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Dyson Will Spend $1.4 Billion, Enlist 3,000 Engineers To Build a Better Battery (digitaltrends.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Digital Trends: Among the 100 new products the company founder James Dyson wants to invent by 2020, the greatest investment in people and money is to improve rechargeable lithium-ion batteries, as reported by Forbes (Warning: paywalled). And Dyson is not planning incremental improvements. His opinion is that current Li-ion batteries don't last long enough and aren't safe enough -- the latter as evidenced by their propensity to spontaneously catch on fire, which is rare but does happen. Dyson believes the answer lies in using ceramics to create solid-state lithium-ion batteries. Dyson says he intended to spend $1.4 billion in research and development and in building a battery factory over the next five years. Last year Dyson bought Ann Arbor, Michigan-based Sakti3, which focuses on creating advanced solid-state batteries, for $90 million. The global lithium-ion battery market accounts for $40 billion in annual sales, according to research firm Lux as cited by Forbes. Dyson's company (which is an accurate description since he has 100-percent ownership) currently employs 3,000 engineers worldwide. He intends to hire another 3,000 by 2020. Their average age is 26. Dyson values young engineers, saying, "The enthusiasm and lack of fear is important. Not taking notice of experts and plowing on because you believe in something is important. It's much easier to do when you're young."
That and they have less to loose in case of failure. So they are willing to take more risks and perhaps get bigger rewards. Having a family while personally rewarding forced you to play it safer as failure will effect more than themselves.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Also a lot of engineers that you can fire or layoff without causing shareholders to notice.
I don't know how good Dyson is good with HR. But those comments make it sound like it may be a tough job to keep.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
That's right! That's why my cell phone which uses more power than my cell phone of 10 years ago with a battery less than a third the size lasts significantly longer - because everyone's been "never doing anything with the research", right?
Good research results make news. Their employment in commercial products generally doesn't.
"99 dead duelists of Dios on the wall. 99 dead duelists of Dios! Take one's ring, pass it around..."
EVs would have been overtaken by ICE technology regardless of whatever conspiratal notions you are imagining.
ICEs still provide a superior driving experience per dollar, and most people who have an EV wouldn't have one if not for subsidies... to compete with the entrenched energy monopolies' subsidies.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
It is said that Microsoft in the early days hired only young fresh software engineers so they wouldn't be corrupted by "old school" thinking.
These engineers went on to build software that re-created every mistake in the book about how and OS should be designed and implemented.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
DAMN I wish I had karma to give you. I am by far the oldest member of my R+D team, and by far the most innovative and risk averse.
James Dyson is an asshole. He bleats about wanting more engineers, but he only want the cheap young ones he can pay as little as possible and toss aside. He isn't even a qualified engineer himself. People like Dyson say we need more engineers, but when the UK starting salary for grad engineers is between 26- 30K GBP , they are too cheap. Until we can make a real scarcity of engineers that isn't going to change
No one is wondering... It's because of education. People see a lot more to life and kids hinder ones ability to enjoy a lot of those things.
That's probably a good thing too in general since automation will replace a lot of low skilled jobs.
I'll agree with your sentiment, if not your particular example. My old flip-phone from 10 years ago lasted about a week on a single charge. Obviously, though, that's because it was doing jack-crap processing-wise compared to the mini-supercomputers we now all have in our pockets, not due to a lack of progress in battery tech. I think many tech-types have just been spoiled by Moore's Law, not realizing how abnormal it is for technology to improve on an exponential scale.
Anyhow, I'm always glad to see more research into this field. A lot of our current tech is tethered to battery life, and batteries are, I think, going to be more and more important as we transition more toward renewable energy for much of our everyday power needs.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
we need people actively looking into making those new type of batteries instead of just researching them and never do anything with the research
You haven't been paying attention.
Like photovoltaic solar panels (which can now be had for under a dollar a watt WITHOUT subsidies, more than an order of magnitude improvement over the last decade or so), DEPLOYED battery technology has been improving, drastically.
Of course most of the breakthroughs don't get deployed. That's usually because better breakthroughs come along before they get that far.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Are those the ones where you draw a Ford Transit overlapping a Citroen Nemo?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."