A former Sanyo/Pana battery engineer, who was on the team that developed 18650 for Tesla, was interviewed by a Tesla fanboy/BEVangelist about the Battery Day.
TL;DR: Nothing ground-breaking. All are minor improvements IF they can work them out.
$TSLAQ
I might get around to summarizing the key points later. Meanwhile, here's the link. The guy is a Tesla owner & a bit of a fanboy himself, but I find his engineer's perspective interesting. Quite different from what lab scientists have said.
Before I get started, the summary by the interviewer says a lot. He likens what Tesla is trying to do to their attempt at "kaizen". Nothing radical.
Here we go.
1. cylindrical: A surprise. No advantage over others. Maybe being tabless will help w/ cooling.
$TSLAQ
2. tabless: Old tech used since NiCd days. Pana's HEV cells use it. Benefit questionable for BEVs. Concern over low yield in practice.
3. dry coating: seems semi-wet. Nothing new. Has been used for primary Li cells for 3 decades. Could help IF it works.
$TSLAQ
4. anode material: Problems w/ Si is well-known. No idea if they solved them.
5. cathode material: seems to be something developed ~2000. May improve energy density a bit via higher voltage. Maybe the same as the one recently announced by Top Battery of S.Korea.
$TSLAQ
6. recycling: importance of recycling is something he & others have been talking about for a long time.🤷
7. cell-vehicle integration: space/structural efficiency gain possible, but battery will not be replaceable.
$TSLAQ
8. overall: not unrealistic, but won't be easy. They may be able to reduce CapEx IF they can make them work. They'll likely encounter the same practical issues that Pana did at Nevada, including the lack of skilled workforce. A lot depends on prod. equipment suppliers.
$TSLAQ
My impression is that, for him, it was full of unproven ideas that may each help a little IF they work. Nothing new. So many IFs & MAYBEs. He seems to assume Tesla can't commercialize this w/o tons of help from others.
/fin
$TSLAQ
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If anything S.Korea had more cases than usual, but fewer hospitalization. That makes sense, given that RSV is worse in <1. Delayed infection is a good thing.
What's ironic is that, if you follow the logic of "immunity debt" enthusiasts (charitably, tbf), you end up concluding that "freedom day" was even dumber than we already thought.
1/
For one, we know infection-induced immunity to many of these pathogens is fairly shot-lived. i.e. what happened yrs ago doesn't really matter.
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For another, not all pathogens are created equal. Some are more infectious/harder to control.
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Variant-specific PCR says suspected BA.5 was ~3/4 during 7/5~7/11. Almost all suspected BA.5 for the latest wk (7/12~7/18).
2/
Similar story for Kobe. L452R+ > 80% for 7/11~7/17 (1st table). Majority of sequences (2nd table) from 7/4~7/10 were BA.5. They show BA.2.12.1 under BA.2 in ( ), BA.2.75 in [ ].
Mini-thread on JPN Covid mortality data wrt "from" vs. "with".
(Meaning to do this since MHLW advisory board posted some useful data a month ago, so here it is.)
tl;dr: Covid is still the primary cause in majority of reported deaths & Omicron is bad.
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MHLW guideline essentially requires all deaths by Covid patients be reported, so the reported #s include some incidental cases. So what % is incidental?
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First, data from Kanagawa pref. (pop. 9.2m, 2nd largest) on the "primary" causes of death in Jan/Feb '22 (almost all Omicron).
Primary cause: 53.2%
Not primary cause: 32.1%
Undetermined: 14.7%
Note that "not primary cause" doesn't mean it wasn't a contributing factor.
2 lines overlapping for Alpha = ~2% CFR
Same for Delta & Omicron = ~0.3% CFR
Note the differences in Y-axes.
Most seniors got vaccinated after the peak of Alpha wave. Others during the Delta wave.
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Omicron wave is likely to peak next wk (likely already did in southern/western 1/3 of the country), so deaths likely to peak in late Feb. Looking like it'll be the deadliest wave so far.
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Roughly,
Spring '20: 1k
Summer/Autumn '20: 1k
Winter '20-'21: 7.5k
Spring '21 (Alpha): 7.5k
Summer '21 (Delta): 3k
Winter '22 (Omicron): ~800 so far.
Per case severity is clearly lower relative to pre-vaxx peaks, but high transmissibility makes that less relevant.
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