At a recent GPU Technology Conference, Elon Musk talked about the automating of automobiles:

Thus far continual incremental improvements and mass-production have been more effective in driving lithium-ion battery performance up and prices down rather than dramatic breakthroughs:

• Electric car battery costs already cheaper than 2020 predictions: Study – VentureBea/Stephen Edelstein/Green Car Reports
• Electric vehicle batteries ‘already cheaper than 2020 projections’ – Carbon Brief

This process may plateau, of course, and then leaps in technology like solid state batteries will be needed to make further progress towards lowering battery costs.

Dyson of vacuum cleaner fame is making a significant investment in the small Michigan company Sakti, which is developing a solid-state lithium battery that they say could eventually store usable energy at $100 per kWh vs $500 per kWh for current lithium-ion batteries. Energy density is also said to be double that of current li-ion. (Haven’t seen any numbers for the power density, i.e. kW per kg.)

• Dyson powers $20M investment into solid-state battery company Sakti3 – VentureBeat
• In Battery Revolution, a Clean Leap Forward: Vacuum maker Dyson is investing in Sakti3’s energy technology – WSJ
• Secretive Company Claims Battery Breakthrough: The Michigan start-up Sakti3 says its solid-state cells more than double the energy density of today’s best Li-Ion batteries – Scientific American
• Will this battery change everything? – Fortune

Of course, as the articles indicate, there have been lots of claims over the past several years of big advances in batteries in laboratories that were not validated in real world conditions. Dyson, though, is quite a serious R&D outfit and I expect they have done their due diligence to determine if this company has a better chance than the others to fulfill its ambitious claims.

Here is a TEDx talk from last fall by Ann Marie Sastry, co-founder and CEO of the Sakti and  Arthur F. Thurnau Professor of Engineering at the University of Michigan:

Here’s an update on the General Fusion company in Canada, which I’ve posted about occasionally here, on their quest to develop a unique approach to achieving practical nuclear fusion power at a relatively low cost: Tech firm aims to ‘save the world’ with nuclear reactor – The Globe and Mail.

A General Fusion promotional video:

Here are some pictures via Steve Jurvetson of the giant Gigafactory lithium battery manufacturing plant that Tesla Motors and partners are building in Nevada.

Elon Musk, the driving force behind the project, posted the following in response to some claims that the project was slowing down at Elon Musk (@elonmusk) | Twitter:

Some shots of the Gigafactory pilot plant (~20% of full size) under construction

There is no slowdown of the Gigafactory construction underway, as anyone near Reno with eyes can verify. It’s not subtle.

Media reporting solely off random job ads board in Reno that we didn’t even know existed. That is as dumb as it sounds.

Here’s an artist view of how the GigaFactory will look when finished and the roof covered with solar panels:

Update Mar.10.15: Some pictures of the Gigafactory construction taken from a drone: Gigafactory Drone Pics