some of these technologies reduce or illuminate some hazardous problems with lithium batteries - and, yes, the terminal problem causing plating and fire will be solved at some stage by some company or companies.
However, IMO, you cannot have a huge amount of energy stored in a compact area that if that area is ruptured or similar - and, that source of energy will be completely safe if released in an uncontrolled manner.
I won't say it's impossible - but, I think it highly unlikely - ever. (Potential energy - yes, but, energy itself - no).
Aside from the lithium plating terminals problem - I am really astounded that we still stick thousands of little batteries together in large packs to power cars and houses ---------- it seems a very inefficient way to me - and, to build a gigafactoy to do something like that - well, to me - I think that alone proves that we are in the very early days of these technologies.
Very odd practice.
I asked at a recent conference on whether or not Tesla would have factored in to their business plan - revenue from battery replacement or refurbishment at all (like selling cars cheap and then making money on parts) -
I asked this because there was a titanium process for the terminals at the conference - and, I thought - well, if Tesla has factored this into their business plan, then, they sure wouldn't want some process that makes the batteries literally last forever (or practically forever).
I was told that Tesla has consistently been asked that question and that they have stated over and over again that they have NO plan beyond 5 years because they believed that technology would be completely different in 5 years anyway.
Which immediately brought to my mind that they would have wanted to make very sure that their billion dollar battery factory could be fairly easily upgraded in a hurry.
It's an interesting space - and, I expect a lot of blowups are to come - no matter what the power source or how it is contained.
