Electric vehicle battery costs rapidly declining, Tesla cited as leading • Hacker News Board

Re: Electric vehicle battery costs rapidly declining, Tesla cited as leading

#41

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jun 07, 2016, 8:44 PM UTC

honkhonkpants wrote: post #30

narrator wrote: post #17

I find it amusing to see so many people questioning why Tesla didn't release a cheap Tesla sooner. The answer is: They don't have the batteries to do that. That's why they are building the GigaFactory. People don't get that, on a large industrial scale, you actually have to think about supply. They think you just spend money and supply shows up because they are used to thinking on a household scale where supply is ge…

Tesla consumes a small fraction of global lithium-ion battery production. When the overall market is much larger than the marginal consumption, the assumption that offering more money increases local supply holds perfectly well. Even if you assume that Tesla is demanding 5% of the battery market which would be an outside estimate that's still well within the region where paying more will get you more.

[deleted]

Re: Electric vehicle battery costs rapidly declining, Tesla cited as leading

#42

Post by dimino » Tue, Jun 07, 2016, 8:45 PM UTC

mtgx wrote: post #2

4x drop in battery prices, (or) 5x increase in density in only 8 years. Pretty damn good for batteries that "aren't following Moore's Law", something most battery-related articles are quick to remind us. Hopefully, this continues for at least another decade, which should make EVs more than competitive with ICE cars.

Batteries are the secret to most of the cool "sci-fi" tech we all want but currently can't have.

Re: Electric vehicle battery costs rapidly declining, Tesla cited as leading

#43

Post by codemanneil » Tue, Jun 07, 2016, 8:46 PM UTC

[deleted] wrote: post #41

honkhonkpants wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tesla consumes a small fraction of global lithium-ion battery production. When the overall market is much larger than the marginal consumption, the assumption that offering more money increases local supply holds perfectly well. Even if you assume that Tesla is demanding 5% of the battery market which would be an outside estimate that's still well within the region where paying more will get you more.

[deleted]

Don't forgot Tesla Energy powerwall/powerpack as well

Re: Electric vehicle battery costs rapidly declining, Tesla cited as leading

#44

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jun 07, 2016, 8:48 PM UTC

chrischen wrote: post #21

maratd wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As a free market proponent, I assume you support including the externalities of pollution from fossil fuels into their costs? How do you even calculate that? For you to calculate externalities, you'd need to be able to assign costs. What's the cost of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere? You can't calculate something like that. So let me answer with a simple NO. We don't need anything like that. Cleaner technologies…

The cost is how much people would pay to prevent you for emitting it into their air.

[deleted]

Re: Electric vehicle battery costs rapidly declining, Tesla cited as leading

#45

Post by Animats » Tue, Jun 07, 2016, 8:49 PM UTC

From the article: "Since 2008, estimates of battery costs were cut by a factor four and battery energy density had a fivefold increase."

We're not seeing that kind of improvement in mobile devices.

Re: Electric vehicle battery costs rapidly declining, Tesla cited as leading

#46

Post by dmix » Tue, Jun 07, 2016, 8:49 PM UTC

toomuchtodo wrote: post #8

bhauer wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Its almost like we're going to fix the climate change issue, slowly (ramping up quickly)....by sheer luck of technological advancement. Which is an argument made by those on the free-market side of the political spectrum—that technology will help us solve this problem more quickly and efficiently than central planning and energy austerity. As someone who favors free markets, I have gone out of my way to be an early…

As a free market proponent, I assume you support including the externalities of pollution from fossil fuels into their costs? Which would've made the cost of electric cars and renewables cheaper much sooner?

This is an excellent point and a perspective I hope more free-market learning people (such as myself) come to appreciate. Although making externality influenced descisions in when factoring in your own energy expenditure and limited resource allocation, it may be a luxury of those of us in the 1st world and nearing the top of maslow's heirarchy.

Some climate change reducing habits can be cost-saving though. Such as biking vs cars, reducing meat consumption, long-term investments in solar power, etc.

Re: Electric vehicle battery costs rapidly declining, Tesla cited as leading

#47

Post by mikeash » Tue, Jun 07, 2016, 8:50 PM UTC

back_beyond wrote: post #40

mikeash wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Coal is killing a million people a year right now. Is it really "soon enough"? You can't precisely calculate the costs of the externalities, but you can estimate it decently. A tax based on a decent estimate would be far better than just saying "zero cost, everybody gets to pollute for free" and then trying to patch it up with regulations as we do now.

Without cheap energy in the form of coal, how many would die each year?

Do you mean compared to an alternative where people's energy comes from burning wood and dung, or one where energy comes from widespread solar, wind, and storage?

Re: Electric vehicle battery costs rapidly declining, Tesla cited as leading

#48

Post by macintux » Tue, Jun 07, 2016, 8:50 PM UTC

dimino wrote: post #42

mtgx wrote: post #2

4x drop in battery prices, (or) 5x increase in density in only 8 years. Pretty damn good for batteries that "aren't following Moore's Law", something most battery-related articles are quick to remind us. Hopefully, this continues for at least another decade, which should make EVs more than competitive with ICE cars.

Batteries are the secret to most of the cool "sci-fi" tech we all want but currently can't have.

Hmm. I think fusion is more important, but I'll take what I can get.

Re: Electric vehicle battery costs rapidly declining, Tesla cited as leading

#49

Post by jbooth » Tue, Jun 07, 2016, 8:52 PM UTC

narrator wrote: post #17

I find it amusing to see so many people questioning why Tesla didn't release a cheap Tesla sooner. The answer is: They don't have the batteries to do that. That's why they are building the GigaFactory. People don't get that, on a large industrial scale, you actually have to think about supply. They think you just spend money and supply shows up because they are used to thinking on a household scale where supply is ge…

Fortune 500 are all sitting on record amounts cash right now, they apparently see no place to invest it profitably.

The thinking behind trying to pump up demand is that if people are buying more, the Fortune 500 will put that money to work selling things.

Traditional supply-side economics is basically "shove money into those companies however possible".. but they're already sitting on piles of cash and doing nothing with it. How does more of that help?

Re: Electric vehicle battery costs rapidly declining, Tesla cited as leading

#50

Post by g4k » Tue, Jun 07, 2016, 8:54 PM UTC

mtgx wrote: post #2

4x drop in battery prices, (or) 5x increase in density in only 8 years. Pretty damn good for batteries that "aren't following Moore's Law", something most battery-related articles are quick to remind us. Hopefully, this continues for at least another decade, which should make EVs more than competitive with ICE cars.

That is indeed very good progress.

Elon Musk mentioned recently that he expects a yearly capacity increase of 5% for the foreseeable future.