Futurology Today

People often complain about lab breakthroughs going nowhere in the real world. That makes CATL's claims for its Naxtra sodium-ion batteries interesting. CATL is the world's biggest battery maker. If anyone can bring a product to market, it can.

Current lithium-ion battery pack prices are around $100-150/kWh. CATL says one day sodium-ion batteries could cost just $10/kWh. That would require a lot to go right, and massive economies of scale. But that has worked for lithium batteries, and CATL has the heft to make economies of scale plausible.

If fossil fuels and nuclear energy are already feeling the heat from renewables plus lithium being cheaper, renewables plus sodium-ion batteries at $10/kWh would be an annihilation event for other energy sources. They could also usher in an age of micro-grids and decentralized energy, reducing reliance on big business, autocratic countries, and large corporations. Fingers crossed it happens soon.

CATL’s sodium-ion EV battery passes China’s new certification with 15-minute fast-charging capability

cross-posted from: https://leminal.space/post/27314526

I wonder how close the day is when we will have cheapish ( $20k, or so) humanoid robots capable of most unskilled or semi-skilled work? I'd guess 2030, or so. This new training approach confirms that the guess is on track to be right.

Significant too that they used Unitree's G1 model. It retails for less than $20k. When these robots capable of most work arrive, they won't be expensive. They'll work 24/7 for a fraction of the cost of a minimum wage human employee.

Dealing with this, by reorganizing our economic system, is likely to be the main political issue in developed nations in the 2030s.

HumanoidExo Turns Human Motion Into Data That Teaches Robots to Walk

European & US car makers seem to be in retreat. European car makers are lobbying the EU to relax laws pressuring them to hurry the transition to EVs. The current US administration wants to pretend the switch to EVs isn't happening, and gasoline will go on forever. This stance will doom the country's car industry on the global stage, and eventually at home, too.

Some people complain about Chinese manufacturing dominance through shady and unfair practices, but they won't be able to when China owns the global car-making industry in the 2030s. All the warning signs were clearly signposted, and willingly ignored.

Top 20 Table by CleanTechnica

The French government is in turmoil. There have been 5 different Prime Ministers since 2024, the most recent one resigning a few weeks into the job. All have left for the same reason. The French state is becoming ever more indebted paying for its citizens' welfare entitlements, but politicians cannot bring themselves to cut them or tax more. Now the country is close to a debt crisis, with spiralling interest payments.

The situation in France is acute, but other developed nations like the US, Japan, and Britain are also close to the same crisis, and for the same reasons. It's a structural demographic shift. The ageing of populations across the developed world is no longer a distant challenge. It is now a live crisis, and its financial, political, and social effects are beginning to cascade. Existing solutions to this problem - like mass immigration - have run their course.

A Debt Jubilee is the cancellation of all debts of a certain class, and they've been carried out many times in history, going back to ancient times. Is it an idea that is due for a revival?

1. France, the Ageing Population, and the Future of State Viability…

2. Reducing Debt via a Modern Debt Jubilee

Concentrated solar optics (e.g., Fresnel lenses) focus sunlight onto a receiver, converting it into high-temperature heat. That heat is stored in a thermal (heat) battery. Because energy is stored thermally, it avoids many of the degradation issues and material constraints of chemical batteries. When power is needed, the stored heat drives a heat engine (or equivalent conversion) to produce electricity on demand.

They claim electricity production at $0.04 per kWh, which is in the range of existing solar & wind electricity production.

They're a start-up and tying their fortunes to the data center boom. Why pick this instead of existing solar+batteries, though? They say it has advantages over existing solar. It needs simpler materials and doesn't rely on Chinese supply chains.

Exowatt’s ‘next-generation renewable energy’ tech could power data centers faster: - The Miami-based company raised $70 million to commercialize its solar-powered energy system, which can provide round-the-clock power without a grid connection.