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At Current Rates, Tesla Could Soon Suck Up Worldwide Supply of Li-Ion Cells
cartechboy writes "Lets just say Elon Musk may need to go battery shopping, like, big-time. Here's some little-understood Tesla math that could turn the global market for cylindrical lithium-ion cells upside down by 2015. It turns out the massive Model S battery takes almost 2,000 times the number of cells a basic laptop does. Assume Tesla just doubles production from its current 21K cars/year to 40K cars/year. (Something it expects to do by 2015). At that point, Tesla would require the *entire* existing global capacity for 18650 commodity cells. That assumes no other growth, no next gen model, nada. What should Elon do? Better get on the horn to Panasonic and Samsung."
Our newfound infatuation with extremely flat laptops that have about as many user-servicable parts as 2001's Monolith means that demand for 18650 Li-ion cells in laptops should be plummeting! Problem solved.
Now we just need to go liberate whoever is living on top of our lithium, and we are good to go.
If we extrapolate this curve and assume everything else remains constant, DOOOOOOOOOM!!!!
But it gets the clicks, and that's all that matters on the tubes.
Take a look at this chart:
http://qph.is.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-bcc9036c04a16179b3ecfd490333a32e
Interesting examination of it on Quora: http://www.quora.com/Dharmesh-Bhatt/Quora-gold/Batteries-are-following-Moores-law
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
I seem to recall some old English dude saying stuff about supply and demand... But sarcasm aside, isn't it about time we had some tangible breakthroughs in battery tech?
weinersmith
Make more?
Crisis solved. I will even waive my customary consulting fee.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
Maybe Mr. Musk would be better served dumping more R&D into super capacitors instead.
Life is not for the lazy.
So if Tesla doubles production, it would consume the entire world's production of li-ion cells. So the measly 21k cars Tesla produces use half of the world's production already? Maybe I can't read and/or do math though.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
Yeah; in particular it assumes that there will be no growth in production of batteries, despite the increase in demand. Maybe that's not such a good assumption? Nah, let's just print another FUD piece about electric cars.
http://xkcd.com/605/
18650 is the name of the size of cell. See this table.
We start with some seriously breathless doom-and-gloom headlines and summary, then reading the articles we find this sort of thing:
The carmaker's rapid production scale-up has prompted Panasonic to expand capacity, by reopening previously idled plants, while simultaneously committing to build entirely new production lines.
So prices had been dropping, production had been cut, but now at least one cell maker has restarted idled lines. That doesn't exactly sound like a disaster in the making.
I am not a crackpot.
I wonder which has the better profit margin, electronic devices or Tesla? Presumably that decides how this plays out. The interesting thing is that it's going to become a barrier to entry for electric car makers. The one with the highest profit margin can set the price of the batteries above the profit margin of the competition when there is a supply shortfall.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Seriously, putting an r-squared value on the chart for apparently FOUR data points? Scientist card revoked.
http://troll.me?p=9286
18650 is the model
These comments are my personal opinions and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the other voices in my head.
Elon Musk founded PayPal, Tesla, and a company that flies TO SPACE. I'm sure he has the supply strategy for the #1 component of his cars worked out. What a non-story.
At least they aren't buying up all the HeLa cells. That would be creepy.
It would drive the price of batteries sky high, as well as other devices that use said batteries, such as cell phones.
Supply and demand. Econ 101. Nothing to see here besides another Tesla slashvertisement.
18650 is the Li-ion cell type not the quantity. It looks like a bulked up AA battery and is typically available in the range of 2.5 - 3.0 AHr at 3.7 volts.
Better get on the horn to Panasonic and Samsung.
Tesla already has a manufacturing deal with Panasonic, who makes all their cells. They don't buy the thing on the open market. I'm pretty sure that if Tesla wants more batteries, Panasonic can and will ramp up production.
Basically, they're on their way to consume the li-on's share of Li-Ion cells. Sounds about right!
Ezekiel 23:20
we'll start making LiON batteries from carbon, zinc, and magnesium dioxide, then.
the lithium/rare earths mine in California is going to have to start exporting to China.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
and the speedometer has to be marked -2000 to +10,000 years, not in mph
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
The lithium ion 18650 cylindrical cell production has been dropping as laptop demand has dropped and as laptops are moving to lithium polymer flat pack batteries.
Panasonic/Sanyo has had to close factories. Originally, Panasonic's plants that were acquired from Sanyo were supposed to be able to produce 300 million cells in their Suminoe plant in Osaka, Japan in just stage 1.
http://www.eetasia.com/ART_8800603184_765245_NT_5f784554.HTM
That plant alone, running at full stage 1 capacity could produce enough batteries for 40,000 85kWh Model S's. The demand from Tesla is strong enough that they are expanding production again:
http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2013-08-21/news/41433228_1_lithium-ion-batteries-production-line#
However, it really isn't the Model S or Model X that will have the issue, or even the initial production of whatever Gen 3 car that is coming. The big issue is making enough batteries for millions of EVs, and that will take some planning for the necessary expansion.
Just use the design for the Chevy Volt. Had mine two years, beat the snot out of it - and it's as good as new, or actually, slightly better in range. GM has that all worked out re temp/charge/balancing control - and as a result, both would get cheaper due to volume. And yes, I'm about to test-drive a Tesla, since my solar system has the extra juice to handle both.
Why guess when you can know? Measure!
This article is a classic example of why this sort of reasoning is wrong:
http://www.jir.com/geographic.html
"PUBLICATION AND DISTRIBUTION OF THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE MUST BE IMMEDIATELY STOPPED AT ALL COSTS! This beautiful, educational, erudite, and thoroughly appreciated publication is the heretofore unrecognized instrument of doom which must be erased if we as a country or continent will survive. It is NOT TOO LATE if this warning is heeded!"
The Great Horse-Manure Crisis of 1894. Writing in the Times of London in 1894, one writer estimated that in 50 years every street in London would be buried under nine feet of manure.
Summary sez that...
>no assumptions that the situation will ever change except that Tesla will use more batteries:
FTFS "That assumes no other growth, no next gen model, nada."
Increased demand will make it profitable for economies of scale in manufacturing to take place, and to make Li cells cheaper, as has happened since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. And we'll have more of them.
FTFA:
Well, duh!
It's not like we're going to run out of Lithium, either. It's recyclable, first and foremost, and it's plentiful.
Clicking through to the article, it's not at all as sensationalist as the summary even though the article itself contains some BS. The summary says that we're going to suddenly run out because of the demand. No such thing is mentioned in the article itself.
Invest in battery manufacturers. That's the real take-away from this article. And the summary writer is a douchebag.
--
BMO
They should've fit it with a cubic function to claim an r^2 of 1.
To build that Ark reactor he wears....
Or ask Howard Heughes, the real Tony Stark, for his Ark technology.
Seriously, the #1 problem with electric vehicles is that we have crap power storage systems. If he wants to change the world, stop with flights of fancy and dump ALL his effort into just tripling battery storage capacity and life.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
18650 cells?
Thats like saying "If everyone bought their house using pennies, we wouldn't have enough pennies!". 18650 cells are ideal for laptops, but for cars, one uses bigger batteries, for which there is more production volume.
No, the R stands for Round, and designates that it's a cylindrical cell. The 0 is just the tenths place, denoting that the cell is 65.0 mm long. I'm sick of this misconception (spread memetically through and from candlepowerforums), could you people please get it right?
1.21 Jigawatts! Science!!!
There was a time when there was this thing called the iPod, and it had a small magnetic hard drive inside it. iPods were really big business - hundreds of millions were made. iPods practically cornered the market for 1.8" hard drives for a while. The world did not end.
More recently, Apple started producing iPods and, later on, entire freaking phones, tablets, and computers that did away with the spinning magnetic discs in favor of flash memory. Apple sold of lot of those, too, and for a long while has consumed a large fraction of the entire world output of flash memory. Lo and behold: world output increased to match demand.
If anything, these facile comparisons should give Elon Musk an idea: pre-purchase huge swaths of 18650s as a strategic move, just as Apple has done for flash memory and touchscreens over the years. Doing so would ensure the lowest possible price, a consistent supply chain, and make it harder for competitors to enter the market on equal terms.
The first linked article mentions them explicitly:
Tesla is the only carmaker to use small "commodity" 18650 cells for plug-in vehicles; Nissan, General Motors, BMW, and others use larger-format cells, which contain up to 10 times the energy in each cell.
The issue is whether there is a production limit for "18650" cells, or if only enough are made that would be sold, and now Tesla need more, more will be made.
Given that ultimately they're all Li-ion, just in different formats, it's not a real issue as long as Tesla have managed their suppliers expectations.
The carmaker's rapid production scale-up has prompted Panasonic to expand capacity, by reopening previously idled plants, while simultaneously committing to build entirely new production lines.
Yes.
No real story, certainly no panic.
lithium ion batteries are awful. currently available, there are much better battery types out there, like the si-anode battery, among others. the future,however, is not batteries, it is supercapacitors made out of graphene. there wont really be a huge market for electric cars until supercapacitors are available, because they hold a much larger charge and build up storage 100x faster than a battery. with graphene supercapacitors, electric cars will be able to go much further without recharging than a normal car would go without refueling.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium
is it economically viable to isolate it from the sea?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I'll have to buy a petrol version.
Tesla really needs to give up on electric cars. Unless, they can prove their CO2 footprint is lower than building and running a petrol car.
Pigs might fly....
Wait wait... You just made a computer analogy for a car issue. This is a complete reversal of Slashdot policy. I'm afraid your userID will have to be suspended.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
I'm sure _no one_ at Tesla has gotten someone "on the horn" and planned out their capacity for the next several years. Also of course production cannot be expanded at any battery plant or new plants built, because of the oh-so-precious resource that is lithium, one of the most abundant elements on earth, right behind Carbon and Chlorine.
Why is this trash on slashdot?
"I don't know that atheists should be considered citizens, nor should they be considered patriots." George HW Bush
Excuse me for being sane here, but why does he not sell the lithium to finance the battery production infrastructure? Then he would not need any international investment.
Sounds simple doesn't it. These things always do. But, reality is a bitch. Here's that rather circular process that is always there.
See most of South and a bit of Central America for specific examples. Brazil seems to be an exception, Venezuela seems to be a poster-child.
They should just develop their own vastly superior battery technology instead of buying other people's cells. All they'd have to do is read Slashdot and call up everyone behind every battery vaporware story and buy their patents and/or company. Then they could make superior batteries that are lighter and better than anyone else. They could either lease those new patents out or directly make battery cells for other companies like golf cart manufacturers or laptop battery makers and they'll probably make more of a profit on that than on their cars.
Funny thing is there are plenty of ASX listed companies that do a lot to contribute to the raw materials of these batteries but just loose money Such as Galaxy Resources and Lynas Corporation. https://www.google.com/finance?q=ASX%3ALYC&ei=CP8lUrirI4elkgWu-AE https://www.google.com/finance?q=ASX%3AGXY&hl=en&ei=P_8lUvCZB4WpkgXQlwE I guess its a lot like farmers and the supermarkets, those at the top get the money.
He also throws out 2 data points to make the curve!
He jumps to the conclusion that a car with 400 mile range will require $10,000 in batteries in 2017. Fair enough. He goes on to say that means there will be no reason to own a gasoline car if electric continues to cost 0.03 $/mile and gasoline 0.20 $/mile. Perhaps I'm doing it wrong, but that $10,000 premium still buys you almost 60,000 miles worth of gas! For my city driver that is over 12 years payback period, for my minivan it is around 6 years, but I haven't seen an electric minivan yet. If, God forbid, you have to replace the pack, you start all over again.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
The worldwide supply of oil is being sucked up by people who can't afford a $70k electric car.
---
DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
A low-milage driver is almost always better off with the cheapest possible car price, and a higher cost per mile. Buy a used crown vic from your local taxi or municipal auction and accept the bad mileage and throw the car away every couple of years.
At 12k/miles/year - something that lease owners fight to stay under, it's 5 years on the button to pay the 10k electric price difference if that's the premium.
"That assumes no other growth, no next gen model, nada."
So in other words, this is a non-story. Hey, if I make patently false assumptions, I bet I could come up with some pretty scary "news" stories, too!
Liberty in your lifetime
Gigawatts. "jigga" is the correct pronunciation of the SI prefix, despite the widespread use of gigg-a (hard g).
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Elon is a successful businessman specifically because he's selling the idea that if you buy his $70k car, you're doing your part to help move humanity towards a more sustainable future. It's exactly the same reason some people with extra money to burn buy organic foods. The reason he doesn't get attacked more often on Slashdot, is because people here really want to believe the line of shit about his company producing an affordable car at some indeterminate point in the future, when economy of scale makes it feasible.
---
DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
He better not be in line in front of me at Costco. Just sayin.
--Steve
If there's one thing business is exceedingly good at, it's ramping up production when a big customer says they want to buy lots of your product. All Tesla has to do is sign a contract guaranteeing a minimum buy.
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
Earth.
That's right, lithium is FUCKING COMMON.
And we dig out 30 billion tons of coal and oil a year, so I think we have some headroom for fucking lithium.
Shit, it just HAS to be doom and gloom alarmism if it's going to be bad for electric cars.
Elon is a successful businessman specifically because he's selling the idea that if you buy his $70k car, you're doing your part to help move humanity towards a more sustainable future. It's exactly the same reason some people with extra money to burn buy organic foods. The reason he doesn't get attacked more often on Slashdot, is because people here really want to believe the line of shit about his company producing an affordable car at some indeterminate point in the future, when economy of scale makes it feasible.
It's a lot simpler than that.
Musk is all image and no substance, with billions of undeserved dollars and a rapidly expanding reality distortion field and cult of zombie followers.
Basically, people want a new Steve Jobs character, so they latched their suck/blow tubes onto Musk and inflated his ego and wallet to the fucking stratosphere. Now he can do no wrong. Absurd ideas such as the Hyperloop get mass media attention and morons all over cry about how it would be so great if the "rest" of society would just wake up and do it. He gets praise for being a visionary of some sort when his main claim to fame is PayPal - an evil bank that skips out on all regulation by saying "We're not a bank, LOL!".
El condensador de fluzo!
Opinion: I think it's ridiculous to use AA form-factor cells to power an automobile. I know for a fact that large, high-capacity Li+ cells are made specifically for vehicle use. Yes, I understand his rationale for using them -- but I think Tesla should transition towards the larger cells at some point.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
At least in the US, NIST, the official standard bearer for all things SI, says you're wrong. "Gigg-a" is simply the ignorant pronunciation, popularized by the same people who though it a good idea to incorrectly use SI prefixes for units based on powers of two (1024 = k, etc.).
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
The way capitalism works is demand first, then supply shows up. It can't even be done the other way around.
Sure it can. Inventing demand for a waste product is a great way to create new markets. Examples include whey protein as a byproduct of cheese production, biodiesel from waste fryer oil, the huge demand for a process to turn cellulose into ethanol, the invention of silage for animal feed in the 19th century, scrap metal reselling, gasoline and petroleum jelly as byproducts of refining oil into kerosene, etc. These are all examples where supply came first and demand came later.
Also, marketing can be a huge creator of demand for products people didn't even know they wanted. For a humorous, non-scholarly article on that, check out 5 Basic Facts of Life (Were Made Up By Marketing Campaigns). While it doesn't focus on the creation of markets as much as their radical expansion, The 7 Sneakiest Ways Corporations Manipulated Human Behavior is also good for a read on the subject. (Take with a grain of salt; both articles are from a comedy site that doesn't exactly cite its references.)
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
All we need to do is continue what we are doing.
Send Al'Queda into regions with resources we want, properly fund them to do terrorist attacks here and abroad to keep the money flowing for the bankers and industrialists. That way we can install regimes to get the natural resources of any country for the cheap.
You don't think for a minute for example that Afghanistan war for the past 10 years is about "People who hate our freedom and liberty.".
I tend to think it is about this:
http://news.discovery.com/earth/afghanistan-minerals-lithium.htm
I mean seriously people. Wake up and smell the coffee. Your getting your balls felt up at the air port, your cities are laying in ruin all for a bunch of bankers, who are printing money for the government to obtain these things.
No way in hell can we afford 11 carrier groups from just taxes, the dollar is a reserve currency so they can print it to fund all of this stuff.
When the dollar loses its reserve status, which is in the making, there is going to be a massive correction.
In my opinion when this happens the government in charge at the time is going to probably set off a Nuke in New York or something dramatic so the event clouds the issue and nobody asks these sorts of questions.
-Hack
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
Instead of pie-in-the-sky ideas like Hyperloop, Elon should invest his billions into coming out with a new generation of batteries that:
a) don't rob the world of a specific limited resource to produce, need to make it from carbon, period, we have more than enough, use up what we have dumped into the atmosphere as a start.
b) has a much higher energy density than found in today's batteries, extends range and delivery of power comparable to combustion engines.
c) are quicker to charge, ideally 5 minutes for a long enough charge that matters
d) are significantly cheaper to produce, we don't want $20k batteries that have a limited lifetime.
You call Hyperloop "pie-in-the-sky," and then you demand all this from batteries? What do you expect him to be, a wizard? Do you think throwing money at the problem will just magically make all this happen?
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
" It turns out the massive Model S battery takes almost 2,000 times the number of cells a basic laptop does."
No fucking shit, Sherlock, given the Model S weighs about 2000x what a typical fucking laptop weighs.
" At that point, Tesla would require the *entire* existing global capacity for 18650 commodity cells"
Your link quotes graphs with ZERO production capability. Your rough estimate would be Tesla needing 480 Million 18650 cells just for their vehicles alone. I can guarantee you more than that gets produced (one factory I deal with in China can do 300 million annually by itself. I know of at least six others with an annual capacity of 100 million each. One of the joys of having such a huge coastline and easy access to ocean lithium supplies that us in the USA simply won't do.)
"What should Elon do? Better get on the horn to Panasonic and Samsung."
Aren't you just the shill, CARTECHBOY that knows jack about anything other than the shell of the vehicle and knows nothing about the rest of the world involved in such a contraption?
Come back when you're as deep in global production as I am. Maybe then you'll actually have something worth saying besides shilling and spreading FUD.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Ya. Just in case it isn't obvious, 18650 means 18mm Diameter, 65mm length, and 0 at the end indicates a cylindrical cell. AA batteries are 14500 sized, and CR123's are 16340s.
I use 18650s and 26650s in all my flashlights. Lithium is cheap, bright, and long lasting compared to AA NiMH. Love em!
It's easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.
So what, you think the materials for Li-Ion batteries are endless?
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
While Tesla uses the 18650 form factor the cells ARE NOT the same as laptop cells. Laptop cells typically contain protection circuits for each cell. Tesla maintains protection circuits for each group of cells. Also, Tesla's cells are a slightly different chemistry designed to be more reliable for automotive use. Right now Tesla uses Panasonic to manufacture their custom cells. Each model S and future model X uses up to 7000 cells each.
In the last earnings call, Elon has stated that they are working on getting more battery production lines online in order to meet their demand. Given that it is a couple of years away, that gives time for the production lines to be built. Tesla is very aware of the problem and has been actively working on it.
Elon estimated that by the time they come out with their lower cost model (Model E) that they will be using more 18650 cells than all the laptop batteries combined.
People ask why they use the 18650 form factor as opposed to a larger rectangular form factor and the response is that the 18650 form factor is a lot cheaper and that by using a lot of small cells, the failure of any single cell does not cause any problems (for example, the fires that Boeing had with their 787).
This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal.
All Elon has done is put a battery into a nice attractive container and sells it as a high-end luxury car.
Toyota paid $100 million to have Telsa build drive-trains for them for use in the RAV4 EV. Doesn't sound to me like what you claim is all that Elon has done.. sounds to me like there is a commercial demand for the Tesla drive-train, and that Patents that Telsa owns on their own drive-train prevent others from producing a competitive product.
"His name was James Damore."
What do you do with all the excess chlorine?
SIGSEGV caught, terminating
wait... not that kind of sig.
No, but this isn't about resource exhaustion, it's about current production levels.
.: Semper Absurda
Other examples:
- Plastics
- Asphalt
- "Coal-tar" dies.
- Liquified Natural Gas from remote oil fields (like the Middle East).
One of my favorites: Stove Pellets: They're made of sawdust from lumber mills, which used to be disposed of by burning it on site. They can sell them very cheap and still be far ahead of spending money to get rid of them (especially after EPA regs made burning them pricey). As a result, my house heating (in a mild climate place where shipping raises their price substantially) costs me maybe $300-400/year, vs. several thousand if I were still using natural gas. (It's carbon-neutral, too.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Darned right. (The authors seem to think the battery makers won't respond to a market for more batteries by building more batteries. Duh!)
As I understand it there's NOTHING blocking production ramp-up for Li-Ion batteries except lack of customer demand, which the auto industry is now rectifying. There's nothing exotic or rare in their composition.
Pretty much ditto for NiMH (except maybe for the price of nickel).
Henry Ford built a bunch of infrastructure to supply his auto company with necessary materials - including building his own steel mills, power plants, and soybean warehousing and processing operations (for early plastics). Any bets on whether Elon Musk would build his own battery plants if the current industry doesn't make him enough (or gouges him on the prices)?
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
They're not "incorrectly" using an "SI prefix" - they're overloading the meaning of a prefix.
Sometimes things have more than one meaning. Welcome to human communication!
give parent more mod points - this is just about what I would have expected from forum at least in part dedicated to technology - giving information in concise form.
It was a good one was it not? It is indeed a rarity to have one working so nicely.
Batteries don't use up their working materials, speaking generally.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
The companies who hold the large-battery patents are only shooting themselves in the foot if their asking price to license their intellectual property is so high that it stifles adoption.
Generally, owners of intellectual property do not shoot themselves in the foot. They prefer the large revenue stream that accompanies widespread adoption of their IP.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
Yet.
Lithium is one of the rarer metals, in commercially extractable concentrations. A crustal abundance of about 20ppm is comparable to the abundance of fine diamond in a good quality ore. Clearly, ore bodies presently being worked are more concentrated than that.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
When do you think Li depletion will limit battery production? If the answer is a decade or more, even with significant increases in output, then I suspect TFA will prove wrong about a near-term price spike due to production shortfall.
.: Semper Absurda
I honestly don't know. I think that production is fairly well concentrated into a small number of mines, which doesn't auger well for being able to expand production rapidly, but I really don't know about the ultimate levels of reserves, or their distribution.
Reading the Wikipedia article (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium#Production), it's not clear whether there is likely to be a problem or not. It's not encouraging that half of the reserves are in one country, but the article reports several other recent major discoveries. Given that estimating reserves isn't exactly a precise science, it's probably good that a number of other resources are being developed.
I'd lose sleep over something else.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"