228: Solid State Batteries - Or Are They?

https://youtu.be/aciA1dKz5iE

On today’s episode of Still To Be Determined we’re talking about the Yoshino “Solid State” battery and some of the controversy around it. There’s a lot to talk about … and definitely more to come on this topic.

Corrections:
24:15 - The name of the company is TechInsights, not Tech Ingredients.

Watch the Undecided with Matt Ferrell episode, Solid State Batteries Are REALLY Here: Yoshino Power Station https://youtu.be/9AZRPItAsfA?list=PLnTSM-ORSgi7HT9O73K9oYUe19eS-wjxX

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Creators & Guests

Host

Matt Ferrell

Host of Undecided with Matt Ferrell, Still TBD, and Trek in Time podcasts

Host

Sean Ferrell

Co-host of Still TBD and Trek in Time Podcasts

What is Still To Be Determined?

Join Matt Ferrell from the YouTube Channel, Undecided, and his brother Sean Ferrell as they discuss electric vehicles, renewable energy, smart technologies, and how they impact our lives. Still TBD continues the conversation from the Undecided YouTube channel.

On this episode of Still to be Determined, we're going to talk about some solid state batteries. We're going to talk about Matt's investigation of them, and we're going to talk about what Matt might be doing in the future about them. So that's all to come. Welcome everybody to Still to be Determined, where of course we follow up on Undecided with Matt Ferrell.

I'm Sean Ferrell. I'm a writer. I write some sci fi, I write some stuff for kids. I'm just generally curious about technology. Luckily for me, my brother is that Matt of Undecided with Matt Ferrell, which takes a look at emerging tech and its impact on our lives. And Matt, how are you

today? I'm doing pretty good.

Uh, this weekend I've talked about how I did my little shed project, Sean, where I put solar panels on my shed. Well, yesterday I thought, you know, I gotta, I've done my video review about my robot mowers and I was doing more of a permanent installation of them. So I was trying to attach the antennas that have to be used to the shed and I have a little solar panel that will power those antennas.

I was just trying to neat it up and do it. I don't know what happened, Sean, but it was a simple project that should have taken an hour, but I spent five hours yesterday outside it was one of those things of like, I'm doing it. I was like, Oh, I need that like get some caulk or something like that from Home Depot.

So I run too Home Depot and I get back, I spent way too much time outside yesterday and I got like a little sunburned and I've got a wicked, uh, like farmer's tan going on. It's

nice. Yeah. It's that kind of weekend. I think it's that time of year where it's like, okay, we're going to do those projects. And then the projects take far longer than we hope.

And for me, it was not an outdoor project. It was, uh, things for me in my office job have been very, very busy. And so I would talk to my manager. I was like, I think I need to do a better job of taking some time off for myself. So coordinated with him around taking some Fridays during the rest of the summer off using some personal time.

And this last Friday was my first friday, that was kind of a summer Friday vibe. And I thought I'm going to work on some art projects. I'm going to work on some writing. It's going to be great. And instead I spent five hours putting together a piece of furniture. So very similar vibe as what you've just described, because it was one of those like, Oh, now I need an Allen wrench.

Oh, now I need a hammer. Oh, now I need a screwdriver. Oh, where's my power drill. And when you get partway through putting together a piece of furniture, there's the point of no return. There's the, well, if I put these into this piece and these into this piece, I could still stack them discreetly in the back of the room and not have to finish this project.

But then you get to that point, the first moment that the letter T appears anywhere in the project, now you're like, okay, all right. And the way that this project was put together, that T made a very early appearance. So suddenly I was fully committed and it was a lot of, uh, very patient coordination between me and my partner in a very small space to put together a piece of furniture to make better use of the space.

It never seems to make sense when you're midway through it. And you're like, how are we going to fit this in this room? This room is not big enough for this. And then eventually you get there, but so. I hope everybody out there who's listening or watching with their summer projects are having as much success as it sounds like Matt and I are having with five hours spent going back and forth to Home Depot and avoiding the letter T.

On now to our discussion about our most recent episode. This is from Still to be Determined, episode 226, Home Battery Experiences, are they worth it? And the comments here that I wanted to share were fairly light hearted. The video itself didn't garner a lot of debate, but it did have some people, like Ryan Child, pointing out Does anyone else get tricked into trying to wipe away Sean's doorstop from the screen?

Yes, we've had people comment about this before. This doorstop right here, this is not a speck on your screen. Don't try and wipe that away because if you do manage to wipe it away, it means that my doorknob will damage my door, my wall. There was also this comment from Andrew Park who said, my comment isn't related to the show, but it would be cool if you could talk to the owners of your old house and their thoughts and feelings about it after a year of living in Matt's old house.

I understand, Andrew, where you're coming from. Matt left behind a home that he had updated with various Like a nice set of solar panels and some batteries in the garage. And somebody moving in would be moving into an older home that had been updated in some nice ways. However, Matt and I know from personal experience that a family member who haunts the old home isn't always the

isn't always what you want in your life. And Matt showing up on somebody's door and saying, knock, knock, knock. I used to live here. Can I talk to you on camera for a few minutes? I don't know that Matt's going to be doing that. What do you think about that?

I don't think that's going to happen.

I will ask you this though.

And again, without naming names, family, family history, we have people in our family who are like, I'm curious about what's going on in the old house. Do you ever think about

that?

Do you ever think about, like, I wonder if they're utilizing it. I wonder if they're enjoying it. I wonder if all the tech I put in there is something they appreciate.

I, well, here's the actual, there's actually a story to this, Sean. I have heard from the new owner. Um, I've had back and forths and email with, with, with this person, um, because some of the technology, the person who bought the house was not a technophile. So some of the getting solar panel accounts moved over to a new person and the battery system account moved over to a new person and the SPAN panel moved over to a new person and getting it attached to the new Wi Fi and all that kind of stuff has turned out to be very challenging.

Um, More challenging than I expected. And I don't blame the new owner. There's some aspects to the way things change from account to account that is like surprising to me. So I have had back and forths. Um, but And some of the new owners, uh, experience with the house has been good and some has not been good.

So I'll just leave it at that.

Do you think that's a sign of an industry that yet hasn't matured to deal with the fact that it is a product that will change hands as the home changes hand? Do you think this is something that will evolve or is it about as good as it can be just because you have so many companies and so many players in the market and

if you got a Tesla Powerwall, solar panels from a different company, and you got this and that, and power companies being what they are, is it just the nature of the beast?

It needs to get better because it's all, everybody's got their own little walled garden and they all do it in a different way. And what I found frustrating was moving your Tesla thing over to somebody else has some rigmarole, but it's free.

And at the end of the day, you get it done. Uh, SPAN, same thing, but the challenge with SPAN was the new owner had a really hard time trying to get it even connected to the new Wi Fi. So that's something SPAN really needs to work on. And then when it came to my Enphase solar panel system, uh, they charge you money to transfer to a new and I don't get it.

I don't get it. It's like, why are you charging me money? That

seems like, that seems like, yeah.

It was like 250 bucks or something like that. It was like hundreds of dollars. And it was like, what are you charging for? This is a database item. It's like, they could go in and type their own information in and hit a transfer to me kind of a thing.

And it like, it should just be kind of like a human shouldn't even be involved in the process. Yeah. What are you charging money for? So yeah, that's pretty wild. What are you doing?

That's like, that's a, that's a kind of creepy. Yep. Yep.

Matt does not like, yeah, that's, that's, and I don't even have an account like that and I'm not going to be getting an account like that anytime soon. I'm a renter in a building where I'm not going to be doing anything like this, but yeah, that wouldn't stop me from wanting to do tech like this, but it's gross.

It's like, it's gross. It's gross. It's like over, it's like overdraft fees from your bank. It's like, okay, just because I didn't transfer this from savings to checking in time, you're going to take 30 bucks that you said I didn't have, like, it starts to feel, ugh, it's, it's icky. Yeah. On now to our discussion about Matt's most recent, because, and we're jumping into this one a little faster than we normally do, because we have a lot to talk about this time around.

Solid state batteries are really here, Yoshino Power Station. This episode dropped on July 16th, 2024. This one included a lot of people responding to the technology itself, like Mario Goetz, who said, It's a bit of a charged topic, he says with a straight face. This man is a dad. I guarantee it. Well, close.

This man is an uncle. But the dad pun is strong with this one. That's all I'll say about that.

There was also this comment from Casper that I really enjoyed. Casper jumped in to say, I love that at 2 minutes 45 in the Yoshino video, the teenage daughter gives zero fucks that dad got the TV working. I think that that's I can't help but wonder if the director of the promotional video was just like, has a teenage daughter and was just like, I'm going to make this real.

Because no teenage daughter or son is going to be that impressed with dad being able to give the stupid battery to work. Jack Hemsworth jumped into the comments to say, for a first gen product to be even this close to lithium batteries that have been around and refined for decades now is really something.

And the next few comments will have a theme to them that we will visit in a longer conversation, once we get through them, like this one from Napalm Enthusiast, which is an interesting username, but thank you for jumping into the comments, Napalm, who wrote, As an engineer once said, the last of the old will always be better than the first of the new, but they already made a promising product that's somewhat competitive in the market.

And this is a Interesting comment from multiple perspectives. I want us to keep it in mind as we move forward. Finally, this one jumps us off into our bigger conversation. Vanto says, Matt, I think you've reached the point in this channel where you should be buying two of these things, one to show off, the other to do a teardown on.

Would have really loved to have seen the actual size of the battery compared to all the electronics inside. So. With those three comments in mind, here's the first gen product that's competing with lithium. Here is the first of the new, but it seems to be doing a good job of competing the last of the old.

And Matt, Teardown Videos, what's holding you back? Let's start with the Teardown Videos. Matt, when are you going to start tearing things down? When are you going to start breaking stuff up? That's what I want to know.

Never. That's never been a part of my channel. It's never going to be a part of my channel.

But of course, I should probably never say never. Part of the reason for that is that's not what I'm interested in. Um, my background's in user experience. And so I try to look at things from the perspective of The end user, like, what is it like to use this thing? What are the benefits to me as an end user, um, breaking down the specifics of like the actual product and looking inside and ripping it apart is other people.

And I actually have some friends that do this kind of stuff. Um, and when it comes time to do something like this, I might do some kind of collaboration with them, have them rip it down and then we can kind of, I can conclude that in my video and have a back and forth with them. So it's like. I love, I love those videos.

I watch them, but for me as a creator, I have no desire to do it. I don't have the experience to do it. Um, some of my friends, like the one I mentioned, his name is Ryan Hughes. He's a mechanical engineer. He's a, he's a PhD student over in the UK. He, he's game for doing this kind of stuff. That's his right up his alley, but for me, not so much.

Um, so yeah, that's not gonna happen.

Yeah. There is also, uh, just as your brother. My first thought was safety concerns. I would be terrified of you breaking into a battery that would contain materials that you'd be like with a screwdriver and slip and the poof like right in your face.

Well, in my defense, I could break the battery apart.

I could take it apart, but like actually breaking into the cell itself, like opening up the actual cell so I can see the anode and cathode. Uh, like I'm not doing that. It's like, I don't want to electrocute myself or cause a battery fire or do something crazy. It's like, I'm not gonna do that, but I can open up the casing and see what the cells look like and how it's put together.

But that's where I would stop. Going beyond that I could do multimeter testing and see what the amperage is and stuff like that. I can do that. But it's like, again, it's not my Interest level. That's not where my point was on this video. As many people pointed out, it wasn't just these comments. There were other comments about like, well, it's like people took issue with me talking about how the watt hours per kilogram, that's not how you do watt hours per kilogram for a, you didn't do it based on the cell.

You did it based on the entire pack. And it was like, yeah, I did it based on the entire pack. Cause I'm, that's what you're going to be tossing into the back of your truck. It's like, I'm not going to be tossing the cell into the back of my truck. Individual cells.

Yeah.

Right. So it's like, what is the total?

It's like, what's the total weight of the car? You're not saying, well, the tire weighs this much. It's like, no, the car weighs this much. This battery pack weighs this much and it's this much lighter than this other battery pack. So what is the watt hours per kilogram I'm getting out of that? Yeah. End product, user experience, the thing that you get.

So that's the lens I'm looking at all this through. And I thought it was interesting that there's so many people that were not seeming to either get that or they were disappointed that I wasn't doing what they wanted in the video.

Yeah.

Which again, That's not my channel. So it's like, if you're looking for that, you're gonna be looking at somebody else's channel, not mine.

What's interesting is I think that that is an unspoken that maybe you and I should speak more often. The end user experience as the framing of our conversations, because not to criticize you or us on this channel, but I do think that that is an assumption that you and I, that's a That's a silent assumption that you and I have made in our conversations that people understand that we're talking about the what is it like to get the bill and the paper, not what is it like to work in the machine shop.

And like we are talking and when I talk to you, I'm coming from like, uh, Joe on the street. I'm just coming at it from like, I don't understand this stuff, so please tell me about it. But my approach is also end user experience. I'm not asking you about like the wattage inside the cell I'm interested in, like, is it going to be difficult for me to plug this into the wall or is it got a long cord?

Like that's my, my approach as well.

Yeah. I, I, I actually do take the blame for this because all those comments, it kind of shone a light on it for me of like, I thought it was obvious why I was doing it the way I was doing it. But it clearly wasn't. So I need to be more explicit about that in my videos going forward.

So I'm taking it as a learning lesson. Um, for the reason that I think part of the thing that confuses it on my channel as well as I tend to go very technical and some of this stuff, I do dive into it. And I think that creates this kind of scenario where it looks like I could very easily flip the other way where I'm doing the breaking the cell apart, doing all that kind of stuff.

The reason I go technical like that is my background as a user experience designer was like, when I worked in the software industry. I needed to understand the technology of, I'm designing user interfaces and experiences. I need to understand the underlying technology that I'm designing those experiences on to know what I can do and can't do.

What users might want to do with that technology. I need to understand that. So I have to dive into that and understand how the software engineers have to do their thing, how the databases work. I have to understand a high level understanding of that to be able to make the decisions I make in how I'm crafting those user experiences.

And that's how I look at these videos and that's why I go technical because it's like well how does this thing work and that explains why it's done the way it's done well what does that mean for me as the end user that's why I go technical. Um, and I don't make that as explicitly clear in my videos as I should, and I'm going to try to do better about that going forward.

I, I think that that's a valuable takeaway from the feedback that you received on this, this episode and the, and your, from your main channel. And it may just be as simple as including a line in the framing at the very beginning of every episode. Like I'm approaching this from the end user experience.

And like, and, and build it in that way. I think that that is a helpful footnote. Um, and again, it's interesting when we find these blind spots in our own approach to something.

Yeah.

We understand the unspokens. Oh, you don't understand the unspoken I understood. Oh, that's, that's, it's an interesting gap to discover.

Yep. Um, and so I think it's a good, I think it's a good recognition on your part that that was the gap that was happening here.

From that, there is another gap. Yeah, go ahead. I was gonna say this, this is based on the comments that you read off. One of the comments that mentioned the, um, it's interesting to see a new, these new batteries competing with lithium ion, blah, blah, blah.

And I think that is another thing that I had assumed people understood and clearly not. Um, and this is again on me, my understanding of how batteries work because I'm not, I'm not a material scientist, but when I'm looking at this stuff and what I've learned and based on the people I've talked to and the people that are on my team that are material scientists, battery chemistry, when we talk about battery chemistry.

And I talk about, oh, my bat, my garage, I have lithium ion phosphate. Oh, my Tesla has NMC, nickel manganese cobalt. Those chemistries are basically kind of talking about the cathode of a battery. You have an anode and a cathode. That's the cathode chemistry. And then an anode is usually a carbon, like graphite.

And then you have an electrolyte between those two to shuttle the ions back and forth. Gross oversimplification, but that's basically what it is. So when you talk about a solid state battery, it's not necessarily talking about a completely radical different anode or completely radical different cathode, it's instead of a liquid electrolyte between those two, it's a solid.

Right. So you can, so the Yoshino battery is a nickel cobalt manganese battery, which is a chemistry that's been around for decades with some kind. I can't remember what it is off the top of my head. It's the IPC solid electrolyte in between them. So that is the difference. So to say it's not, it's, it's competing with lithium ion.

It's, it is lithium ion with a solid electrolyte in there. And the benefits that that brings to the Yoshino is safety and cycle life, right? So a typical NMC battery, maybe it has 1500 cycle life. With this solid electrolyte maybe it doubles it. Maybe it triples it. Whatever, whatever it is, it's going to make it last longer because solid electrolytes are more resistant to dendritic growth and all this other kind of stuff, so it can affect the cycle life.

And the other aspect that it's supposed to bring is the safety of, you drive a nail through this battery cell, A NMC battery, like you see those over reported car fires of an EV uncontrolled fire. An NMC battery when it gets thermal runaway, flames. Hard to put out, hard to stop an LFP battery, like the lithium ion phosphate battery, which is not a solid electrolyte battery.

Drive a nail through it, you're gonna get some smoke, you're not gonna really get flames. And then you get to solid electrolyte, put a nail through it and nothing really happens, the battery keeps working. So, that's the benefits that this Yoshino brings, is it has a high cycle life, it has high safety, I saw the safety report from the third party that talked about the double penetrations and the battery kept going and there was no fire.

It's a very safe battery because of how it's constructed and the solid electrolyte that's included in the battery. So, that's why I focused on those things, and that's why the Yoshino has a higher energy density than the competitors, because all the competitors use lithium iron phosphate. Fantastic, robust battery, but it's not super energy dense.

The NCM battery is more energy dense. So it's like, if you had a non solid electrolyte NCM battery, it's still going to be more energy dense. So it's, there was this confusion around that, that I think I assumed was obvious, but it's not. Um, so I definitely need to do a follow up video. I'm actually planning on doing a follow up video to dive into some of this and to dive into some of the other controversies around Yoshino specifically.

That, um, we could talk about too.

Yeah. Just, uh, before we get into that stage of the conversation, to loop back to what you were saying about this unspoken, the like, Oh, it's not about new natures of the cathodes and anodes. It's about the material between, uh, I know for myself, I hear solid state battery and there is an instinctive, And this is maybe born of, you get the layman, you get the person on the street who knows about older terminology, and then they hear the new, the word new, and then they hear the new terminology.

They think it must be fundamentally different. I fall into that category. I hear, you know, like here's a nickel, here's a, here's a lithium battery. Here's a solid state battery. Oh, that's new. That means it's not those. That is on an instinctive level. That is how I interpret that. So I, I think that that makes sense that you would be saying, Oh, my audience isn't necessarily connecting a dot that I thought was connected.

So it's another interesting and another interesting blind spot. That's, that's going to be useful for you and for both of us. Moving on to some of the controversies, this kind of touches in with the, um, the comments that were, Hey Matt, why aren't you tearing these things down? Because some people were like, Hey, why aren't you tearing these things down?

I really want to see what's inside. Other people were like, Why aren't you tearing these things down? Because I don't trust that what is inside is what they say is inside. So let's deep, deep dive into that conversation. Now, as Matt already hinted, there's a follow up video coming and Matt, why don't you tell us why you're doing a follow up video?

Okay. So

I had, I have no relationship with Yoshino. I reached out to them for details around their battery. That's when I had a conversation with them. They shared the safety report testing and all that kind of stuff. We talked about what the solid electrolyte was, they're using their battery. And I have to take them at their word, um, which is what I include in the video.

But some people pointed out this has been disproven to not be a solid state. And nobody was providing details as to what that meant until a couple of people said, look at the report from Tech Ingredients. And I had not heard of Tech Ingredients. So I looked them up and they're a company that does reverse engineering of products.

And then they sell those reports. So it could be a company says, we want you to break this competitor product down and tell us what's inside and how it works and see if we can learn anything from it. Um, they may also just do some of these reports themselves and just sell them. And this is the case for the Yoshino one.

They broke down the battery because they're very interested in solid state. So they broke down the battery and they put together a very detailed report, but they only released a kind of like, to say it's light would be an understatement. You can go find it. It's this Yoshino, they call it an ebook. Um, it's like six, seven or eight pages long, a bunch of pictures and x rays of the battery and some very high level comments that raises more questions than it answers, which I think from their perspective is a good thing because buy the full report to find out what, but the things that they say in there

have me concerned not just about what Yoshino is doing but also about like what they're doing because they say that Yoshino's battery is not solid state because when they ripped open the cell there was a liquid inside it was wet ergo it's not solid state and they basically the ebook report is basically saying trust me it's not solid state but they provide no context no additional information nothing and in fact their last statement is along the lines of it's almost like they're saying This isn't a traditional lithium battery, but it's also not solid state, period, buy our full report.

It's like, well, what, what the hell does that mean? Right. So I reached out, I've reached out to them. Um, I was trying to get, I was trying to buy access to the report. I want to see the full report. Uh, but to buy the reports, it's really weird. You basically have to apply to get access to even buy it, which I thought was weird. So I, I submitted a couple of like contact form things to them saying who I was, what I was trying to look to do. I'm actually having a phone call with somebody from there tomorrow to do a high level conversation as to like, it sounds like they're willing to help me out.

And they've been having internal discussions as to what information to release to me and what that kind of stuff and how they want to support me. So tomorrow's conversation is just to go over that, what they're willing to do, what they're not willing to do. Um, which is awesome. I'm super excited to talk to them because I want to find out some of the answers, even if they're just high level answers.

I want to find out some of the answers as to like these gigantic holes in the report they've got. Um, I have a hunch as to what's going to come out about the Yoshina battery, I have a hunch that the best you could describe is it's considered what a lot of people call a semi solid state battery, which means, yes, it may have a solid electrolyte in there, but it's still using some kind of liquid or gel electrolyte as well.

And oftentimes that's done, you to assist the manufacturing process or to make sure that there's a good connection between the electrolyte and the, um, anode and cathode, um, so that it helps with the shuttling of the ions. It's kind of like a half measure. Um, and one of the reasons you do stuff like that is it's like, it alleviates some of the problems around manufacturing solid states and you still get some of the benefits of solid state, which is what I brought up before of higher cycle life and safety.

You still get those benefits in a hybrid approach without having a full solid state. If that's the case, Yoshino is kind of, their marketing is off. If that's the case. Um, and they kind of stepped on it themselves. They stepped on a rake themselves if they did that, but I'm keeping an open mind until I talk to Technology, um, the Technology Ingredients, I'm also having a follow up conversation with Yoshino to talk to them about this specifically to get their rebuttal, because they mentioned to me when I reached out to them, they're aware of the Tech Ingredients report.

And they, in their words, thought it was awful and not accurate. But I think that might be based on they may have only seen the ebook report that I saw. They may have not seen the full report. So it's like, I'm really insanely curious to talk to both Yoshino again and this company. So there's most likely going to be a follow up.

Uh, there's also for me, a giant question mark around my existing video, because I didn't do this on behalf of Yoshino. But the, I talk about solid state and this is a solid state battery. Well, what if it's not a solid state? If it's not truly a solid state, I might take the video down. So it's like, it's one of those, there's all these things at play right now as to what's going on, but I'm not going to make any knee jerk reaction.

I'm, I'm doing my investigation and due diligence into what the hell's going on and see if I can find an answer. And on top of that, I brought up my friend Ryan Hughes from the channel Xeroth over in the UK. I bought a second, I bought a second one of these, Sean, and I tried to ship it to him, the UK.

Because he's a PhD student at the University of Bath, and I was going to send it to him, and he had gotten lab time to break down the battery. He was going to do his own testing. Okay. I was like, this is awesome. So I'm going to send it to him. I paid an obscene amount of money to UPS to ship this to him, Sean.

Sent him the tracking number. Next day he says, hey Matt, what's going on? It says it's being delivered to your house today. I was like, what the, guess what showed up? I spent all this money and this battery shows up on my doorstep. And there was a sticker on it saying it, you can't, it's considered a hazardous material.

Cannot be shipped. You can't ship this internationally and you don't have the proper paperwork. So I call the hazardous material lines on UPS. I'm like, well, what's up with this? I described what the product is. It's a consumer electronics device. I didn't make it. It was shipped to me, buh, and like doing this.

And they were saying, this is not a UPS thing. This is international and U. S. code. It's the law. You can't do this unless you have Hazardous materials training, and then you can create your own paperwork for this special code that you have to include that paperwork with the box to prove that you know what you're doing.

I can't ship this to him because of this. Like you're not allowed to as a

product in the U. K.

No, it's not available in the U. K. It's only available here in the U. S. So that's why I bought it for him to send it to him, and I have no way to get it to him. So as of right now that whole part of this plan, which was I wanted to have tech ingredients.

I wanted to have Yoshino's comments and I wanted to have a third, like somebody I know that broke it down as well. So I'm kind of asking around. I'm trying to still find out if wait, there's a way for me to get it to them. And if there's not, I'm still trying to find a way if there's somebody else here in the U S that I could get it to break it down for me.

But it's, yeah, it's, it's been kind of a, kind of a massive endeavor to do this. That's a lot.

That's a

lot. Yeah.

Let's put to the side marketing speak. Like, yeah, let's put the marketing speak to the side. Let's also put to the side media speak in the form of a scientist looks through a microscope and goes, aha, I found it.

And then tells her university communications department, like this is what the breakthrough means. And then the communications department releases a press release and then some news anchor says, here's what was discovered recently and it's not even close to being connected. It's a game of telephone.

Yeah. It's a game of telephone. So we're going to put aside media speak, we're going to put aside marketing speak, and we're going to say, Hey, I've got this, this battery and it's semi solid state. Do you think it's fair to call that solid state?

Oh man, Sean, this is where I'm living up the name of the channel. I'm undecided on this. I, part of me feels like, I think it is. It's still part of the solid state family. You're still getting some of the solid state benefits. So taking marketing aside, I think it's fair to say this is a solid state technology that's inside this battery which is why it has a credible safety rating it's it's safer than a comparable battery it has a longer cycle life yada yada yada i think that's why it's okay to do that flip side is I totally hear other people's point of view on this because i like people like well that's not accurate yeah um this is why so many people are skeptical of everything because you have people that play fast and loose.

It might bend the definition of something or omit something just, you know, by omission, they're like leaving out the detail of that stuff and it creates this distrust. So I, there's a, there's an ethical point of view of this, where it's kind of like, I don't think it's a good thing to do because you're eroding that trust.

And then for a company that does that, it's like, you may have just permanently damaged your brand, if you're not careful by doing that. So, I don't know. I'm, I'm, where do you fall on it? What do you think?

I keep going back to what you said a little bit earlier in a connected vein, not fully on target with this, but it kind of taking it from the approach of is it waddling and quacking?

If it is duckish enough, maybe it's a duck. And if you're coming at it from, I want to put something in the trunk of my car, that in case of needing some extra juice on the road because of an unexpected emergency, I've got this thing. It's going to give me 10 hours of juice so I can charge up, I can listen to the radio and I can charge up my phone and make sure I've got, uh, A light that's going to be able to be turned on, and I want it to be a safe product in case something bad happens to the car.

I don't want this thing to blow up in the trunk, and I don't want it to get overheated and be damaged. If this product can do those things, Yeah, the, the labeling of solid state versus not solid state years from now, that won't matter. That labeling won't come into play. Solid state versus solid state, because there will just be a variety of different things that will make claims about hours of power, safety of product, usefulness of product.

And I find myself in a similar gray zone as you, of, is it okay for them to call it solid state? Is it okay for them to, uh, lean into the solid statishness of it? It's like, it feels a little bit like Is a beanbag a chair? Is a hot dog a sandwich? Like these are like, you think somebody is a hot dog a sandwich.

It's not, it's not an ethical conundrum, but is it okay to sell something as a solid state when it's not? I don't know.

I

don't know. Well, that's

the thing is like, It may not be true solid state, meaning no liquid electrolyte, but it has solid state technology in it. It has a solid state electrolyte. So it's like, how do you talk about it?

That's part of the reason why some companies are saying we have a semi solid state. I mean, that's part of the reason why they're doing that. This kind of, in a weird way, I think, relates to like how we talk about AI and artificial intelligence. It's like, That's technically not AI. Like if you want to push the glasses up and go, well, excuse me, it's machine learning, not AI.

It's like, that is, you know what I mean? Yeah. It's like, it's taken on the definition and what AI means in the public sphere is different from what it actually means in academia and in actual software development. It's like, You know what I mean? It's kind of taken on a different life in the public sphere.

Solid State might be something similar, where it's kind of taken on a different, slightly different life in a public sphere versus actual material scientists that are working on this stuff, yeah, building these actual cells. Yeah, I'm not saying it's right or wrong. I, like I said, I'm still undecided, which is why I'm talking to all these people and why I'm probably gonna do a follow up.

And depending on what I find from all that, it may persuade me to go, uh, this isn't solid state. And then if that's the case, I might take the original video down. I may republish something, you know, it's like, whatever it is, I'm trying to figure out the answer to this so that I can put my best foot forward.

And it goes, there's part of the debate too is like, is a gel a solid? Is a gel a liquid? Like the simplicity of like words have meaning. You're

going to get a bunch of people yelling at you right now.

Yeah. It's just like, but the simplicity of like words have meaning like, and you're using words on your packaging.

And if those meanings don't fit with what's inside is that. Okay. Yeah. Or is it close enough? It's solid state ish. If they just put the ish at the end of that phrase, would that have been enough? It's

what's the marketing was the first there. I think their marketing was along the lines. I think it worked forward with something like the first solid state battery on the market.

And so it's like, well, the first solid state ish battery on the market doesn't have quite the same ring..

But maybe if it avoids a lawsuit, I mean, you talked about brand damage. It also could be a class action lawsuit. If enough people are like, but, but that's where I only bought, but that's where I come back to and

say, but that's where I come back to and say, but how is there a class action lawsuit there?

When you look at what they claim the battery can actually do, they're accurate They are accurate about what the battery can actually do. So saying it's solid state and it's not solid state, well, what was the harm done to you as a consumer? Because you bought it and you knew what the watt hours were. You knew what the amperage was.

You know what the cycle life is. You know, it's got this safety report done by a third party that it's an incredibly safe. It's like, it's doing everything they're saying it's supposed to do. And the only thing they've done wrong potentially is call it solid state, which sets expectations. It sets

expectations.

If

somebody else

bought it, not because of the stats on the thing, but because of the wording of solid state. That's your, that's your lawsuit. That's your, like, I was, I was duped. Yes. Thorny, thorny, sticky, quacking, waddling mess. Listeners, viewers, where do you land on this? Matt and I have both taken a very firm and bold stance that we are undecided.

So, where do you fall on this? Is this a, yeah, if it's not solid state, it's not solid state. Or, well, it's mostly solid state. So why not call it solid state? Where do you all land in this? Let us know in the comments, we look forward to hearing from you. As always your comments are a huge part of the conversation here.

And as you can tell the commentary also helps inform what happens on Undecided. As Matt mentioned, this conversation that he spotted in the comments and his feedback from his viewers and listeners has driven him to dive deeper into this topic, looking for more for more information and trying to figure out, should that original video even stay up on YouTube?

So stay tuned for that and please do let us know what you think. You can also just leave a review wherever you found it. And don't forget to subscribe. Comments, subscriptions, and reviews are three easy ways for you to support the channel. And if you'd like to more directly support us, you can go to stilltbd.

fm. And click the become a supporter button, or you can click the join button on YouTube. Both of those are easy ways for you to directly support us. And we appreciate the welts from the quarters thrown at our heads. Once the bruises heal, we get down to the conversation about whether or not a solid state battery is in fact a solid state battery.

It's light, it's easy. It's fluffy and you all love it. Thank you so much everybody for taking the time to watch or listen, and we'll talk to you next time.