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10k kWh per year seems really low. Does that include heating?
The US 10k kWh average is extremely high. The EU average is 3.7k kWh.
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I don't assume they mean something smaller than a factor of 25 either. 1.2kWh would be substantially less than 40kg.
No, no, the world is 25 times bigger than the US, by population. So it's ridiculous to equate houses with US houses, especially when reading a British publication.
Also, FWIW, the North American edition of the Economist accounts for more than half the readers. UK readers are less than 20% of the total.
And believe the cost of a pack itself is very quickly approaching $100/kWh as well if not crossed it already.
Making batteries is still a rather profitable business with double digit margins, it's just latest equipment, and cathode materials became way more expensive, and hard to get than what small battery makers can afford.
Despite China dominating the metallic cobalt supply chain, the cathode materials market are dominated by Japanese chemical companies, and I suspect some form of collusion is there.
With cathode being the most expensive part of the lithium battery cell, it's hard to fathom how a free market price for it can be many times the cost of input materials for years on end.
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No way. 90kWh/month? My Silicon Valley house consumed ~450kWh/month (15kWh/day) (before we bought an EV) which is very much on the low side from what I see here. 1100sqft. No A/C. Rarely run the heat. Every single light in the house is an LED. Gas appliances. 2 people, not home during the day.
Your neighbour is stealing power. 15kwh/day means you are permanently using 600 Watts. Do you have a stationary (desktop) computer? Or do you underestimate heating. You can burn through your whole years budget easily in less than two month. What about the oven, I mean do you bake?
This is important to keep in mind when you read articles and/or studies about how electric cars or wind or solar power is impractical. A lot of the data these studies use is just obsolete. Say you have an opinion piece in a news paper that says that electric cars will always be expensive toys for the rich. It relies on a scientific paper published in a technical journal 2 years ago. The scientific paper does not perf…
Well, you don't see poor people buying EVs that much. That's car manufacturer statistics, which I believe deserves a good degree of trust.
In the market for new cars, poor people buy cheapest IC cars, but not cheapest EVs.
I will take the point that middle class is now buying budget EVs, but you don't have real economy class EVs selling that well in the West, and in China as well.
Wuling Mini EV will classify as a true economy class EV, but what people lauding it don't say it that Chinese IC vehicles in the same price range outsell Mini EV many, many times over.
-- Mineral scarcity/cost of mining
-- Cost of processing, refining lithium
-- Cost of making battery chemical contents
-- Cost of assembling rest of complete battery
Any info on how much more advance there is to go on these aspects?
And, after all that is squeezed out, is lithium still going to be the thing for 30 years?
The article says that today a battery pack the size of a backpack and that weighs about 40kg, can power a house for a day. Is that really so? Would that be a normal house, being powered for an entire day? I find it hard to believe that battery would pack that much energy
A Tesla Powerwall 2 weighs 114.0 kg and provides 13.5 kWh. Average US household electricity consumption is 877 kWh/month, which would be 29kWh/day. Either they mean a very efficient/small house, or homeowners with unusually frugal habits. Edit: Average UK household electricity consumption appears to be around 10kWh/day.
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Not really. My electricity usage is considered normal so I've never really looked into it. Additional freezer, washer & dryer, oven (I have a propane range but many do not), microwave, there's some additional water heating in the dishwasher as well as for drying, TVs, other electronics like printer stereo etc., furnace/water heater are oil but still have pumps etc.
That's fascinating as it's not really that different from myself. I'm alone in a flat tough, I guess you are a family?