MIT weighs in on Better Batteries. I weigh in on better articles.

There are a number of reasons mentioned in this article on why we don't have better batteries already despite a slew of promising chemistries and constructions coming out of the lab. Richard Martin of MIT gives 'lack of money' as the primary reason. He provides a secondary less defined reason: 'it's hard'

And so it is hard and takes a lot of money to create better batteries. There we can agree. However, I think the real reason a fundamental change has not taken place in energy storage has less to do with money and more to do with turning theory into practice. Ramping up construction of a promising cell that has both good capacity and low material cost is an engineering problem. But we simply haven't found the right chemistry and construction to apply our brilliant engineering minds to.

Another article that deserves mention is this one that says Nikola Motors has removed the battery in their prototype semi-truck. It says so in the title. It repeats that claim in the first and second paragraphs. The article then goes on to state the battery will remain the same. 

Confusing, no?

I don't bring this up to laugh at the editor. I bring it up because we should be as accurate as possible, and since I can't change their article, I'll set the record straight here.

Nikola motors designed a semi-truck as a hybrid vehicle. Or, more accurately, a range extended battery powered semi-truck. The battery would be used first and then, originally, a turbine engine would kick in to charge the battery while driving. The only change that the article should have mentioned was that the turbine engine was being replaced by a hydrogen fuel cell. The battery was not 'ditched'.

The company also claims to have plans on adding solar farms to create the hydrogen. One would think the start-up cost would make this impossible. However, Nikola says they can rely on subsidies  -

"There is currently a per gallon federal credit to the station owner (Nikola™), so Nikola™ is able to build that into the price of the truck when purchased and can then realize those savings and give customers the pre-purchased fuel for the first 1,000,000 miles."

Now, this might be attractive to a businessman, but it spells out death to a company for an economist because subsidies are fickle things and always result in malinvestment. Still, one hopes this idea can produce some good result in the end despite the problems of subsidies and malinvested markets.