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

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

#241

Post by pjc50 » Wed, Jun 08, 2016, 2:18 PM UTC

Teeboo wrote: post #203

Cyph0n wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not as much, yes, but it's still important. Space is quite valuable even in a normal household.

Space is only at a premium because it costs more to have more space. The real question is "how much space are you willing to sacrifice for energy self-sufficiency?" In the UK, electric bills hover around $1200 a year for electric/gas households and $2000 a year for full electric. Renewable households will have a HUGE potential market. U.K. Residential market is 26 million houses. Theoretical price point of $1500 doll…

IF you can get a solar system and batteries for £1k, then that starts to look feasible. But that's a big if.

I had a 3.8kW solar system put in for £5k last year and have yet to really run the numbers on savings; the payback period is 10 years of feed-in tariff cheques. If I went off-grid that would be reduced. I don't really see why I'd want to go off-grid for its own sake, I'd rather better explore the possibilities of net metering and sharing power with the rest of the city.

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

#242

Post by Brakenshire » Wed, Jun 08, 2016, 2:59 PM UTC

Gibbon1 wrote: post #205

Brakenshire wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We'll find out! The lesson from oil and gas is that people find ways once the price goes up and the demand is there. Lithium is very abundant. Do we know what percentage of the cost of the battery comes from material costs?

Well 'the internet' says a Tesla Model S battery contains about 11.7 kg or 14.2 kg of lithium. Currently lithium carbonate is $6500/ton. Molar mass is ~74 which is 14/74 = 19% percent lithium. So I'd assume it costs $30/kg $35/kg X 12kg -> $420 On the other hand the Nissan Leaf contains 4kg or $140 worth. I'm pretty sure a sustainable increase demand will bring more lithium onto the market.

Very interesting, thanks for doing that calculation. Lithium should scale directly with storage capacity, so despite technological improvements in kWh per unit weight or volume, that should stay relatively constant. So there is a relatively hard limit here for price reductions.

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

#243

Post by mikeash » Wed, Jun 08, 2016, 3:35 PM UTC

melling wrote: post #230

simonh wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do their sales in the first 5 months of 2016 somehow not count?

I was looking at the wrong data. At any rate, the point is that Tesla is trying to ramp up production very fast. Going from 50,000 to 100,000 cars sounds difficult in 12 months, while maintaining quality.

Going from 2,700 to 22,000 in 12 months sounds difficult too, as does going from 22,000 to 32,000 and from 32,000 to 50,000.

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

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Post by delecti » Wed, Jun 08, 2016, 4:15 PM UTC

tajen wrote: post #212

pmarreck wrote: post #181

Tesla is going to be a gigantic company one day. Disclaimer: I own one (Model S P85+, about 2 years old). And everyone I let drive it (yes, I am crazy enough to do that... As a fan who pushes the bleeding edge, it's important to share the experience in order to change minds... Anyway, my insurance covers me even when I'm a passenger!) cannot stop talking about it afterwards. I actually think Tesla's market is limited…

How do you deal with the 8-year limited lifetime? I evaluate a Tesla at 4x the cost of a normal car: I can get a new car for €15k lasting 15 years with a lively second market, Teslas are ~€30k, with free supercharger network, and 8 years warranty but no road license after that, and no second-hand market for spare pieces. Have you calculated the total cost of ownership (including insurance and free petrol) and how did…

Can you elaborate on the 8-year limited lifetime? I've never heard anyone mention anything about that before, and "but no road license after that" almost makes it sound like it's a legal thing rather than a physical/practical thing.

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

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Post by imaginenore » Wed, Jun 08, 2016, 4:55 PM UTC

mavhc wrote: post #238

nl wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. Next time someone claims base load means renewables don't work do that math. Also point to the experience in developing countries where they don't have reliable base load, yet have similar uptime.

Wind provides base load anyway, always windy somewhere

That's a bad argument. Arbitrary energy transportation is not a solved problem. Power grids are designed to deliver from power plants to the consumers.

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

#246

Post by tajen » Wed, Jun 08, 2016, 5:00 PM UTC

macspoofing wrote: post #123

Can Lithium battery supply even meet the demand if a significant portion of the auto market switches to electric?

It will have to: Car makers will have to compete with the same amounts of production. Owning a petrol car at the time of global warming doesn't make you the boss anymore.

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

#247

Post by Gravityloss » Wed, Jun 08, 2016, 5:20 PM UTC

jernfrost wrote: post #221

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…

Building the cheap mass market EV was what we tried in Norway. An utter failure. What it meant was a boring, underpowered car at a high price. Exactly the ugly little cars which EVs where known as. Elon Musk understood you had to start at the high end with low volume and high margin to fund your way to the mass market car.

I think a car that is worse than average is a significantly different thing than a car that is average.

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

#248

Post by tcoppi » Wed, Jun 08, 2016, 6:19 PM UTC

jonathanfoster wrote: post #20

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.

This is what happened during the Great Horse Manure Crisis of 1864[0]. Cities like New York and London were drowning in manure from all the horse-drawn carriages, which caused major health issues. No one could find a solution until Henry Ford came up with a process to build affordable cars and made horse-drawn carriages obsolete. [0] http://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofBritain/Great-...

Minor correction, according to the article it is 1894 not 1864.

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

#249

Post by _ph_ » Wed, Jun 08, 2016, 7:32 PM UTC

josephg wrote: post #180

audleman wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Interestingly (for me), when I leased my leaf the sales guy was talking about how Nissan could make a car with a much better range, but chose not to Wait, what? How did he justify that? That sounds like saying Apple could easily make a laptop with much better battery life but chose not to. Why would they ever do that?

Apple could easily make a laptop with better battery - it would just be bigger, heavier and more expensive. Elon Musk claims the same thing about Tesla - that he could easily increase the range on Tesla's cars if they wanted to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wsixsRI-Sz4 . But with a range of ~300 miles he thinks they're fine.

The current MacBook pro has with about 100Wh the largest battery you are allowed to carry onto airplanes - any larger battery would prohibit it traveling by air. So there is a very good reason not to make the battery any larger.

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

#250

Post by alex_hirner » Wed, Jun 08, 2016, 8:15 PM UTC

disposeofnick9 wrote: post #74

alex_hirner wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> fallacy is that any amount of money can fix anything. That's exactly why I started http://openbatt.org The problem exists partly because incremental knowledge gains, such as additive formulas, are hard to trade.

Chinese cells are like illicit drugs: quality varies widely and it's hard to know what someone is getting. I bought 4 laptop batteries from Amazon and all had overstated capacities of the 18650 chemistries... some had 2000 mAh (10% overstated), others 1800 (22% overstated) , when the 4s3p packs were marked "8800 mAh." I tested the cells individually, and they came out to about 85-99% of spec. The problem is also in t…

There is significant effort (and progress) in standardizing and contrasting test methods [1]. This usually constitues a good first step in a market of lemons. [1] http://energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2014/09/f18/es_cunningham...