It sounds like they are planning to make battery packs cheaper by adding expensive electronics to each cell, and make them denser by adding air space 
(Does anyone else remember Ball Semiconductor?)
It seems you have information about our BOM that we don't have?
Nice obfuscation there. The cost of electronics vs. battery cells is not exactly a secret.
Do you know what's strange? I was expecting people here to ask technical questions about how it's done, specifically about the electronics. But that seems to be all rather obvious. Weird 
Yes, the electronics part is pretty obvious, and it's also obvious that you're not here to discuss it in any detail, so that just leaves talking about the "why" of it.
It's worth noting Bert didn't invite himself here to shill his product. He came here to respond to a rabid, infantile, bash-fest of his company's product, which is still in development. He's under no obligation to answer any questions at all.
I think part of the reason that questions about the electronics have been few is that it doesn't seem like the part that will make or break the project. If each ball has external contacts in a tetrahedral arrangement, then the cell electrodes will each need switches to go four ways. You could also use a low-ohm resistor to bypass a cell that has failed. Communication could use fieldbus protocols, or if it is better to do unidirectional it could work as a ring. Combined power+data modulation is now very common, with 1Wire, PoE, powerline, etc, but as far as I know this would be the first application to series string generators. In this case you don't need very high speed data, but you would like low latency, so some ideas of e.g. EtherCat might be useful.
Something I realized is that the concept of having a pile of balls working together to make power, that can be dropped out one by one and sorted, is inspired by pebble bed nuclear reactors.
It's worth noting Bert didn't invite himself here to shill his product. He came here to respond to a rabid, infantile, bash-fest of his company's product, which is still in development. He's under no obligation to answer any questions at all.
He's a marketing guy who came here to do damage control...
It's a product that needs almost every EV manufacturer onboard to work (zero chance) plus who's going to pay to install those ball machines that need to be available before the product takes to the road?
On the plus side it's a slick presentation, perhaps good enough to get a government research grant GNDN.
It'll never be a commercial success for the automotive industry, I can't think of a practical use for it anywhere. What's the timeline and cost projections for this project anyway?
TLDR it's a money pit. Bail out.
Perhaps Vincent can correct me or elaborate, but I thought I heard somewhere the Tesla plan down the road was for you to pull up to a tesla station, drive over an apparatus, and the battery pack is pulled of the bottom of the car and a freshly charged one is put in its place and off you go. That sounds like the most practical solution. Just like exchanging welding tanks. They don't fill your tank. They just hand you another full one.
yep. it does exist. the Harri s Ranch station in southern CA has one. It is operational ( but by invite only )
90 seconds for a swap.
It's worth noting Bert didn't invite himself here to shill his product. He came here to respond to a rabid, infantile, bash-fest of his company's product, which is still in development. He's under no obligation to answer any questions at all.
He's a marketing guy who came here to do damage control...
he's not marketing guy... i know him.
There's been some hardcore development to make this thing work. It is very clever technology.
It's worth noting Bert didn't invite himself here to shill his product. He came here to respond to a rabid, infantile, bash-fest of his company's product, which is still in development. He's under no obligation to answer any questions at all.
He's a marketing guy who came here to do damage control...
he's not marketing guy... i know him.
There's been some hardcore development to make this thing work. It is very clever technology.
According to his profile on LinkedIn he's an ex Nokia sales manager having done some RF stuff back in the day.
Clever it is, neat too. But does it have a market no. It needs to be sold to the consumer to fill a need that doesn't appear to be there.
The egg adds complexity and cost to an EV, it also simply cannot offer the same Wh per cubic meter (egg shape, electronics) than a bank of batteries on a bus bar can.
If you know anything about the auto industry it won't spend a dime it doesn't have to. Even if it kills people.
The egg adds complexity and cost to an EV, it also simply cannot offer the same Wh per cubic meter (egg shape, electronics) than a bank of batteries on a bus bar can.
As was pointed out earlier though, EV batteries are not a solid mass of lithium cells either. Large and high-performance EV batteries require cooling. Also, large cells swell during operation and must be compressed to mitigate deformation which could otherwise lead to internal shorts. So you end up with a non-negligible chunk of the battery's volume and weight dedicated to thermal and mechanical management.
Since the "eggs" are loose and have low individual waste heat, they can likely be cooled by forced convection through the tank.
Perhaps Vincent can correct me or elaborate, but I thought I heard somewhere the Tesla plan down the road was for you to pull up to a tesla station, drive over an apparatus, and the battery pack is pulled of the bottom of the car and a freshly charged one is put in its place and off you go. That sounds like the most practical solution. Just like exchanging welding tanks. They don't fill your tank. They just hand you another full one.
yep. it does exist. the Harri s Ranch station in southern CA has one. It is operational ( but by invite only )
90 seconds for a swap.
Harris ranch is one of those crazy places. Millionaires and Billionaires fly into that dusty hole in the west side of the valley to a private airstrip to eat a $50 steak, then get back on their plane and fly away. At last count you pass by over 200 of our installations in that stretch of I 5 from the bottom of the grapevine up to about Tracy visable from the road, and many thousands across the valley and beyond, each one helping save thousands of gallons of water per day through high efficiency irrigation, yet I have never had a steak at harris ranch
never had enough money to justify it, and if I am out there its because I am working and do not have the time.
There's been some hardcore development to make this thing work.
This all about it, while hardcore development need means, that this is hardcore idea and if someone do not know what is inside this egg "battery"l thay maybe will buy this thing, but today a lot of people read forums and when someone discoveres its complexity which means much higher probability of failure, that maybe if want be fancy will buy this thing, but I do not want risk finishing my EV trip without electricity in my vehicle in remote place
I'm curious about a couple of things.
1. Why egg shaped not spheres?
2. Do you have a working prototype of the tank & fill / un-fill station, not a CGI graphic? If so link?
The egg adds complexity and cost to an EV, it also simply cannot offer the same Wh per cubic meter (egg shape, electronics) than a bank of batteries on a bus bar can.
As was pointed out earlier though, EV batteries are not a solid mass of lithium cells either. Large and high-performance EV batteries require cooling. Also, large cells swell during operation and must be compressed to mitigate deformation which could otherwise lead to internal shorts. So you end up with a non-negligible chunk of the battery's volume and weight dedicated to thermal and mechanical management.
Those same considerations apply to the battery balls - they can only be worse than a conventional pack.
Since the "eggs" are loose and have low individual waste heat, they can likely be cooled by forced convection through the tank.
Then you could make an air cooled conventional pack, and it would still be denser than the battery ball tank.
However, a liquid cooled conventional pack can be denser than any air cooled pack, which is why they are used in cars...
Those same considerations apply to the battery balls - they can only be worse than a conventional pack.
My point was that the "eggs" are not necessarily at that much of a Wh/m^3 or Wh/kg disadvantage once you take all the extra design elements that go into conventional packs: the eggs may not be packed as densely by volume as conventional cells but they do not require liquid cooling, pumps, coolant and radiators either, so what you lose in terms of tank density, you get most of it back by eliminating other stuff - you may have to take on 15kg of extra packaging and 20L of extra volume with the eggs to achieve the same capacity as a traditional battery but you eliminate a 15kg liquid cooling system that occupied 20L of space, so you end up with similar overall system energy density for the complete storage system. The total weight and volume just got shifted around.
The claim that balls can achieve similar performance to traditional batteries is plausible when you look at the system as a whole.
But you're also adding a sack of electronics to the mix.
Those same considerations apply to the battery balls - they can only be worse than a conventional pack.
My point was that the "eggs" are not necessarily at that much of a Wh/m^3 or Wh/kg disadvantage once you take all the extra design elements that go into conventional packs: the eggs may not be packed as densely by volume as conventional cells but they do not require liquid cooling, pumps, coolant and radiators either, so what you lose in terms of tank density, you get most of it back by eliminating other stuff - you may have to take on 15kg of extra packaging and 20L of extra volume with the eggs to achieve the same capacity as a traditional battery but you eliminate a 15kg liquid cooling system that occupied 20L of space, so you end up with similar overall system energy density for the complete storage system. The total weight and volume just got shifted around.
I can't understand your argument. No one would bother with liquid cooling unless it enabled significantly higher density than air cooling, even including the cooling system components.
But, a conventional pack doesn't have to be liquid cooled, and in that case the battery balls can only be worse than a conventional air cooled pack, because of the extra electronics, and the packing fraction issue.
But, a conventional pack doesn't have to be liquid cooled, and in that case the battery balls can only be worse than a conventional air cooled pack, because of the extra electronics, and the packing fraction issue.
Even if you get away without liquid cooling, you still still need to dedicate volume and weight to some form of thermal management or otherwise, cells near the middle of the pack will get significantly warmer, will perform worse and wear out faster than the rest.
As far as the "extra electronics" are concerned, which I presume is mainly about the ridiculous amount of space wasted on PCBs in the prototype, keep in mind that that it is exactly that: a prototype made from off-the-shelf parts. The 4-5 PCBs would likely get reduced to one ASIC integrating all the smarts and one or two power hybrid doing the routing, freeing most of the internal volume for a larger cell before this thing reaches production.
It's also worth noting that EV battery packs are HEATED as well as cooled!
Cars have a horrible operating environment, and general need to keep worked down to at least -15degC and generally should provide a modest "limp home" capacity even at -30degC. In order to achieve this, current EV's use the energy within the battery system to heat that battery when ambient temps fall below about 5 degC. (which is why manufacturers recommend leaving the vehicle connected to the charger when parked, even when fully charged). Using a water "cooled" battery system means the vehicle can use the cabin heater to warm the battery coolant in a controlled fashion. The high thermal capacity of water also means hot (or cold) spots are avoided within the battery system.
It's all well and good coming from a "Mobile phone" background, but i suspect the Battery Ball team are going to quickly find out just how difficult (and conservative) the passenger car market is.
Also, another issue i can see is that the "refueling" stations will have to actively condition these ball cells, especially when those stations are in environmentally poor locations etc
The people inventing stuff like this think the problem they are solving is somehow important to making electric cars ready for the mainstream.
They seem to reach this conclusion because of course, electric cars need to be as convenient as gasoline powered cars, and those can be fueled up in about 5 minutes.
The thing is, most of the time, most people drive their cars less than ~75 miles a day, which is why the designers of electric cars have targeted a minimum range of ~75 miles. This means that most of the time, most electric cars need to be charged at most once a day. But the thing is, unlike gasoline vehicles, they can be refueled/charged while they are parked. The result is that for most owners, most of the time, 5 minute recharges of most electric cars are not a concern.
Ah, but sometimes people drive their gasoline cars hundreds of miles at a time! If they can't sometime drive their electric cars hundreds of miles at a time without recharging for an hour every hour or two, most people will never buy electric cars. Therefore, we need some way of recharging electric cars ~as quickly as we can refuel gas powered cars. That actually remains to be seen. It might be that people are willing to rent cars for long drives. It is also likely that in the longer run, the cost of batteries for electric cars could decline enough that most electric cars have ~300 miles range. Once you have 300 miles range, ~5 minute recharges are less important, even on long trips, because most people need a break for bathrooms, food, and stretching their legs every 4-5 hours. Already today, Teslas can charge to ~170 miles of range in 30 minutes at a "Supercharger" station.
Bottom line, the trends look like stuff like this is going to be a small niche in a mainstream electric car market, and as such, will likely never get the critical mass needed to be viable.
It is also likely that in the longer run, the cost of batteries for electric cars could decline enough that most electric cars have ~300 miles range.
Aside from cost, there is also the weight and volume consideration of that 300 miles / 500km battery since the extended-range battery is nothing more than dead weight and space for most everyday driving. If the Standford aluminum-based battery works as well as the students said it did, we could have inexpensive high capacity batteries soon - as long as weight and space are not major constraints.
It is also likely that in the longer run, the cost of batteries for electric cars could decline enough that most electric cars have ~300 miles range.
Aside from cost, there is also the weight and volume consideration of that 300 miles / 500km battery since the extended-range battery is nothing more than dead weight and space for most everyday driving.
It is simple sidecar solution when higher range needed and no another "egg battery" needed
Watch carefully: range 20-45 km on one charge and... up to 5 passengers
It's worth noting that because an EV has a "bi-directional" powertrain (ie it can source and sink power) the absolute mass of the vehicle has a significantly lower effect on it's fuel consumption (approx 65% lower in fact, as that is the typical overall round trip efficiency of an EV powertrain). Much more important is the vehicles aerodynamic and rolling frictional losses in fact, as those loses are "one way" and irrecoverable.
This is why cars like the Tesla p85, despite being significantly heavier than a conventional ICE passenger car can still return overall lower energy consumption figures!
It is simple sidecar solution when higher range needed and no another "egg battery" needed
A side-car might make sense on a motorcycle but on a car, not so much.
Much more important is the vehicles aerodynamic and rolling frictional losses in fact, as those loses are "one way" and irrecoverable.
Yep, and when see people trying change ebike into a few kW EV with aerodynamic Cx~0.95 and A~1m^2 to get higher range it is
When higher mass is moving than regenerative brakeing sometimes can help extend EV range, but first we need good aerodynamic: low Cx and as low as possible air impact area, so something long and thin relative to weight like train will have advantage.
Sidecar I mean no exactly something like in video above, but designed for EV with aerodynamic in mind which somehow extends, not disturb oryginal vehicle aoerodynamic, but like a train-improoves ratio of Cx*A per vehicle mass, so adding sidecar doesn't change to much Cx and sometimes can even improve overall aerodynamics (reduce drag)
BTW: Tried a few days drive classic car 1.5m wide and 1.5 high (I guess-Peugeot 206 1.4HDI) at speed 50kmh-60kmh, so within city limits and... not so bad ONLY a few cars long traffic jam
But I do not care while probably at those speeds its fuel consumption was very low (for sure below 4L diesel/100km), but unfortunatelly haven't got integrated classic car speed meter yet with custom MCU and
http://www.invensense.com/mems/gyro/mpu6050.html ( Six-Axis MEMS Gyroscope + Accelerometer MPU6050 ) to be able calculate terrain slope without need to use GPS and maps, so I could obtain total energy changes (kinetic 1/2mV^2 + gravity m*g*h) to compare fuel consumption with aerodynamic speed increase (probably need air speed meter too).
Anyway when this IC 1.4 HDI fails for sure will try convert Peugeot 206 to EV with help of sidecar, while inserting too many batteries inside classic ICE car to convert to EV I don't think is best idea when we chose traveling to places where parking with longer vehicle is not a concern