> Some startups have even promised commercialization within a couple of years (but we know how those promises usually go).
These are exceptionally difficult problems for a start-up to tackle (unless they've had a genuine 'eureka!' moment). It just requires too much up-front capital costs and intensive R&D. Even if you have the science right, scaling it up to production is a huge engineering challenge. Hope you're right about the 5-10 year estimate though.
That's true, there is low possibility that any particular line of research will pan out. Usually what happens is various groups each figure out bits of the puzzle and then everyone cross licenses the resulting solution.
I remember 10-15 years ago same rough groups were working very hard on cathodes for lithium batteries based on iron vs cobalt. Because cobalt is spensive and cobalt based cathodes suffer from thermal runaway. They tried all sorts of ways to make iron based cathodes that were conductive enough. Today lithium iron phosphate batteries are standard off the shelf consumer items.
Batteries are hard because material science is hard.
Srsly. It's one thing to build a prototype, another to bring costs down to profitability, uniform yield up and processes optimized.
WTTW: Such folks are better off calling McKinsey, they will send a 7'5" Brit ex-physicist whom speaks English and Mandarin and knows the secret handshakes of how .cn works.
These are exceptionally difficult problems for a start-up to tackle (unless they've had a genuine 'eureka!' moment). It just requires too much up-front capital costs and intensive R&D. Even if you have the science right, scaling it up to production is a huge engineering challenge. Hope you're right about the 5-10 year estimate though.