Unavailable
Unavailable
Unavailable
Audiobook10 hours
The Powerhouse: Inside the Invention of a Battery to Save the World
Written by Steve LeVine
Narrated by Mike Chamberlain
Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
3.5/5
()
Currently unavailable
Currently unavailable
About this audiobook
A Soul of the New Machine for our time, a gripping account of invention, commerce, and duplicity in the age of technology
A worldwide race is on to perfect the next engine of economic growth, the advanced lithium-ion battery. It will power the electric car, relieve global warming, and catapult the winner into a new era of economic and political mastery. Can the United States win?
Steve LeVine was granted unprecedented access to a secret federal laboratory outside Chicago, where a group of geniuses is trying to solve this next monumental task of physics. But these scientists- almost all foreign born-are not alone. With so much at stake, researchers in Japan, South Korea, and China are in the same pursuit. The drama intensifies when a Silicon Valley start-up licenses the federal laboratory's signature invention with the aim of a blockbuster sale to the world's biggest carmakers.
The Powerhouse is a real-time, twoyear thrilling account of big invention, big commercialization, and big deception. It exposes the layers of competition and ambition, aspiration and disappointment behind this great turning point in the history of technology.
A worldwide race is on to perfect the next engine of economic growth, the advanced lithium-ion battery. It will power the electric car, relieve global warming, and catapult the winner into a new era of economic and political mastery. Can the United States win?
Steve LeVine was granted unprecedented access to a secret federal laboratory outside Chicago, where a group of geniuses is trying to solve this next monumental task of physics. But these scientists- almost all foreign born-are not alone. With so much at stake, researchers in Japan, South Korea, and China are in the same pursuit. The drama intensifies when a Silicon Valley start-up licenses the federal laboratory's signature invention with the aim of a blockbuster sale to the world's biggest carmakers.
The Powerhouse is a real-time, twoyear thrilling account of big invention, big commercialization, and big deception. It exposes the layers of competition and ambition, aspiration and disappointment behind this great turning point in the history of technology.
Unavailable
Related to The Powerhouse
Related audiobooks
Unsupervised: Navigating and Influencing a World Controlled by Powerful New Technologies Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBlockchain Radicals: How Capitalism Ruined Crypto and How to Fix It Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Wolf Is At the Door: How to Survive and Thrive in an AI-Driven World Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Taming the Octopus: The Long Battle for the Soul of the Corporation Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsJimmy Stewart Is Dead: Ending the World's Ongoing Financial Plague with Limited Purpose Banking Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Non-Fungible Token Finance Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsIndustrial Revolution 1750-2020: From Sparks To Automation Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDistrust: Big Data, Data-Torturing, and the Assault on Science Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAltcoins and ICOs: The Next Frontier: Navigating Altcoins and ICOs for Investment Opportunities and Growth Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGods at War: Shotgun Takeovers, Government by Deal, and the Private Equity Implosion Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Work Mate Marry Love: How Machines Shape Our Human Destiny Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTHE I.Q. TRILOGY BOOK 3 - TWO JUMPED OUT OF THE LION'S MOUTH Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWaking Dragon: The Emerging Chinese Economy and Its Impact on the World Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Ingenious: A True Story of Invention, Automotive Daring, and the Race to Revive America Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Information, Technology, and Innovation: Resources for Growth in a Connected World Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAccountable: The Rise of Citizen Capitalism Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHigher Power: An American Town's Story of Faith, Hope, and Nuclear Energy Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMake It in America: The Case for Re-Inventing the Economy Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The End of the World is Just the Beginning: Mapping the Collapse of Globalization Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5YouTubers: How YouTube shook up TV and created a new generation of stars Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRobot-Proof: Higher Education in the Age of Artificial Intelligence Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Investing in Resources: How to Profit from the Outsized Potential and Avoid the Risks Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Startup Weekend: How to Take a Company From Concept to Creation in 54 Hours Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Dual Transformation: How to Reposition Today's Business While Creating the Future Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Invention and Innovation: A Brief History of Hype and Failure Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Gamechanger Investing Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Power Resources For You
No Immediate Danger: Volume One of Carbon Ideologies Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Manual for Survival: A Chernobyl Guide to the Future Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Creating and Maintaining an Electrical Safety Structure: Duties of Management and Chief Responsible Electrical Specialists Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHow To Simulate Stand Alone Solar PV System With Batteries in PVsyst 7 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Third Industrial Revolution: How Lateral Power Is Transforming Energy, the Economy, and the World Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5No Good Alternative: Volume Two of Carbon Ideologies Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5ISO 50001: A strategic guide to establishing an energy management system Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPlutopia: Nuclear Families, Atomic Cities, and the Great Soviet and American Plutonium Disasters Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Windfall: How the New Energy Abundance Upends Global Politics and Strengthens America's Power Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Fueling the Planet: The Past, Present, and Future of Energy Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Taming the Sun: Innovations to Harness Solar Energy and Power the Planet Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Our Livable World: Creating the Clean Earth of Tomorrow Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRenewable Energy: A Very Short Introduction Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Energy: A Human History Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5When Oil Peaked Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Uranium: War, Energy, and the Rock That Shaped the World Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Up to Heaven and Down to Hell: Fracking, Freedom, and Community in an American Town Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Blackout Wars: State Initiatives To Achieve Preparedness Against An Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Catastrophe Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Radioactive Boy Scout: The Frightening True Story of a Whiz Kid and His Homemade Nuclear Reactor Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Scientific Genius (and Rivalry) of Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
Reviews for The Powerhouse
Rating: 3.452382380952381 out of 5 stars
3.5/5
21 ratings3 reviews
- Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5LeVine explains the battery and it's place in society quite well. The importance of the battery to the modern world, especially in terms of electric cars, was explained quite well. A lot more could have been done with it, though, to show how important batteries really are to modern technology. I felt the book read as if a good editor could have cut it in half - it read like an essay based on too little information, dragged out to make a book. A let down for me.
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5The book focuses on one company (Argon) and dedicates more space to its office politics than technology.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5With all the geopolitical difficulties that come from a dependence on oil, and all the deleterious repercussions of car emissions, it would help a great deal if cars could all run on batteries. Thus, the efforts to realize such capabilities are not without interest or importance. One might well ask, what’s the holdup? This book is the story of the effort by a fairly small group of scientists and engineers to invent, [actually, develop is a better descriptor], a battery sufficiently powerful, energetic, and dimensionally stable to provide power for a commercially viable automobile. The author competently explains the electro-chemistry of batteries, in particular, the characteristics of lithium ion technology. It transpires that lithium based batteries have the greatest “energy density” [measured in kilowatt-hours per kilogram (kw-hr/kg)] of any known battery chemistry. This criterion is very important because a battery’s weight should be as light as possible for both the performance and the cost of any car it powers. Lithium-ion batteries developed for cell phones and other electronic devices typically have energy densities of less than 200 kw-hr/kg. General Motors estimated that a battery would have to have an energy density of nearly 400 kw-hr/kg to be an effective power plant for an automobile. Moreover, it would have to maintain that energy density through 1000 charging cycles.Levine also does a good job of describing the technological hurdles that have to be overcome to reach those performance criteria. He focuses on the efforts of two institutions, Argonne National Laboratories, (a government-associated facility) and Envia Systems, Inc. (a Silicon Valley start-up company). His description of the organizational and managerial struggles at both institutions, while accurate, did not interest me much. Who cares what building number at Argonne housed the battery team? And who cares whether various members of the team received promotions from A-6 to A-7? Dealing with petty jealousies may be an important aspect of research and development, but it makes for tedious reading or listening. Too much of the book is devoted to describing the managerial decisions taken at both institutions, and far too much is devoted to describing the preparation of a particular bid by Argonne to the Department of Energy. Some of the tedium in the story might be justified if “the battery to save the world” had actually been developed. But, spoiler alert: alas, although the 400 kw-hr/kg criterion has been met in small, coin-sized cells, no large scale battery has yet been built that can maintain that energy density for more than a few cycles. Part of the problem is that if you change any one part of a battery, there can be unforeseen consequences over time, which can’t be predicted by testing. Another challenge is finding the right composition of coatings for the batteries in order to stabilize the voltage. Efficient manufacturing processes represent yet another obstacle. There is much that can go wrong, and a great deal of money and effort is necessary to achieve success. Thus, battery research must continue, and so the story has not yet ended. As of now, however, an affordable fully electric powered automobile is still a thing of the future. Elon Musk’s Tesla is a great performing car, but it is very expensive. Chevrolet’s Volt, while more affordable, is not fully electric. Stay tuned—on your battery powered radio. Evaluation: This book may prove of most interest to those in fields of research and development, and especially in the management issues posed in those circumstances.(JAB)