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Electric vehicle battery costs rapidly declining, Tesla cited as leading

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

#61

Post by mtgx »

g4k wrote: post #50
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.

I think that's extremely conservative, even if you don't consider the gigafactory. He said years ago that the rate of improvement in density would be 6-8% per year, but clearly it's been much better than that - more like a 20% increase in density or a 15% drop in price per year, for the past 8 years.

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

#63

Post by Someone »

jeromeflipo wrote: post #51
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.

How small a fraction? Tesla is expected to produce between 80,000 and 90,000 Model S and X this year. With 80 Kwh battery pack on average (my guess), Tesla currently consumes 6.4 Gwh of Lithium-ion battery. Back in 2013, the global production was estimated to be 35 Gwh (cf. Gigafactory announcement presentation). How much has it grown in the past 3 years?

Eyeballing the chart in the article, and assuming kWh/car to have remained constant: by a factor of about 6.

The article also mentions 70% growth in the last year. Assuming equal growth in the other years, It would be about a factor of 5.

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

#64

Post by bluehawk »

Animats wrote: post #45

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.

Yeah we are. But phones are more powerful, with bigger screens and power hungry electronics. Plus consumers want smaller, lighter phones, so with the higher density they make the batteries smaller. It's a balance.

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

#65

Post by Shivetya »

So were are only talking about numbers they are hoping for, not currently in production? GMs numbers are current, what are Tesla's current battery costs? Just because they want 100 by 2020 doesn't mean they are leading the charge, simply leading the wish list.

Still waiting on density improvements because frankly 400kg for 200 odd miles of range is not good. Of course with higher density means better charging and hopefully standards are ready for it

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

#68

Post by melling »

mikeash wrote: post #37
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.

Worldwide production of lithium-ion batteries in 2013 was around 35GWh. The current rate is somewhat higher, I can't quite find how much. Tesla is currently producing around 100,000 cars/year. Each car has about 80kWh of battery on average (the options right now are 75 or 90), so that's about 8GWh. If they meet their goal of 400,000 Model 3s produced in 2018, assuming 55kWh of battery for those cars, that's 22GWh, no…

Tesla hasn't sold 100,000 cars in their entire history. Last year they did sell 50,000 cars. Think they'll double that this year?

http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2015/11/18/how-many-ve...

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

#69

Post by warfangle »

Animats wrote: post #45

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.

In 2008:

The iPhone had an 1150mAh battery and, according to anandtech [0], 284 minutes of talk time (3G) and 400 minutes of web browsing time (WiFi). It weighed 133 grams.

In 2016:

The iPhone SE has a 1,624mAh battery and gets 556.2[1] minutes of web browsing time on WiFi.

It weighs 113 grams.

Of course, I have no idea what percentage of weight made up the battery for either of these phones. I also have no idea what percentage of the cost to manufacture the battery made up for either of these phones. But I do know the iPhone SE @ 16GB is $100 cheaper than the iPhone 3G @ 16GB was, not accounting for inflation.

We're seeing some improvement, most definitely. But unless someone has data to compare the two batteries directly, we can't say by how much.

The smartphone world has been much more keen on improving power consumption of the hardware in question rather than power storage. At the scale of power that an automobile uses, the opposite is true.

0. http://www.anandtech.com/show/2571/18 1. http://www.anandtech.com/show/10285/the-iphone-se-review/3

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

#70

Post by pyoung »

bhauer wrote: post #7
toomuchtodo wrote: post #4

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.

> 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…

I can't quite tell what you are trying to argue, because you acknowledge that government incentives have helped, yet you seem to be claiming that the success of solar was due to free market economics.

Just to set the record straight, the solar industry would not exist without government support. Nearly every company past and present has taken grant money from the DOE, or directly benefited from cash rebates or stimulus money. Local utilities in many states are required by local regulatory agencies to buyback excess solar power at retail prices, which for many regions is the difference between hitting the break even point in a reasonable time frame. And before the ITC (tax credit) was unexpectedly extended last year, companies were preparing to downsize considerably and were warning local politicians that without an extension, there would be massive layoffs in the industry.

With battery tech starting to become viable and with continuing efficiency improvements, we are getting closer to a point where solar might be able to compete on it's own, but in it's current form, the industry is still highly dependent on subsidies and tax breaks.

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