Prediction Not checkable as stated
Berdichevsky: Autonomous EVs will be an order of magnitude cheaper than gas
“And as you can imagine, with the cost of recharging an EV being almost nothing compared to the cost of refueling a car, you know, autonomous EVs are going to be not just a little cheaper than gas powered EVs, but they're going to be an order of magnitude.”
Prediction Held up
Berdichevsky: Automotive scale will make lithium-ion dominate electrical grid storage
“Being somebody who's in lithium ion, I actually think the scale of automotive will also lead lithium ion to dominate most of the grid.”
Prediction Open · timeframe Dec 2050
Berdichevsky predicts most fossil fuel use will disappear by 2050
“I think by the middle of the century, I'm very, very confident that most fossil fuel fuel use will go away.”
Opinion
Berdichevsky argues climate change is no longer a technology bottleneck
“I don't believe that solving I don't believe solving most of climate change is going to be a technology problem. I think we have the technologies. I'm watching them get invented. I'm watching them get scaled right now.”
Assertion Partly supported
Berdichevsky: Graphite-metal oxide battery chemistry has completely flatlined
“This graphite metal oxide chemistry went through an S curve and flatlined, totally flatlined. And that's sort of when I started to see it flatlining at Tesla as part of the, was part of the impetus for starting Sela.”
Prediction Open · timeframe Dec 2030
Berdichevsky predicts battery costs will reach $50/kWh by 2030
“And so you can plot that out and you can see the costs. If technology improves trending to kind of 50 bucks a kilowatt hour, which would have been unthinkable to people, you know just a few years ago. I mean, a hundred seemed like a real stretch for everybody.…”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Berdichevsky: Autonomous vehicles will drive 1-2M miles per decade
“Is as we get to autonomy, which obviously is going to take a little longer than everybody expected, you know, vehicles are going to go from driving a 100,000 miles in 10 years to driving a million or two million miles in 10 years.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Berdichevsky says he, not Musk, chose Roadster's 69-cell battery configuration
“No, that was, no, that was me. That was me.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Berdichevsky: Advanced battery tech will probably double phone runtime
“Probably you can probably extend the runtime of the cell by with a, with not just our technology, but other technologies by roughly a factor of two.”
Assertion Supported
Berdichevsky: Early Tesla engineering operated from JB Straubel's living room
“Mostly no. So I spent a lot of time with JB. I mean, Elon was already an investor. He was on the board. But day to day, you know, I worked, we worked out at JB's living room. That was the Tesla annex. Back then.”
Assertion Supported
Berdichevsky: Silicon anodes hold 24x more lithium per atom than carbon
“So there, the lit, ah, four atoms of lithium actually bond with a single atom of silicon. So you remember with carbon, it's six to one. Here it's one to four. So it's 24 X atomically better.”
Assertion Supported
Berdichevsky: Silicon is 10x better by weight and 3x by volume
“Now silicon's heavier. So it's only about 10 times better on a weight basis. And then the other thing that happens is the silicon expands about three X as you charge it with lithium. And so on a volume base, it's about three times better, right?”
Assertion Supported
Berdichevsky: One electric car contains battery material of 10,000 phones
“So there's about 10,000 phone batteries worth of material in a single car.”
Assertion Supported
Berdichevsky: Electric vehicle battery demand currently exceeds grid storage by 10-20x
“Today, today cars are 10 or 20 times more.”
Assertion Supported
Berdichevsky: Basically 100% of lead-acid batteries are recycled today
“Basically a hundred percent of lead acid batteries are recycled today.”
Assertion Supported
Berdichevsky: Battery prices rose in 2021 for first time in 30 years
“So we saw battery prices increase for the first time and, you know, I mean, heck, probably in 30 years this past year.”
Assertion Supported
Berdichevsky: Tesla's first Gigafactory exceeded total global consumer electronics battery demand
“When Tesla built the first Gigafactory, it was it's, was bigger than all of the demand for all consumer electronics at the time.”
