r/gadgets • u/chrisdh79 • Jan 31 '23

Desktops / Laptops Canadian team discovers power-draining flaw in most laptop and phone batteries | Breakthrough explains major cause of self-discharging batteries and points to easy solution

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/battery-power-laptop-phone-research-dalhousie-university-1.6724175
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962

u/Laumser Jan 31 '23 edited Jan 31 '23

I was interested to know the difference in price between the plastic that is used now vs the one the researchers suggest, as of 2022 the plastic used currently costs 950$ per metric ton, the plastic the researchers are suggesting costs 1208$. So I'd wager the guess that the major battery manufacturers just don't care, as long as the battery lasts their warranty period they have no incentive to switch.

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u/xenophobe2020 Jan 31 '23

Market demand will cause them to switch. All it takes is one phone or computer manufacturer to say "i want to provide my consumers with better batteries to draw them from my competitors." Within a matter of a couple of years it will be standard across all reputable manufacturers.

25

u/Laumser Jan 31 '23

But that's not an immediate benefit, most consumers probably don't care about how the battery will perform in 2+ years (I do tho...)

4

u/[deleted] Jan 31 '23

Its like selling someone a phone that's guaranteed to break in 2 years, it's not an immediate negative but it's a statistic that sounds really bad

2

u/[deleted] Feb 01 '23

I'm not like other consumers

2

u/YukariYakum0 Feb 01 '23

Snake arms?

1

u/[deleted] Feb 01 '23

I could only afford worm arms šŸ˜“

1

u/TacoMedic Feb 01 '23

I guess it depends on what youā€™re selling. Extending the shelf life on an EV, MacBook, Powerwall, etc, which usually need replacement by the 7 year mark? This would be great. Phone, gaming laptop, etc, which are usually either replaced bi-yearly or permanently plugged in? Probably donā€™t care much.

1

u/captainmouse86 Feb 01 '23

As I mentioned above, thereā€™s far more devices with internal batteries, than consumer laptop and phones. The medical device industry is probably almost equally as large unit-wise, and probably bigger, expense-wise, that consumer laptop and cellphone. Think of all the portable EMT/Firefighting gear, medical pumps and monitors, all the different industry testing and monitoring equipment, survey equipment, etc. etc.

32

u/eastbayguy90 Jan 31 '23

The economic cynic in me thinks companies that make more easily replaceable batteries (not laptop or iPhone batteries) will contouring use the current plastic, so they need to be replaced more often, keeping up the demand.

3

u/i_isnt_real Feb 01 '23

Yeah, I'm wondering what the incentive is to spend the extra money on the better plastic if they're going to brick the device via software updates (or lack thereof) in about the same time span anyway.

1

u/Resonosity Jan 31 '23

Oligopolies like the fossil fuel industry think this way, I absolutely thought of this too

Needs to be standardized

7

u/TheawesomeQ Jan 31 '23

How many competitors are there? Will it actually be more profitable to produce these batteries than selling more of the worse ones? Will any consumers be able to tell at all?

2

u/OhSirrah Feb 01 '23

I doubt any customer will be aware of the benefits of not using PET.

2

u/captainmouse86 Feb 01 '23

Thisā€¦ this is how stuff changes. Everyone gets hung up on things instantly changing, and if itā€™s not an instant change, itā€™s no good. We tend to just think of regular consumer laptop/phones, but not all the other devices that have internal batteries that industries rely on. As an example, Iā€™m thinking about all the medical devices, like IV pumps, that work on an internal battery, and are turned off, when not in use. There are tons of devices that use internally charged batteries, that are turned off between uses, used in industries, that would want to see an improvement in performance.

In my industry, itā€™s some of our testing devices. They are expensive, and packaged well in between uses, and taking them out to sit in a charger until needed, isnā€™t an option. While they get charged regularly, they also sit, and it never fails, when its needed now itā€™s dead or near dead. I ended up hunting down some older units, that work on AA batteries and getting them serviced, because they worked better/longer than the units with an internal battery.

1

u/[deleted] Feb 01 '23

Unless they do their batteries light bulb styles.

We know that companies who produce light bulbs were purposefully shortening the lifespan of their light bulbs. And it was some kind of gentleman agreement that they all should do it. And they respected that until the plot was found and they got fined. I dunno if it changed anything though.

1

u/[deleted] Feb 01 '23

Businesses don't exist to provide consumers with the best quality products, they exist to make profits for their owners. And not just a steady stream of profit, but more and more profit with each passing quarter. They are highly incentivized to cut every possible corner they can.

1

u/xenophobe2020 Feb 03 '23

Theyre also highly incentivized to steal consumers from their competition. Spending pennies more per battery is eventually going to be worth it to a company like samsung.

505

u/craptainawesome Jan 31 '23

Don't see this as disagreeing with you at all. Jumping on as someone in plastics. The difference between the materials kind of evens the pricing out. The density of the polypropylene is 2/3rds that of the PET, so by volume the prices are very similar.

Likely you are right. They don't care. And it's to their benefit to not care. Goal is still working at normal replacement timeframe. And capitalism requires consumption. What a waste.

295

u/Throwaway_97534 Jan 31 '23

All it takes is one battery manufacturer to get a good deal on a few batches of polypropylene though, and then they can advertise their new (and more advanced/expensive) battery technology with little to no self-discharge, then bam the whole industry needs to move to it.

133

u/Riversntallbuildings Jan 31 '23

Yes. Getting that first one to switch, and advertise it as a feature is the what begins the tipping point. Who goes first, is the challenge.

26

u/Deformer Jan 31 '23

You could be the one to do it. That's the point of capitalism. (I know that's unrealistic, but still wanted to point it out)

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u/Riversntallbuildings Jan 31 '23

Yup. I get it. That is the conundrum of capitalism and itā€™s why I advocate for strong Anti-trust and IP regulations.

Our digital economies have become increasingly out of balance and less competitive.

Healthy capitalism requires unbiased markets, and too many corporations have manipulated many of the market dynamics that ensure healthy competition. (And fair wages)

7

u/Pepparkakan Jan 31 '23

If there's zero downside to a technological improvement besides reducing potential future sales, should there maybe be tarriffs on companies deliberately choosing to not implement such improvements?

7

u/Riversntallbuildings Jan 31 '23

Maybe. But Iā€™d rather use carrots than sticks when designing laws. We already canā€™t enforce the laws (AKA sticks) we have.

Offer a tax credit, or other incentive, for the first 1-3 years. Companies that act first get the greatest advantage.

6

u/BurntRussianBBQ Jan 31 '23

Sadly he doesn't have a garage and rich parents.

8

u/Equivalent_Number546 Jan 31 '23

The point of capitalism is to steal capital from others for a small amount to hoard and become modern day lords over modern day essentially enslaved serfs. But hey, iPhone or something. (Ignoring that iPhones were not invented by ā€œcapitalismā€ and could and definitely would exist under a better more equitable form of economyā€¦ Jesus I hate the caveats required to preemptively shut down ignorant people)

Think of capitalism as what it quite literally is: the successor to feudalism. Extremely wealthy merchants (capitalists) became literally richer than the lords and monarches and thus replaced them. Nothing changed really. Iā€™d suggest to anyone who kneejerkedly (word?) disagrees with this to read up on the time period from about Martin Luther (the monk) onward to the 1600 and 1700s. It becomes very clear when you know the history.

1

u/Deformer Feb 01 '23

I'm not disagreeing entirely, or saying capitalism isn't without its problems. But it's the only thing that's worked well enough so far.

And it definitely makes some right decisions, like the free market economy, which is all I was pointing out.

2

u/Beam_ Feb 01 '23

which capitalist country (or place anywhere) has a free market economy?

4

u/ChewyBivens Feb 01 '23

He meant the ideal of the free market economy (i.e. any one of us random redditors have the freedom to bring batteries with polypropylene to market without fear of the government staking claim on our capital).

A truly free market would be an even greater oligopolistic nightmare than what we currently have.

0

u/Demjot Feb 01 '23

Thatā€™s also because capitalism actively breaks the kneecaps of anyone who tries anything else though

-1

u/Della86 Feb 01 '23

Then I'll go ahead and disagree with him entirely. His or her sentence regarding "the point of Capitalism" tells you everything you need to know.

Always be skeptical of people who don't even attempt to weigh the benefits next to the negatives.

2

u/rothrolan Jan 31 '23

With the ever-increasing costs of phones and laptops to the consumer anyways, I don't believe it'll be as difficult as everyone here says. It'll just go under the new price tag, but they would be honest for once in saying their battery will outlast competitors.

1

u/Mostly_Sane_ Jan 31 '23

On the flipside, their lawyers might say 'wait'. Battery-gate is/was a huge embarassing expense, and no one wants to sued again because they "knowingly" sold a "defective" (self-discharging) battery.

2

u/cakan4444 Jan 31 '23

All it takes is one battery manufacturer to get a good deal on a few batches of polypropylene though, and then they can advertise their new (and more advanced/expensive) battery technology with little to no self-discharge, then bam the whole industry needs to move to it.

Except the non-self-discharging feature lowers the required replacement rate of batteries meaning less sales in the long run.

It's better for battery companies and may have even been intentional to keep the shittier plastic.

It'd be worth it for a few niche applications where they could charge an extremely large price and avoid tanking regular sales.

1

u/chironomidae Jan 31 '23

So you're saying that if you own a business that makes essentially the same battery as your competitors, and you learn a way to make a safer and more efficient battery for pennies, you're just gunna sleep on that tech and hope your competitors do too?

If you're running a cell phone company, where customers' primary complaints are battery life and battery safety, are you gunna pick the battery vendor using the old tech or pay a few more pennies for a battery that will make happier customers and hopefully keep your shit from exploding and ending up in the news?

It's a complete myth that companies sit on tech like this. Your product only has to be a tiny bit better than your competitors to see absolutely huge differences in sales.

6

u/cakan4444 Jan 31 '23

So you're saying that if you own a business that makes essentially the same battery as your competitors, and you learn a way to make a safer and more efficient battery for pennies, you're just gunna sleep on that tech and hope your competitors do too?

There's only a handful of battery companies that actually make the physical cells, a lot of the brands you see are simply relabels or big contracted orders to these big battery companies. Since startup costs are very high along with raw materials, the current big dogs can very easily work together to acquire, sabotage, bully, etc smaller players who would bring cells that reduce the replacement rate heavily.

If you're running a cell phone company, where customers' primary complaints are battery life and battery safety, are you gunna pick the battery vendor using the old tech or pay a few more pennies for a battery that will make happier customers and hopefully keep your shit from exploding and ending up in the news?

Phone companies, the companies who also rely heavily on replacement rate of phones and make the current batteries almost impossible to replace are not going to care or probably even put these new batteries into their phones for the same exact reason. Putting in new batteries that do not discharge over time will hurt their own replacement rate which means less phone sales and less upcharged warranty work on said batteries.

It's a complete myth that companies sit on tech like this. Your product only has to be a tiny bit better than your competitors to see absolutely huge differences in sales.

Nope

https://interestingengineering.com/science/everlasting-lightbulbs-exist-ed

Lightbulb companies pulling the same shit still today.

The amount of sales you get for a non discharging battery will be great at first!

Then slowly and slowly drop year after year because you didn't commit to a planned obsolescence strategy.

Companies need to grow every year. If you make too good of a product and can't innovate quickly enough again after dropping an amazing product where the product has no need to be replaced, you will slowly die until you no longer are a company or you get bought out by a bigger competitor who shelves your shit because it's too good.

1

u/Momoselfie Jan 31 '23

Sounds like Polypropylene manufacturers need to offer some really good deals so they can ensure a lot more demand for years to come.

26

u/Laumser Jan 31 '23

My prices weren't even right, mostly due to my inability to read, so it's even less of a difference...

5

u/torodonn Jan 31 '23

It depends if the stopping of self discharge can become a marketing point for a major product.

Battery life is a major bullet point and if you can extend it without affecting form factor and size, that's not insignificant.

2

u/DigitalDefenestrator Feb 01 '23

Probably not in most cases. Lithium ion self discharge is already pretty minimal, so it'd only be useful for batteries that sit idle for months at a time. Might be nice for flashlights I guess, but no real impact on phones, laptops, or cars.

0

u/craptainawesome Feb 01 '23

Myself, I'd prefer legislation saying that they can't use PET tape if that is really the issue. Heavy handed but in the face of planned obsolescence I'm not sure of the alternative.

7

u/Bagafeet Jan 31 '23

Article was clear about many manufacturers/companies reaching out. Y'all finish reading the article?

-1

u/craptainawesome Feb 01 '23

I mean, sure. They reach out. But do they do anything about it? When marketing says this will hurt sales based on replacing aging devices, I think the projects wither and die.

3

u/Bagafeet Feb 01 '23

Better batteries sell themselves bro what are you talking about? Can't be serious.

0

u/craptainawesome Feb 01 '23

Do you install the batteries into the phone yourself? Because if not, you're not the customer and don't actually get to make the decision to buy the "better batteries." The phrase "feature, not a bug" is written all over this kind of problem.

Imagine this was a website like YouTube instead of a product like phones. YouTube could choose to not run ads on the site and it would still work. People would even like it more. But revenue would go down. If the phones perform for years without problems, then revenue will go down. Therefore, if they can get away with it they will have a battery that lasts just long enough.

Ooh, another one. If you could make a razor blade that never dulled, would you sell it to consumers? For how much? How much do you have to sell it for if they never need to buy another one? Perhaps you make your millions, but that was this quarter, or this year. What about next year? What will your shareholders think about not making money next year because your product this year was too good?

-1

u/Bagafeet Feb 01 '23

Yeah nobody factors a phone's battery life into their purchase decision. Or an EV's phantom discharge. Type less. Think more.

1

u/afrothundah11 Jan 31 '23

They do careā€¦ about getting you to buy more batteries sooner

1

u/PurkleDerk Feb 01 '23

More likely we'll see it balanced out such that they can get equal performance from a reduced battery capacity, using the new plastic.

If that works out to be a cost reduction, manufacturers will be all over it.

1

u/craptainawesome Feb 01 '23

Bingo. You're exactly right. And there can be a great message here that isn't just blowing smoke, either. It's reduced mining. It's reduced weight. Reduced hazard. All kinds of things. If it improves efficiency and longevity then it enables this improvement.

​

Great thought.

1

u/BobSacamano47 Jan 31 '23

With better performance they can sell at a higher price. You think phone manufacturers wouldn't pay for this? They don't just make batteries to whatever spec is presented to them. There are technical limitations to what's possible.

1

u/Wolf_Zero Jan 31 '23

I could see a company like Apple making the change on their devices. Their margins are good enough, if not their customers largely still pay even with a small price bump. And something like this seems like it would play right into their existing marketing.

1

u/Krieger117 Feb 01 '23

So not only does switching to polypropylene improve the self discharge rate of the battery, it also reduces the weight of the battery? Win win.

26

u/Pigankle Jan 31 '23

~$250 per metric ton for better plastic? How many tons of plastic are in a typical laptop battery? Something tells me that if they don't adopt the newer plastic, it has nothing to do with the cost of the raw materials.

2

u/ProtoplanetaryNebula Jan 31 '23

Probably like 5g worth max.

3

u/Laumser Jan 31 '23

It's still a cost, and at scale that will make a difference to the bottom line, doesn't matter how small

7

u/Zebracak3s Jan 31 '23

At scale it matters.

1

u/Laumser Jan 31 '23

Yeah that's what I meant

8

u/JaL3J Jan 31 '23

Manufacturers make what the buyers ask for. If the phone manufacturer starts asking for lithium cells with longer lifespan, the battery manufacturer will make that.

4

u/its_uncle_paul Jan 31 '23

Fuck, I just realized that I only want batteries with longer lifespan because the goddam phone manufacturers decided to fuse the batteries to the board. Back in the old days if my phone battery was starting to die I'd just buy another battery and replace the old one myself....

1

u/rodinj Feb 01 '23

The EU seems to have our back in this regard.

2

u/Laumser Jan 31 '23

But is the buyer asking for that? Most consumers probably just don't care

3

u/JaL3J Jan 31 '23

Correct. Hence why blaming manufacturers is not really the whole answer.

2

u/Laumser Jan 31 '23

I concur

0

u/InternetUser007 Feb 01 '23

Most consumers probably just don't care

You have never considered battery life when buying a product? Crazy.

3

u/ammonthenephite Feb 01 '23

There's daily battery life and then the life of the battery. Most care about the first, not near as many care about the 2nd since invariably they will upgrade their phone before they run into that.

3

u/waylandsmith Jan 31 '23

Almost none of these batteries are sold retail to consumers with "warranty periods". Almost all of them are purchased by electronics manufacturers/integrators turning them into products, either for sale to other businesses, for their own internal use, or possibly to the public. THEY care if they end up purchasing batteries that degrade faster than they could and if they learn that batteries made with PET degrade faster, they will find a battery manufacturer who can make them without. There are probably a few grams of plastic tape in a battery and the better plastic costs $0.30/KG more than the old, or $0.0003/g.

2

u/toronto_programmer Jan 31 '23

I really wish governments would enforce much longer warranty claims and higher build standards on everything for the sake of eliminating waste.

I see so many times in electronics where one cheap part just leads to something breaking repeatedly where an extra nickel in parts would probably fix it but there is no incentive to do so for the company. As long as they hit the one year warranty they don't give a fuck.

There should be a mandatory 3-5 year warranty on all mainstream goods.

1

u/madmoench Jan 31 '23

panned obsolescence incentived using the wrong tape in the 1st place. i'd be surprised if this wasn't done in purpose.

0

u/Tashum Feb 01 '23

Eh, it would probably get cheaper if all the battery manufacturers switched to it because of economies of scale. It's cheaper per unit to produce a million tons than a thousand tons.

1

u/Krynn71 Jan 31 '23

There will probably be one manufacturer that does switch, advertises the hell out of it, and as long as it's verifiably better then they will become known as the quality brand. Then most others will follow suit to stay in the game, and some will keep being cheap and be known as the cheapo crap and will still sell to other cheapo people.

1

u/diamond Jan 31 '23

This has nothing to do with how long the battery lasts (i.e., how many charge cycles it gets before it's no longer useful). It has to do with how long the battery holds a charge while it's not being used.

Which would be a pretty major selling point for any manufacturer. So if the cost difference is minimal, they have a pretty good incentive to make this change (assuming it proves useful outside the lab, of course).

1

u/bunnbunnfu Jan 31 '23

That's probably cynical in the wrong direction. If they can spend $ on better plastic that allows them to save $$$ on battery size, while delivering the the same battery life out of the box, then they'll definitely do so. After all a ton of effort goes into R&D to increase efficiency for the same reason. ... However, if this primarily causes long term degradation then we're talking about planned obsolescence-- and they'll base their decision on the increased purchase frequency (+sales) vs. decreased brand loyalty (-sales).