Futurology

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

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.

"In 2015, Beijing made it a top priority for China to become globally competitive in robotics as part of its Made in China 2025 campaign to import fewer advanced manufactured goods.

Industries received almost unlimited access to loans from state-controlled banks at low interest rates, as well as help in buying foreign competitors, direct infusions of government money, and other assistance. And in 2021, the government issued a detailed national strategy for expanded deployment of robots."

Even if the EU or the US decided to catch up with China on robots, it would take years to replicate China's advantages. It has vast manufacturing supply chains and a huge number of highly experienced senior manufacturing staff. It takes years to build up things like this, and they come from having a real manufacturing base, making real things.

Meanwhile, the EU and the US don't even seem to realize how important this challenge is, let alone do they do anything about it.

Does this make the 2030s the decade China becomes the world's robot superpower, making millions, and then tens of millions of robots a year?

There Are More Robots Working in China Than the Rest of the World Combined

Lenacapavir will still cost $28,000 a year in the US.

Patents should allow the first generic versions of Semaglutide (Ozempic) to appear next year. Again in low income countries, not developed nations.

Are we going to see a future trend of poorer countries bettering developed countries in health outcomes?

Philanthropies Strike a Promising Deal to Turn Back H.I.V.

The crash of the AI stock market bubble seems all but inevitable. If/when that happens, it won't end AI itself, just some of the AI companies. Ironically, the recession it will provoke will probably only accelerate the adoption of AI to replace human workers.

Our politics has yet to catch up to the coming realities of AI and employment, but I wonder how much longer that can last.

Measuring the performance of our models on real-world tasks: We’re introducing GDPval, a new evaluation that measures model performance on economically valuable, real-world tasks across 44 occupations.

Though it isn't getting as much attention, AI is driving rapid advances in robotics. This video illustrates how far robotics is advancing. What is cutting-edge now will be in cheap Chinese mass-produced robots like Unitree's $9,600 G1 in a few short years. Already, these capabilities are moving closer to general-purpose robots capable of most unskilled work; the question is how soon they arrive.

VIDEO - Enabling robots to plan, think and use tools to solve complex tasks with Gemini Robotics 1.5

AheadForm was formed in 2024, and this is at the prototype stage, not yet ready for commercial deployment. Still, it shows the direction of travel. Somewhat realistically human-like humanoid robots may not be too far away.

If many people are already happy with faceless AI "companions," imagine how much they might like this?

VIDEO - Face Robot: AheadForm Origin M1

One of the things that sometimes goes unappreciated about renewables is that they are a technology, not just an energy source. As such, they are subject to the same improvements humans make with technology. Coal and oil long ago reached maximum energy extraction efficiency, and any gains now are minimal.

Hydrogel.

Solar panels lose efficiency as they heat up. The new gel absorbs water from the air at night, and cools by "sweating" it during the day. In tests, this has given a 12% relative boost in power conversion efficiency. The gel may even extend the panel's lifetime. However, there are questions about how this gel will be used over the 20-30-year lifetime of a panel.

Double-Sided Panels.

Tongwei has achieved a record 91.7% bifaciality in their solar panels, meaning the back of their panels is 91.7% as efficient as the front. This is significant because they've done it with cheaper technology that was supposed to be inferior. Most installations see about 10-20% more power from bifacial panels. The exact amount depends heavily on the setup.

Hydrogels keep solar panels cool, efficient, and durable

Tongwei achieves 91.7% bifaciality factor for 722 W TOPCon solar module