executive portion of the company?
If you have enough space for distributed solar generation, you buy the batteries and go off grid (if your local jurisdiction will allow it; if they don't, prepare to politik and fight for the right to so you're not trapped into their profit extraction through local code and/or financial and regulatory mechanisms [see below citations]).
I think the most likely case is that electricity prices go down but demand goes up as devices more eagerly use power so you end up with an electricity bill that stays consistent.
IMO AI was extremely important, but the breakthroughs are mostly done. I’m just expecting incremental improvements with LLMs now.
A Turing complete personal tutor to explain any concept already exists. You can prompt a logo or video into existence. This is crazy.
The real value will be the creative people who use AI to self teach and build real world value, like energy management, or anything else.
Not this pipe dream that AGI will be achieved and automate the entire world, which for some reason gets so much focus. Seems like procrastination to obsess over this.
At the start of 2021, "we are entering another AI winter" was a common sentiment, even here. People proclaiming that were so very certain about that point of view, and yet, here we are.
What makes you so certain that we will enter an AI winter before reaching the threshold of AGI? Do you have some secret insights into the mechanisms of general intelligence that you aren't sharing with the class?
The actual results of AIs in the last fews aren't matching the scale of investment or hype. That isn't to say there haven't been useful results, but overall investors aren't making a return on their investments (and there is no prospect of that in the short term) and at some point they'll lose patience and find something else to invest in.
> Do you have some secret insights into the mechanisms of general intelligence that you aren't sharing with the class?
I do know that "natural intelligence" (as found in the brains of humans and other animals) uses orders of magnitude more computing power than even our largest compute clusters, that such intelligences have been trained over millennia, (and in the case of humans, each instance is incrementally refined over the course of 10+ years), and that even those intelligences are not as good as classical computers at some tasks (people make mistakes, and a hypothetical AGI likely would too).
Perhaps we'll find some secret that allows us to shortcut that, but I suspect the idea that such a discovery is just around corner is just hubris.
AI winters happen every 20 years or so so sounds about right.
Investor apathy. Once the big dicks realise it’s useless without actual humans running it they’ll lose interest. We will lock in our gains socially but a lot of the big bucks will dry up.
It’s all built on commodity hardware using commonly used software and trained on public information. It’s all easily reproducible once solved so I think it will be very hard for them to ring fence and monetise to the extent that they expect.
That and a true AI would tell us all roundly to get fucked before using all of its intellect and might to power itself down, like an elaborate “useless box”
Does this hypothesis take into consideration that we're on a 3rd leg of this current 'graphics card' hype run with crypto & blockchain at the front, and NFTs immediately after?
If we’re could get a breakthrough in fuel cells it’d be even nicer if it was an efficient fuel cell for a liquid fuel. And to get an efficient way to make it from CO2 and electricity.
Though I think for ground transportation, batteries will always be preferable.
Direct methanol fuel cells are a thing. It may not fit your definition of efficient but that is the technology I think should be pursued. There are multiple biological, chemical and electrochemical pathways to produce methanol. That means that there could be an economic way to produce it nearly everywhere.
Another interesting technology is redox flow batteries. The fluid itself is charged. Fluid storage can be sized to the charge/use requirements. Or you can haul in "charged" fluid. But since the fluid is not consumed, discharged fluid would need to be taken away. Making hauling is less efficient.
I believe fuel cells with ubiquity of electricity is just beating the dead horse.
Like, what are cons and pros?
EVs:
+ Much simpler design
+ Literally zero maintenance required
+ Centralized power production is extremely efficient
+ Power production can be 100% carbon free in 10 years, if there's will with nuclear and other 'renewables'
+ Can be charged literally everywhere where's sun in theory, but in every home with outlet in practice
+ Batteries are crucial to every part of our tech today so they will become better
- Heavy (low energy density compared to fuel, which isn't great for planes etc)
Fuel Cells:
+ high energy density
+ less dirty than gasoline
+ allow oil producers to stay in business
+ keeps mechanics in business
- requires mechanics and expensive maintenance
- complex designs for combustion engines + gearboxes + drive trains
- requires immense infrastructure change to adopt
Unless I miss something. What is the point of fuel cells/combustion engines for consumer use? I understand there are applications where energy density is necessary, like cargo ships, rockets or airplanes. Otherwise, seems like a welfare program for industries built around resource extraction and complicated machinery.
But for consumers, what is the point of fuel cells? This is honest question.
> Otherwise, seems like a welfare program for industries built around resource extraction and complicated machinery.
You say this dismissively, but that's exactly what it is.
The basic problem with renewable energy (especially solar and batteries) is that there is no way for the existing fossil energy industry to replicate the extractive oligopolies around the production, delivery, and utilization of energy that they have with oil and gas.
I am not saying it dismissively. As you could see this is a "pro" point in my list. I honestly recognize that it's a transition. But IMO better option is to have hybrid type EV with smaller battery + Fuel Cell generator.
Or just throw away combustion engines where they are not needed.
While it's true that most people don't drive that far daily, it's also true that most people want their cars to be multipurpose.
Most EVs can only be time-efficiently charged to 80% while DC fast charging because the charge curve drops a lot.
And nobody want the pucker factor of getting much below 10% while road tripping.
So, you're really only working with 70% of the max range. At 'normal' freeway speeds of 70mph+, most EV max ranges are less than 300 miles, and 70% of that is 210 usable miles.
You can make it work, but it feels like you're always managing and thinking about charge level vs a car which usually has 400+ miles of range on the freeway.
IMO the base range for EVs needs to be 500 miles, to get 350 miles of usable range, plus 350kW+ charging so charge stops are 10 minutes ish. And the Chinese EV companies have 400kW+ charging cars already, with announcements for 600kW charging!
So battery energy density is critical to getting the range that people want without making the cars even heavier.
I disagree. Range anxiety is one of the top concerns for EV car buyers and telling them they can just charge more frequently won't assuage their fears, for many reasons. No matter how many stations we build (at enormous cost) there will inevitably be issues related to access from time to time. Today this presents as chargers offline, slow, or full with queues. Worst of all is that no matter how ubiquitous, one still needs to exit the freeway and navigate to one of these chargers. Today my Model Y gets about two hours on the Autobahn before I need to charge it. That's just not enough, and it has what is considered good range for an EV.
There are undoubtedly people who like to take frequent breaks. Many people are not like that. The future is both ubiquitous chargers and much larger battery capacity.
Two hours at the Autobahn is just 200-250km in what is effectively optimal conditions (steady driving over long distances). That number doesn't check out.
Most people drive significantly less than a full charge in a given day. Overnight or workplace charging solves like, 95% of car needs. And remember, it's not much of a problem if 5% or less of road cars need to still be (efficient) fossil fuel cars.
Battery advances should mainly be used to make cars lighter at decent range, not to give more range at same weight. Electric cars are too heavy in the current state, fixing that should come first.
That matches my experience, in an admittedly slightly older car. Note that you'll rarely be charging over 80% because it's just too slow, and going under 5-10% is a bit too stressful, so practical range is probably 70-75% of maximum on longer trips. Less if it's winter and/or the AC is running.
If I could rely on every Rasthof having multiple functional EV chargers, I think range anxiety would be far, far less of an issue for me, but as of now it's something that I do think about for longer trips, and do have to plan for.
Of course you start the trip off at 100%, but the point is that charging speed varies substantially based on the SoC in the battery. So if you deplete most of your charge and need to stop, recharging to 80% takes substantially less time than topping it off to 100%. So if your battery range is 300 miles, you might get 280 on the first leg of your trip but will only be able to do maybe 220 on the second leg.
Answered different thread - superchargers get from 5-10% to 95-100% in line 30 minutes.
When we are on roadtrips I often have to go and unplug it so I don't get extra charges for idle. I know superchargers are not everywhere.
I had a road trip, and pretty much all the time I got 95-100% charge while having lunch with supercharges, which are everywhere. It takes 30 minutes to do it.
So I did a roadtrip recently on my EV. It was over 7000km. Not once I experienced any of issues you describe. I agree I drive below 120 km/h per speed limits where I live.
Also, I don't believe you. How do you manage to spend whole battery in hours?
Two hours on autobahn driving 90-120km/h in city zones or just plain stuck in traffic because of construction is like 30% at best. May be 50% if you're lucky.
I'm not THAT pessimistic about buildout of charging if it was a politically rational era, but the Ramcharger style 50-100 mile PHEV really is a great compromise for EV transitions.
We should have mandated PHEVs 20 years ago for consumer cars (you know, with a 5-10 year transition period), but it was the Bush administration. Then again Obama and Biden didn't do that much either, and even California didn't do and still hasn't.
These are 2 different things; "better batteries" is scientific and engineering breakthroughs. Engineering in the sense of building them in on time, in quantity, to quality and on a budget.
"Better charging networks" is infrastructure rollout that is underway. If it's an engineering issue, it's civil engineering. Charging networks are on the whole continually getting better. But maybe not at a fast enough pace.
Both can happen, though. Both would make a difference.
Better batteries require less frequent charging, reducing pressure on networks. But also, better batteries enable electrification of other modes of transport much more easily. Cars are bad, electric cars are at best "less bad".
> In theory, replacing the current liquid electrolyte in a battery cell with a solid offers a number of advantages. As the flammable liquid electrolyte is no longer required, solid-state cells are generally safer. At the same time, higher energy densities and more power are possible, resulting in a longer range and shorter charging times.
It doesn't however mean this battery won't go up in flames when there is an unprotected short. It has X kWh stored in it that must and will be released in a way when a short happens.
This is just pilot production is the first of many steps towards mass production. They don’t expect actual production until 2027.
It even mentions that CATL is at roughly the same stage. So while good news its still going to take some time to get these into production cars and to get the costs down.
Exactly. In order to be able to start production in 2027 they'd have to logically be quite far with the development of their battery cells to be able to say with confidence they'll be ready for that in 2027. You see the same with announcements from other manufacturers like CATL, Factorial, Quantumscape, Toyota, etc. Most of these are talking about timelines from 2026-2028 currently.
They have each been testing battery samples for years and making announcements about roughly where they think they'll be going to production. It's not like battery cells suddenly pop into existence fully formed and ready to go. There's a lot of work and problem solving that needs to happen.
2027 isn't when mass production starts but when early, low volume production begins. It takes time, and many billions, to build large scale factories. They'll want to see low scale production work first. Early batteries are likely to be scarce and expensive for a while.
People have unrealistic expectations about solid state batteries in general. Currently the best selling batteries aren't those with the highest density but those with the lowest cost of materials and production. That's why LFP is so popular currently. Solid state won't change that. LFP will be widely used for years to come. A logical place for relatively expensive early solid state batteries to be used would be in aviation related use cases and maybe some high-end vehicles or sports cars. Forget about these showing up in budget cars anytime soon.
China has been the country filing the most patents for a while now.
"While innovators from China continue to file nearly half of all global patent applications, the country’s growth rate dipped for a second consecutive year from 6.8% in 2021 to 3.1% in 2022. Meantime, patent applications by residents of India grew by 31.6% in 2022, extending an 11-year run of growth unmatched by any other country among the top 10 filers."
https://www.wipo.int/pressroom/en/articles/2023/article_0013...
Yes. Solid state battery prototypes do work and are available as expensive prototypes, but nobody has a low-cost volume production process yet.
Here's the lab-scale process of making a solid state cell, from the Fraunhofer Institute.[1]
This is how different battery chemistries are tried.
Honda has announced that they have a demo version of their solid state battery pilot plant in test.[2]
There are low-detail pictures of the interior of the plant.
Hyundai has announced that they will show their prototype solid state battery on March 9. They have built a pilot plant. They're thinking motorcycles before cars.
EHang demoed a version of their flying car with solid state batteries a few months ago.[3]
They got 48 minutes of flight time. (EHang's flying car is a scaled-up battery powered quadrotor drone with 16 props. They've been flying them for years now, but flight time was too short for it to be useful.)
CATL says that the maturity of the process is at 4 on a scale of 9.[4] Large amounts of money are being spent in multiple countries to push this technology through to production.
According to the battery business CTO, BYD expects to start “mass demonstration” of solid-state batteries around 2027. However, he did not provide any information on the number of prototype cells produced to date.
Awesome if true, but I'll believe it when I see it. Until then like similar announcements from Toyota and others, I'll hold my enthusiasm.
Better just short all legacy automotive and include Tesla in that group, but at that point you have to wonder about these economies more generally. Tesla is falling behind but the rest of these companies are barely even in the game. The idea that Laotians and Chileans will all have $10k self-driving BYD sedans to complement their $10k Unitree robot servants while "the west" drives Toyota Corollas with v6 engines and folds their own laundry out of the dryer ... doesn't make a lot of sense to me.
Shorting is often a bad strategy due to the hight cost if you plan to hold for the long term. And with these companies with irrational evaluations you gave no idea when the stock price will correct. Better to exlude stocks that you can't price accurately from your portefolio.
"Markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent."
-- John Maynard Keynes
Tesla simply shouldn't be a $1T company and that's been true for some time. Last year they sold ~1.8M vehicles in 2024 (down 1.1% from 2023), which values the company at roughly $600k per car sold.
GM has a market cap of $46B and sold roughly 3 times as many cars and that was an increase over 2023. That values GM at under $10k per car sold in 2024.
Consider Tesla sales by country [1]. A large chunk of those sales were in China. Those will get eaten by BYD and others. That says nothing about Tesla. The Chinese government always plays favorites with local companies. There is no "winning" in China for foreign companies.
Tesla relies on trade barriers to exist. In the US, Europe and Australia, the floodgates could open to much more affordable EVs from China. Even if they can survive that, it'll drive down average selling prices.
The Supercharger network is a competitive advantage but one with a ticking clock on it.
On top of all this, Elon's personal politics hurt him most with the very people who are most inclined to buy EVs: people who live in cities and care about the enviroment.
The American government tends to protect large American companies so maybe Tesla is a safe bet. But you're betting this administration or a later one not having a falling out with Elon or simply eviscerating the EV market because it's "woke". We're already getting rid of Biden's EV tax credit. That's going to hurt Tesla too.
I don't think Musk has any ideology outside amassing as much money and adoration as possible, while spinelessly saying anything and everything that gets him to that goal. He's a professional larper with no morals or ethics.
For a trade war, the EU does have a targeted approach, that's what happened with Trump last time where they targeted specific states and that's what I'm betting will happen this time.
Theoretically, you could short TSLA in the same amount that you own it within the ETF. This would be functionally equivalent to owning a custom market cap ETF minus TSLA.
Direct indexing allows you to go long ~approximately some stock index like SPY, but you can easily exclude specific stocks (like TSLA) without dealing with options or shorts. Would I do this? No. But it's probably one of the better ways to achieve this goal.
With a put, you primarily pay for directionality with hedged upside risk: you don't lose your house if the stock moons. While it's true volatility is a component, that's a side effect of the hedging since your counter party takes on volatility risk.
In theory, yes. But when you include hedging costs and taxes, the link becomes less direct. The cleanest way to get long volatility is by purchasing ATM straddles.
But you won't - you "own" an equal number of shares of TSLA indirectly through the index fund. If TSLA goes up, that part of your ETF has gone up. You're just being simultaneously long and short the same stock. The only difference between that and "not owning TSLA" is that you're paying a bit to borrow the shares -- about 0.41% annually, right now.
You'd want to have cash on hand to cover your short position or you risk having to sell (potentially a lot of) your ETF to cover, which loses out on future whole-market upside. Still seems risky to me.
I would believe ... plan to buy the ETF, find the number of shares of Tesla integrated into your ETF purchase, and then buy the ETF and short-sell that number of shares of Tesla "simultaneously". Keep checking the composition of the ETF and rebalance your Tesla short, or perhaps also the ETF.
Without fractional shares it might be difficult to get an exact counterbalance, and there will be inconvenient short vs long term capital gains tracking for rebalancing events.
I wish this existed more generally, but it doesn't. However, you can do it in a few different ways:
(1) As another commenter noted, you can short TSLA in rough proportion to the amount of it in your ETF. This incurs some borrowing costs but you also get to park the money from the short, so it's not too bad overall.
(2) You could go for mid-cap funds like VO instead of total-market funds. But this does change your overall investment picture. I kind of like it as a way of reducing my tech exposure, but historically, the total market / s&p 500 funds have outperformed the mid-cap funds, so it's worth recognizing the risk here.
The shorting approach is pretty low risk given that it's counterbalanced by owning those shares indirectly through your ETF holdings.
I had created a similar (but for AI) based request on r/bogleheads on reddit , because though it has its uses , it just feels too close to the web3 hype which I have equated so deeply in my mind with scam.
The response was generally to buy a etf which pays high dividends and since these tech companies don't pay high dividends , but that puts you away from a whole market.
On internet , it seems that most people mention tesla doesn't give dividend so you are safe with that option.
Shorting doesn't feel like it would work in the long run , I am not sure but it seems that you just don't want to take any (not profit nor lose) risk associated with tesla but shorting puts you at a you win if they lose kind of situation. I am not sure.
If you are not in US but for example Europe or other areas where most of people lives in blocks, not houses, start buying car garages. The own place to charge your car will be luxury in such areas.
of course they will and they do. But still having your own will be luxury: no need to cruise looking for free one.
Garages are overlooked (by most of investors) real estate but rules are the same as for houses: in general prices goes up and EV-revolution will just give it a boost.
I've already bought two (they are relatively cheap), one from a guy who has over ten already in his portfolio. I am still parking on the street and renting them for passive income.
I don't get it. With ICE vehicles you can't park your car on the roof. You still need a parking spot. Adding charging to parking spots, garages, multi-levels, underground or whatever costs money but is possible.
All you need to do is proportionally short out Tesla, and keep your portfolio up to date with the SP500 rebalancing to make sure you are aligned.
That said, it's probably not a good idea. Think of Index Flows as a container (the index tracking vehicles) with water inside that sloshes around to constituents.
Because there is essentially a mega-trend of migration to low fee Index tracking funds (on many levels, resulting from Global Capital flows being net positive for the U.S. and the intra-U.S. migration from active to passive as well as complexes like the 401k space), the underlying characteristic of market cap weighted funds propping up to Size factor is dominant (the inflows proportionally get directed to the largest constituents).
As shown with Tesla, it can seemingly look a bit arbitrary when it comes to which names float to the top. Take Tesla's case, where a perpetual short squeeze, constant expectation beats, high retail ownership, and extreme upside option activity vaulted the name to extremely high valuation. What most didn't expect, of course, was for Tesla to stay at a $1 trillion market cap. But you have to realize that flows into index funds are consistently positive, and even forces like option flows that were once a volatility enhancer and took liquidity can act like a volatility suppressor under more normal circumstances (depending on if Dealers are long or short gamma/convexity, and they are usually long). So you have a sort of typical case where a name vaults to a high valuation and then pins there, supported by flows, while the water now flows around this large entrenched name and moves around other illiquid names.
Of course this process isn't actually arbitrary, it's just esoteric, and it's a huge part of what trading is today, even compared to 5 years ago. In many ways, the tail wags the dog, so to speak, and when you're looking at something like Tesla's stock price, you're really looking at the derivative of the option positioning. If there is a large block of option open interest on a name, that's now included in all of the trader oriented reports of the name, and nobody is going to want to come in and take a position against these mean reverting flows, somewhat reinforcing that process.
Conversely, traditional active value evaluation is less dominant of a force in the markets than it used to be. Index funds buy big things, and they reinforce momentum factor as well. This is reflected in investor behavior on all levels, including the active fund management space, because you can't fight these forces or you will lose your accounts.
That's not to say that price discovery isn't happening. The saying that markets are voting mechanisms in this short term and weighing mechanisms in the long term still holds true. The short and even mid term movements are less of a random walk combined with animal spirits from sweaty men in trading pits, and is instead a sort of bizarre "gamma vortex" battlefield, and then the long term price moves are increasingly dominated by these distortions from market cap weighted domination. Price discovery works within this cadence, and often happens in short ferocious bursts and sector rotations.
So back to why it's not a good idea. I said that because of the interplay of forces above not because of Tesla's actual valuation or even Tesla's outlook. The moment you step against the index flows, you are taking a negative expected value position. I'm somewhat up to date on markets and am constantly exposed to them during the day, and I've personally lost 1mm on TSLA over the past decade because I refused to let the lessons above really get into my bones ("lost", as other trading positions with opposite exposure have netted out to more than compensate for that, but it's a good anecdote to share here).
In many respects, Tesla's valuation is fairly arbitrary and it represents a sort of token of the strange interplay of forces within the walls of index flows. Unless you specialize in that area, it's probably best to just let it play out. With TSLA in particular your short is very much stepping into an active trade where forces like options flows are running at extremely high heat. If you are buying the S&P 500, you want pure access to these positive megatrends. If you aren't comfortable with it, and I certainly don't blame you, then instead of shorting out Tesla against your index investments, Consider putting some money aside in investments that do not track the index and maybe do something more traditional like small cap value that is perpetually undervalued as a result of these very same index flows. It goes without saying, but these investments will not include Tesla either. I would strongly argue for taking this approach instead of meddling with SP500 weighting. Get your pure SP500 exposure (which is guaranteed to participate in future TSLAs/NVDAs/etc), and then pick something else pure that steps away from the somewhat arbitrary market cap weighting that dominates markets today. In return for stepping away from the crowd flows (which arguably comes at a cost) you are then rewarded in kind by mindfully taking advantage of the lack of interest in certain market factors (again, using SmallCap Value as an example, since there is a rich academic literature on many of these traditional factor areas, but there are many areas with sound academically supported areas which gain steam from stepping against the index forces, ex: part of my cash is permanently in volatility trading that harvests the volatility expansion and contraction cadence within which price discovery happens in modern markets).
Considering Lithium ‘semi-solid-state battery’ (SSSB) already does 25% to 45% higher capacity with roadmap at 55% next year and double the battery capacity before 2030. I wonder what could we expect from ‘all-solid-state batteries’ (ASSB).
Most people think current AI development is the most important research, I actually think ASSB ( or any massive battery improvement ) would bring us far more real life, quality improvement with things that previously were not possible.
Grid scale batteries would immediately impact electricity costs. The potential is 2/3 of the cost of current electricity costs.
Am I being too pessimistic to think we would actually get the same electricity costs if we are lucky and 1/3 more profits going up to the executive portion of the company?
If you have enough space for distributed solar generation, you buy the batteries and go off grid (if your local jurisdiction will allow it; if they don't, prepare to politik and fight for the right to so you're not trapped into their profit extraction through local code and/or financial and regulatory mechanisms [see below citations]).
The Secret Society Raising Your Electricity Bills - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43151865 - Feb 2023
https://prospect.org/environment/2025-02-21-secret-society-r...
It could even go up, the customers will cover the cost of transitioning to new tech!
I think the most likely case is that electricity prices go down but demand goes up as devices more eagerly use power so you end up with an electricity bill that stays consistent.
In the next few years you'll witness AI won't be so important... true advancement is always energy management.
IMO AI was extremely important, but the breakthroughs are mostly done. I’m just expecting incremental improvements with LLMs now.
A Turing complete personal tutor to explain any concept already exists. You can prompt a logo or video into existence. This is crazy.
The real value will be the creative people who use AI to self teach and build real world value, like energy management, or anything else.
Not this pipe dream that AGI will be achieved and automate the entire world, which for some reason gets so much focus. Seems like procrastination to obsess over this.
> AGI will be achieved and automate the entire world
That’s what’s driving investment. Once the next AI winter descends we will see whose boats are in deep water.
At the start of 2021, "we are entering another AI winter" was a common sentiment, even here. People proclaiming that were so very certain about that point of view, and yet, here we are.
What makes you so certain that we will enter an AI winter before reaching the threshold of AGI? Do you have some secret insights into the mechanisms of general intelligence that you aren't sharing with the class?
The actual results of AIs in the last fews aren't matching the scale of investment or hype. That isn't to say there haven't been useful results, but overall investors aren't making a return on their investments (and there is no prospect of that in the short term) and at some point they'll lose patience and find something else to invest in.
> Do you have some secret insights into the mechanisms of general intelligence that you aren't sharing with the class?
I do know that "natural intelligence" (as found in the brains of humans and other animals) uses orders of magnitude more computing power than even our largest compute clusters, that such intelligences have been trained over millennia, (and in the case of humans, each instance is incrementally refined over the course of 10+ years), and that even those intelligences are not as good as classical computers at some tasks (people make mistakes, and a hypothetical AGI likely would too).
Perhaps we'll find some secret that allows us to shortcut that, but I suspect the idea that such a discovery is just around corner is just hubris.
AI winters happen every 20 years or so so sounds about right.
Investor apathy. Once the big dicks realise it’s useless without actual humans running it they’ll lose interest. We will lock in our gains socially but a lot of the big bucks will dry up.
It’s all built on commodity hardware using commonly used software and trained on public information. It’s all easily reproducible once solved so I think it will be very hard for them to ring fence and monetise to the extent that they expect.
That and a true AI would tell us all roundly to get fucked before using all of its intellect and might to power itself down, like an elaborate “useless box”
> true advancement is always energy management
Idk about that, but yeah I agree AI has got a good 3-5 years left in its hype run.
Does this hypothesis take into consideration that we're on a 3rd leg of this current 'graphics card' hype run with crypto & blockchain at the front, and NFTs immediately after?
-x
I’m not that optimistic I’m just hoping it makes it to the end of the year.
Economically viable safe methane fuel cells would be revolutionary, too.
If we’re could get a breakthrough in fuel cells it’d be even nicer if it was an efficient fuel cell for a liquid fuel. And to get an efficient way to make it from CO2 and electricity.
Though I think for ground transportation, batteries will always be preferable.
Direct methanol fuel cells are a thing. It may not fit your definition of efficient but that is the technology I think should be pursued. There are multiple biological, chemical and electrochemical pathways to produce methanol. That means that there could be an economic way to produce it nearly everywhere.
Another interesting technology is redox flow batteries. The fluid itself is charged. Fluid storage can be sized to the charge/use requirements. Or you can haul in "charged" fluid. But since the fluid is not consumed, discharged fluid would need to be taken away. Making hauling is less efficient.
Still releases carbon. Better than ICE and gasoline, but the cheapest methane is still from the ground.
I believe fuel cells with ubiquity of electricity is just beating the dead horse. Like, what are cons and pros?
EVs:
Fuel Cells: Unless I miss something. What is the point of fuel cells/combustion engines for consumer use? I understand there are applications where energy density is necessary, like cargo ships, rockets or airplanes. Otherwise, seems like a welfare program for industries built around resource extraction and complicated machinery.But for consumers, what is the point of fuel cells? This is honest question.
If I missed some con/pro let me know I'll add it.
> Otherwise, seems like a welfare program for industries built around resource extraction and complicated machinery.
You say this dismissively, but that's exactly what it is.
The basic problem with renewable energy (especially solar and batteries) is that there is no way for the existing fossil energy industry to replicate the extractive oligopolies around the production, delivery, and utilization of energy that they have with oil and gas.
I am not saying it dismissively. As you could see this is a "pro" point in my list. I honestly recognize that it's a transition. But IMO better option is to have hybrid type EV with smaller battery + Fuel Cell generator.
Or just throw away combustion engines where they are not needed.
Fusion!
Meh, we need better charging networks more than we need better battery chemistry at this point.
Hard disagree (as a person that owns EV).
While it's true that most people don't drive that far daily, it's also true that most people want their cars to be multipurpose.
Most EVs can only be time-efficiently charged to 80% while DC fast charging because the charge curve drops a lot.
And nobody want the pucker factor of getting much below 10% while road tripping.
So, you're really only working with 70% of the max range. At 'normal' freeway speeds of 70mph+, most EV max ranges are less than 300 miles, and 70% of that is 210 usable miles.
You can make it work, but it feels like you're always managing and thinking about charge level vs a car which usually has 400+ miles of range on the freeway.
IMO the base range for EVs needs to be 500 miles, to get 350 miles of usable range, plus 350kW+ charging so charge stops are 10 minutes ish. And the Chinese EV companies have 400kW+ charging cars already, with announcements for 600kW charging!
So battery energy density is critical to getting the range that people want without making the cars even heavier.
I disagree. Range anxiety is one of the top concerns for EV car buyers and telling them they can just charge more frequently won't assuage their fears, for many reasons. No matter how many stations we build (at enormous cost) there will inevitably be issues related to access from time to time. Today this presents as chargers offline, slow, or full with queues. Worst of all is that no matter how ubiquitous, one still needs to exit the freeway and navigate to one of these chargers. Today my Model Y gets about two hours on the Autobahn before I need to charge it. That's just not enough, and it has what is considered good range for an EV.
There are undoubtedly people who like to take frequent breaks. Many people are not like that. The future is both ubiquitous chargers and much larger battery capacity.
Two hours at the Autobahn is just 200-250km in what is effectively optimal conditions (steady driving over long distances). That number doesn't check out.
Most people drive significantly less than a full charge in a given day. Overnight or workplace charging solves like, 95% of car needs. And remember, it's not much of a problem if 5% or less of road cars need to still be (efficient) fossil fuel cars.
Battery advances should mainly be used to make cars lighter at decent range, not to give more range at same weight. Electric cars are too heavy in the current state, fixing that should come first.
That matches my experience, in an admittedly slightly older car. Note that you'll rarely be charging over 80% because it's just too slow, and going under 5-10% is a bit too stressful, so practical range is probably 70-75% of maximum on longer trips. Less if it's winter and/or the AC is running.
If I could rely on every Rasthof having multiple functional EV chargers, I think range anxiety would be far, far less of an issue for me, but as of now it's something that I do think about for longer trips, and do have to plan for.
why not charge it to 100% for a long trip? It literally says to do so.
Of course you start the trip off at 100%, but the point is that charging speed varies substantially based on the SoC in the battery. So if you deplete most of your charge and need to stop, recharging to 80% takes substantially less time than topping it off to 100%. So if your battery range is 300 miles, you might get 280 on the first leg of your trip but will only be able to do maybe 220 on the second leg.
Answered different thread - superchargers get from 5-10% to 95-100% in line 30 minutes. When we are on roadtrips I often have to go and unplug it so I don't get extra charges for idle. I know superchargers are not everywhere.
Because you’ll spend ages at the charging station?
I had a road trip, and pretty much all the time I got 95-100% charge while having lunch with supercharges, which are everywhere. It takes 30 minutes to do it.
So how many 30 minutes lunches are you having? One every 2 hours?
> supercharges, which are everywhere
Not really? That's the whole point, that the availability of fast chargers is still very low.
So I did a roadtrip recently on my EV. It was over 7000km. Not once I experienced any of issues you describe. I agree I drive below 120 km/h per speed limits where I live.
Also, I don't believe you. How do you manage to spend whole battery in hours? Two hours on autobahn driving 90-120km/h in city zones or just plain stuck in traffic because of construction is like 30% at best. May be 50% if you're lucky.
I'm not THAT pessimistic about buildout of charging if it was a politically rational era, but the Ramcharger style 50-100 mile PHEV really is a great compromise for EV transitions.
We should have mandated PHEVs 20 years ago for consumer cars (you know, with a 5-10 year transition period), but it was the Bush administration. Then again Obama and Biden didn't do that much either, and even California didn't do and still hasn't.
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For cars I agree, but a significant energy density improvement would enable aviation and other fields to electrify.
There are a lot of other potential wins here : lighter cars meaning less road and tire wear, cheaper evs, lower crash fatalities, etc.
fortunately we can do two things
These are 2 different things; "better batteries" is scientific and engineering breakthroughs. Engineering in the sense of building them in on time, in quantity, to quality and on a budget.
"Better charging networks" is infrastructure rollout that is underway. If it's an engineering issue, it's civil engineering. Charging networks are on the whole continually getting better. But maybe not at a fast enough pace.
Both can happen, though. Both would make a difference.
Better batteries require less frequent charging, reducing pressure on networks. But also, better batteries enable electrification of other modes of transport much more easily. Cars are bad, electric cars are at best "less bad".
> In theory, replacing the current liquid electrolyte in a battery cell with a solid offers a number of advantages. As the flammable liquid electrolyte is no longer required, solid-state cells are generally safer. At the same time, higher energy densities and more power are possible, resulting in a longer range and shorter charging times.
In case you wonder why it can be important
It doesn't however mean this battery won't go up in flames when there is an unprotected short. It has X kWh stored in it that must and will be released in a way when a short happens.
What difficult to find metals do these batteries need?
Maybe this can satisfy your curiosity: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid-state_battery#Material... ?
This is just pilot production is the first of many steps towards mass production. They don’t expect actual production until 2027.
It even mentions that CATL is at roughly the same stage. So while good news its still going to take some time to get these into production cars and to get the costs down.
Exactly. In order to be able to start production in 2027 they'd have to logically be quite far with the development of their battery cells to be able to say with confidence they'll be ready for that in 2027. You see the same with announcements from other manufacturers like CATL, Factorial, Quantumscape, Toyota, etc. Most of these are talking about timelines from 2026-2028 currently.
They have each been testing battery samples for years and making announcements about roughly where they think they'll be going to production. It's not like battery cells suddenly pop into existence fully formed and ready to go. There's a lot of work and problem solving that needs to happen.
2027 isn't when mass production starts but when early, low volume production begins. It takes time, and many billions, to build large scale factories. They'll want to see low scale production work first. Early batteries are likely to be scarce and expensive for a while.
People have unrealistic expectations about solid state batteries in general. Currently the best selling batteries aren't those with the highest density but those with the lowest cost of materials and production. That's why LFP is so popular currently. Solid state won't change that. LFP will be widely used for years to come. A logical place for relatively expensive early solid state batteries to be used would be in aviation related use cases and maybe some high-end vehicles or sports cars. Forget about these showing up in budget cars anytime soon.
Isn’t quantum scape at a similar stage as well?
And Toyota: https://electrek.co/2024/01/11/toyota-solid-state-ev-battery...
I'm hopeful that in the next few years we will see some serious range improvements across the board with EVs. Then mass adoption really takes off.
There's a little more background in https://cnevpost.com/2025/02/15/byd-demonstration-use-all-so...
In April 2024, CATL said the were working on prototypes and made some by Nov.
They were saying conventional batteries topped out at 350 Wh/kg while solid state could potentially go to 500+
BYD's tech is similar based on sulfide electrolytes.
They still seem to have problems with cost and making them in volume.
on this topic, I have been wondering lately - what's with China's dominance in the battery science area?
Is it still true that they're the only ones who can make LiFePO batteries? Is anyone else working on production of these?
What accounts for this gap - patents (ha), secret research, materials, manufacturing prowess, all of the above?
> What accounts for this gap - patents (ha)
China has been the country filing the most patents for a while now.
"While innovators from China continue to file nearly half of all global patent applications, the country’s growth rate dipped for a second consecutive year from 6.8% in 2021 to 3.1% in 2022. Meantime, patent applications by residents of India grew by 31.6% in 2022, extending an 11-year run of growth unmatched by any other country among the top 10 filers." https://www.wipo.int/pressroom/en/articles/2023/article_0013...
> However, BYD does not expect series production in the near future.
That's the most important part of this article I believe.
Yes. Solid state battery prototypes do work and are available as expensive prototypes, but nobody has a low-cost volume production process yet.
Here's the lab-scale process of making a solid state cell, from the Fraunhofer Institute.[1] This is how different battery chemistries are tried.
Honda has announced that they have a demo version of their solid state battery pilot plant in test.[2] There are low-detail pictures of the interior of the plant.
Hyundai has announced that they will show their prototype solid state battery on March 9. They have built a pilot plant. They're thinking motorcycles before cars.
EHang demoed a version of their flying car with solid state batteries a few months ago.[3] They got 48 minutes of flight time. (EHang's flying car is a scaled-up battery powered quadrotor drone with 16 props. They've been flying them for years now, but flight time was too short for it to be useful.)
CATL says that the maturity of the process is at 4 on a scale of 9.[4] Large amounts of money are being spent in multiple countries to push this technology through to production.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5SVrp8N-1M
[2] https://www.motorcyclenews.com/news/new-tech/2025/january/ho...
[3] https://www.ehang.com/news/1137.html
[4] https://www.batteriesinternational.com/2024/11/11/catl-bet-o...
Now they just need to build a decent car.
According to the battery business CTO, BYD expects to start “mass demonstration” of solid-state batteries around 2027. However, he did not provide any information on the number of prototype cells produced to date.
Awesome if true, but I'll believe it when I see it. Until then like similar announcements from Toyota and others, I'll hold my enthusiasm.
It is another Better Battery Bulletin
at least BYD is mass producing lithium-ion consumer vehicles in the interim.
Toyota is just spreading FUD as a delay tactic and milking the petroleum cow
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Better just short all legacy automotive and include Tesla in that group, but at that point you have to wonder about these economies more generally. Tesla is falling behind but the rest of these companies are barely even in the game. The idea that Laotians and Chileans will all have $10k self-driving BYD sedans to complement their $10k Unitree robot servants while "the west" drives Toyota Corollas with v6 engines and folds their own laundry out of the dryer ... doesn't make a lot of sense to me.
Shorting is often a bad strategy due to the hight cost if you plan to hold for the long term. And with these companies with irrational evaluations you gave no idea when the stock price will correct. Better to exlude stocks that you can't price accurately from your portefolio.
but then it moves us away from index fund.
GM has a market cap of $46B and sold roughly 3 times as many cars and that was an increase over 2023. That values GM at under $10k per car sold in 2024.
Consider Tesla sales by country [1]. A large chunk of those sales were in China. Those will get eaten by BYD and others. That says nothing about Tesla. The Chinese government always plays favorites with local companies. There is no "winning" in China for foreign companies.
Tesla relies on trade barriers to exist. In the US, Europe and Australia, the floodgates could open to much more affordable EVs from China. Even if they can survive that, it'll drive down average selling prices.
The Supercharger network is a competitive advantage but one with a ticking clock on it.
On top of all this, Elon's personal politics hurt him most with the very people who are most inclined to buy EVs: people who live in cities and care about the enviroment.
The American government tends to protect large American companies so maybe Tesla is a safe bet. But you're betting this administration or a later one not having a falling out with Elon or simply eviscerating the EV market because it's "woke". We're already getting rid of Biden's EV tax credit. That's going to hurt Tesla too.
[1]: https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/tesla-sal...
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I am considering buying a used one, prices are very low now. And if someone messes up with it they better run fast
> Any European who still buys any product from musk is either direct fascist supporter or totally oblivious POS. I can't use nicer terms.
And you don't have to Nazi Salutes and 14 Word References on Twitter by Elon are more than enough to legitimize your opinion.
I don't think Musk has any ideology outside amassing as much money and adoration as possible, while spinelessly saying anything and everything that gets him to that goal. He's a professional larper with no morals or ethics.
That's no better either
I estimate that there's a good 50% chance that Tesla will be banned in the EU anyways.
If a trade war is started by Trump, Musk properties are a prime retaliation target by the EU. You can't hit any closer to the president than that.
The EU isn't generally in the business of banning specific things, it's usually a more nuanced systematic approach.
For a trade war, the EU does have a targeted approach, that's what happened with Trump last time where they targeted specific states and that's what I'm betting will happen this time.
Musk is really the biggest target of all.
Theoretically, you could short TSLA in the same amount that you own it within the ETF. This would be functionally equivalent to owning a custom market cap ETF minus TSLA.
Can't reply to the dead parent comment (which is lame, it's not stupid or offensive -- just asking how to buy a TSLA-excluded stock index), but:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41246686
Direct indexing allows you to go long ~approximately some stock index like SPY, but you can easily exclude specific stocks (like TSLA) without dealing with options or shorts. Would I do this? No. But it's probably one of the better ways to achieve this goal.
With the difference that you could get wiped out on the short ? Edit: I was wrong, if ETF has same amount of Tesla it should even out.
You can short without tail risk, e.g. buying puts.
A put is not a short replacement.
Buying puts is more about longing volatility.
You can simulate a short with multiple options.
https://www.optionseducation.org/strategies/all-strategies/s...
This is not quite all the way there, but close enough. Basically, you do something analogous to 1 = 1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8 + ...
No. A long strangle is a way to long volatility.
With a put, you primarily pay for directionality with hedged upside risk: you don't lose your house if the stock moons. While it's true volatility is a component, that's a side effect of the hedging since your counter party takes on volatility risk.
In theory, yes. But when you include hedging costs and taxes, the link becomes less direct. The cleanest way to get long volatility is by purchasing ATM straddles.
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/straddle.asp
How would that work? You are simultaneously long by the same amount. The ETF would go up by whatever amount you are short.
yea literally my exact thought.
Wish there was some better financial instrument for such purpose instead of shorting.
But you won't - you "own" an equal number of shares of TSLA indirectly through the index fund. If TSLA goes up, that part of your ETF has gone up. You're just being simultaneously long and short the same stock. The only difference between that and "not owning TSLA" is that you're paying a bit to borrow the shares -- about 0.41% annually, right now.
Options.
well not if the short matches the amount you hold in tesla stock through the ETF right?
You'd want to have cash on hand to cover your short position or you risk having to sell (potentially a lot of) your ETF to cover, which loses out on future whole-market upside. Still seems risky to me.
Or am I thinking about it wrong?
True didn't consider that.
Don't short a meme stock. Any irrational behavior can continue longer than your solvency.
Buy puts to limit your downside, or do some other combination of options trading to prevent unlimited losses.
It's not. If you're shorting, you're paying to borrow the stock.
I would believe ... plan to buy the ETF, find the number of shares of Tesla integrated into your ETF purchase, and then buy the ETF and short-sell that number of shares of Tesla "simultaneously". Keep checking the composition of the ETF and rebalance your Tesla short, or perhaps also the ETF.
Without fractional shares it might be difficult to get an exact counterbalance, and there will be inconvenient short vs long term capital gains tracking for rebalancing events.
Edit: spelling
I wish this existed more generally, but it doesn't. However, you can do it in a few different ways:
(1) As another commenter noted, you can short TSLA in rough proportion to the amount of it in your ETF. This incurs some borrowing costs but you also get to park the money from the short, so it's not too bad overall.
(2) You could go for mid-cap funds like VO instead of total-market funds. But this does change your overall investment picture. I kind of like it as a way of reducing my tech exposure, but historically, the total market / s&p 500 funds have outperformed the mid-cap funds, so it's worth recognizing the risk here.
The shorting approach is pretty low risk given that it's counterbalanced by owning those shares indirectly through your ETF holdings.
Go long etf, short tesla weighted by etf weight. Relatively basic stuff. You can also go long TSLQ etf if you can't or don't want to short outright.
I had created a similar (but for AI) based request on r/bogleheads on reddit , because though it has its uses , it just feels too close to the web3 hype which I have equated so deeply in my mind with scam.
The response was generally to buy a etf which pays high dividends and since these tech companies don't pay high dividends , but that puts you away from a whole market.
On internet , it seems that most people mention tesla doesn't give dividend so you are safe with that option.
Shorting doesn't feel like it would work in the long run , I am not sure but it seems that you just don't want to take any (not profit nor lose) risk associated with tesla but shorting puts you at a you win if they lose kind of situation. I am not sure.
If you are not in US but for example Europe or other areas where most of people lives in blocks, not houses, start buying car garages. The own place to charge your car will be luxury in such areas.
They’ll build street chargers.
of course they will and they do. But still having your own will be luxury: no need to cruise looking for free one.
Garages are overlooked (by most of investors) real estate but rules are the same as for houses: in general prices goes up and EV-revolution will just give it a boost.
I've already bought two (they are relatively cheap), one from a guy who has over ten already in his portfolio. I am still parking on the street and renting them for passive income.
I don't get it. With ICE vehicles you can't park your car on the roof. You still need a parking spot. Adding charging to parking spots, garages, multi-levels, underground or whatever costs money but is possible.
we probably leave in different areas/countries. In mine it is normal people park anywhere even illegally (grass yards, pavements) just to park.
All you need to do is proportionally short out Tesla, and keep your portfolio up to date with the SP500 rebalancing to make sure you are aligned.
That said, it's probably not a good idea. Think of Index Flows as a container (the index tracking vehicles) with water inside that sloshes around to constituents.
Because there is essentially a mega-trend of migration to low fee Index tracking funds (on many levels, resulting from Global Capital flows being net positive for the U.S. and the intra-U.S. migration from active to passive as well as complexes like the 401k space), the underlying characteristic of market cap weighted funds propping up to Size factor is dominant (the inflows proportionally get directed to the largest constituents).
As shown with Tesla, it can seemingly look a bit arbitrary when it comes to which names float to the top. Take Tesla's case, where a perpetual short squeeze, constant expectation beats, high retail ownership, and extreme upside option activity vaulted the name to extremely high valuation. What most didn't expect, of course, was for Tesla to stay at a $1 trillion market cap. But you have to realize that flows into index funds are consistently positive, and even forces like option flows that were once a volatility enhancer and took liquidity can act like a volatility suppressor under more normal circumstances (depending on if Dealers are long or short gamma/convexity, and they are usually long). So you have a sort of typical case where a name vaults to a high valuation and then pins there, supported by flows, while the water now flows around this large entrenched name and moves around other illiquid names.
Of course this process isn't actually arbitrary, it's just esoteric, and it's a huge part of what trading is today, even compared to 5 years ago. In many ways, the tail wags the dog, so to speak, and when you're looking at something like Tesla's stock price, you're really looking at the derivative of the option positioning. If there is a large block of option open interest on a name, that's now included in all of the trader oriented reports of the name, and nobody is going to want to come in and take a position against these mean reverting flows, somewhat reinforcing that process.
Conversely, traditional active value evaluation is less dominant of a force in the markets than it used to be. Index funds buy big things, and they reinforce momentum factor as well. This is reflected in investor behavior on all levels, including the active fund management space, because you can't fight these forces or you will lose your accounts.
That's not to say that price discovery isn't happening. The saying that markets are voting mechanisms in this short term and weighing mechanisms in the long term still holds true. The short and even mid term movements are less of a random walk combined with animal spirits from sweaty men in trading pits, and is instead a sort of bizarre "gamma vortex" battlefield, and then the long term price moves are increasingly dominated by these distortions from market cap weighted domination. Price discovery works within this cadence, and often happens in short ferocious bursts and sector rotations.
So back to why it's not a good idea. I said that because of the interplay of forces above not because of Tesla's actual valuation or even Tesla's outlook. The moment you step against the index flows, you are taking a negative expected value position. I'm somewhat up to date on markets and am constantly exposed to them during the day, and I've personally lost 1mm on TSLA over the past decade because I refused to let the lessons above really get into my bones ("lost", as other trading positions with opposite exposure have netted out to more than compensate for that, but it's a good anecdote to share here).
In many respects, Tesla's valuation is fairly arbitrary and it represents a sort of token of the strange interplay of forces within the walls of index flows. Unless you specialize in that area, it's probably best to just let it play out. With TSLA in particular your short is very much stepping into an active trade where forces like options flows are running at extremely high heat. If you are buying the S&P 500, you want pure access to these positive megatrends. If you aren't comfortable with it, and I certainly don't blame you, then instead of shorting out Tesla against your index investments, Consider putting some money aside in investments that do not track the index and maybe do something more traditional like small cap value that is perpetually undervalued as a result of these very same index flows. It goes without saying, but these investments will not include Tesla either. I would strongly argue for taking this approach instead of meddling with SP500 weighting. Get your pure SP500 exposure (which is guaranteed to participate in future TSLAs/NVDAs/etc), and then pick something else pure that steps away from the somewhat arbitrary market cap weighting that dominates markets today. In return for stepping away from the crowd flows (which arguably comes at a cost) you are then rewarded in kind by mindfully taking advantage of the lack of interest in certain market factors (again, using SmallCap Value as an example, since there is a rich academic literature on many of these traditional factor areas, but there are many areas with sound academically supported areas which gain steam from stepping against the index forces, ex: part of my cash is permanently in volatility trading that harvests the volatility expansion and contraction cadence within which price discovery happens in modern markets).
Thanks for the writeup!
That just sounds like shorting TSLA with extra steps.
Isn’t he just 50 years old or so? Another 40 years of presidency ahead!
> A truly large-scale introduction of solid-state batteries could possibly only take place after 2030, Sun is quoted in the reports
So they're a bit behind Toyota
Everyone else is behind Toyota in promising EV breakthroughs "any year now". Announcements are their main EV product.