The Powerhouse: Inside the Invention of a Battery to Save the World
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.81 (796 Votes) |
| Asin | : | B00LFZ83RQ |
| Format Type | : | |
| Number of Pages | : | 594 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2017-06-29 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
Can the United States win?Steve LeVine was granted unprecedented access to a secure federal laboratory outside Chicago, where a group of geniuses is trying to solve this next monumental task of physics. With so much at stake, researchers in Japan, South Korea, and China are in the same pursuit. But these scientists-- almost all foreign born--are not alone. It exposes the layers of competition and ambition, aspiration and disappointment behind this great turning point in the history of technology.. It will power the electric car, relieve global warming, and catapult the winner into a new era of economic and political mastery. 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, two-year account of big invention, big commercialization, and big deception. A Soul of the New Machine for our time, a gripping account of invention, commerce, and duplicity in the age of technologyA worldwide race is on to perfect the next engine of economic growth, the advanced lithium-ion battery
"LeVine examines the intricate dynamics of geopolitics, internal conflict and fierce industry competitiveness with equal acuity."
"An interesting story lost in endless details" according to BD. Spoiler alert!This book would have been better if it were about half as long. I only made it through about 70% before I gave up. Instead I looked up Mr. LeVine's article on Quartz about the collapse of Envia. That article was a good read, but here he tried to wrap the Envia story up with the details of battery research at Argonne and make it into a fairly long book. It loses focus as it delves into needless detail on the interactions of a couple dozen major and minor players. I started to lose track of t. Worth reading about lithium batteries, for sure! Bikermaniac1 Interesting story of the history of lithium ion batteries, but not so much from a scientific standpoint, rather from a business perspective. Nice history.I felt the history provided was incomplete. Levine only spends a page or so on Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla Motors, and builder of the huge lithium battery factory in Reno, NV. A frustrating omission. Also, he did not mention at all the lithium ion battery fires in the Boeing 787's. A huge omission, in my view. This book was copy writed in Feb, 2015, so ther. Do government subsidies, public-private partnerships and overcompensated scientists produce better outcomes for the country? Amazon Customer It is a good book, well written and thoroughly researched. It describes in great detail the efforts from 2008 to 2014 to find a viable energy storage solution for electric vehicles, mainly centered around US DOE Argonne National Lab. It focuses almost solely solely on the efforts within Argonne and Envia; and leaves out discussing countless other efforts around the world. The value of the book is in depicting the numerous forces at play within the large US government labs, the maze of subsidies and hype