Lithium battery costs have fallen by 98% in three decades • Hacker News Board

Re: Lithium battery costs have fallen by 98% in three decades

#141

Post by ben_w » Sat, Apr 03, 2021, 7:51 PM UTC

clomond wrote: post #131

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, using obsolete data from when tech was bleeding edge in 1999 to imply things about cost going forward is misleading. On the other hand using improvement over the same timeline, drawing a line on a graph and saying "look how X Y is gonna be in Z years" is the same exact type of stupid but pointed in a different direction. In 1991 lithium was highly immature technology and would take about a decade to make it into…

Except when you consider where each technology fits within its own S-curve of adoption (X axis over time, Y axis is % of the technology adopted by the market). When factoring in the shape of the exponential decreases in costs, and that penetration of most of these technologies is at or before the inflection point (between 5%-15% market penetration), it is more likely that the cost declines will ACCELERATE moving forw…

> Except when you consider where each technology fits within its own S-curve of adoption (X axis over time, Y axis is % of the technology adopted by the market).

Unfortunately, even a very small amount of noise in the data makes is basically impossible to know where you are in an S-curve.

Much safer to make predictions based on the far more limited good news that PV+battery is already cheaper than coal for electricity or ICE for cars.

Hmm… question for anyone who knows: with current tech, how much would it cost to develop a significant PV-powered electrolysis-and-Sabatier-process plant in any of the big coastal deserts, for exporting methane?

Re: Lithium battery costs have fallen by 98% in three decades

#142

Post by callmeal » Sat, Apr 03, 2021, 7:53 PM UTC

ninjinxo wrote: post #111

iknowstuff wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The engineers of Tesla motor's shocked everyone when they abandoned the versatile induction motor in Model 3 cars. They used a totally different motor called IPM-SynRM. Let's understand why the Tesla engineers made this crucial design change. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=esUb7Zy5Oio

Hrmm, so the cost and performance is much the same, but it adds value by creating a new talking point for Tesla owners to harangue others with.

>Hrmm, so the cost and performance is much the same, but it adds value by creating a new talking point for Tesla owners to harangue others with.

I know that hating on Tesla is a thing, but don't forget the higher torque, better efficiency, lower heat generation in the stator windings. And the fact that this type of motor first showed up in the Prius and Tesla made a better version of it. Yeah they're getting away with saying they invented it Prius were touting their continuously variable transmission instead of thier motors.

Re: Lithium battery costs have fallen by 98% in three decades

#143

Post by nickik » Sat, Apr 03, 2021, 7:54 PM UTC

baybal2 wrote: post #86

hristov wrote: post #71

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…

> Say you have an opinion piece in a news paper that says that electric cars will always be expensive toys for the rich. 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 do…

Well, this is the argument against EV from the beginning. Literally people were shitting on Tesla because they started with a the Roadster.

Now they have a much, much better car for significantly lower price produced at much, much higher volume.

This is just gone continue, each generation produced will move down market.

Poor people will never buy new cars, but 2nd hand Bolt EV are already a bargain considering what you save on fuel cost.

As more EV are produced, more EV are gone be sold second hand. And at the same time new cheaper EV are gone be interceded in the market.

There is no inherent reason why an EV should be more expensive then a gas car, but there is a 100 year technology and infrastructure gap, this gap needs to be filled by the rich, upper middle class and now the middle class.

This is basically the same with every new mass technology.

Re: Lithium battery costs have fallen by 98% in three decades

#144

Post by h2odragon » Sat, Apr 03, 2021, 7:55 PM UTC

I recall the first time someone showed me lithium batteries, in a radio control car that outperformed a real car. Even then, the price while high wasn't the biggest barrier to getting large quantities; you just couldn't get as many as you wanted. Don't think that has ever eased.

I think that's why TSLA is such a hot stock, people feel there's much more market thats undeserved and TSLA seems to be the only folks gearing up to build batteries until everyone has all they want.

Re: Lithium battery costs have fallen by 98% in three decades

#145

Post by Fordec » Sat, Apr 03, 2021, 8:00 PM UTC

supernova87a wrote: post #87

I'm pretty interested to know what parts of this cost have hit their practical limit, and which still have cost to be squeezed out? -- 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 g…

I think Lithium is one of the last issues with current battery tech when you compare the additives and support mechanisms for getting the energy out of the battery and into useful work. Cobalt cathodes, Rare earth metals in the magnets of motors, elements like Scandium in light weight alloys, Tantalum capacitors etc. have all more eyebrow raising supply chains.

There will come a point where the economics of Lithium will require looking at, definitely in the scale-up phase. That is probably under 30 years. But there's a lot of lower hanging fruit before the industry collectively properly get onto looking into direct battery chemistry alternatives like Sodium-Air.

Re: Lithium battery costs have fallen by 98% in three decades

#146

Post by nickik » Sat, Apr 03, 2021, 8:01 PM UTC

baybal2 wrote: post #83

FYI, the cost of individual cells has long, long gone below $100 per kWh in wholesale volumes. 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 affor…

Collusion is kind of a strong statement. There is a fair bit of competition, its not only China and only Japan, and in these places its not one company. There are cathode companies in Korea as well. There are also multiple cell manufactures in multiple countries.

Tesla on battery day gave a pretty good exploitation of why the price is what it is, and they didn't say 'we need to solve this by trust busting'.

Elon Musk basically said 'if you attach a GPS tracker to a nickel atom its journey would be crazy'. Many, many steps are involved. Many processes, that then need to be reprocessed, and reprocessed again, and reprocessed again with a lot of shipping in between.

The problem is the industry was to small so far to really consolidate all these steps, localize production and mining. Rather many chemicals need are just bought in the form they were available from other industries, and then processed were built on top of that.

This video is a pretty nice visualization of the current process: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4i1T6s_NdAQ

Re: Lithium battery costs have fallen by 98% in three decades

#147

Post by VBprogrammer » Sat, Apr 03, 2021, 8:02 PM UTC

chrisseaton wrote: post #108

sokoloff wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> while a car lasts only 10-15 years While it might be the case that today’s EVs will not be economically longer-lived than 15 years, the overall average age of a car in the US is 12 years, and most of my cars have been bought with 10 or more years on them as it makes for very inexpensive motoring (no need for collision or comprehensive insurance, no financing interest, and nearly no depreciation). I bought my 2015 L…

> no need for collision or comprehensive insurance, no financing interest, and nearly no depreciation But you need to maintain it and have it inspected instead! And you're also paying with your safety - ten years is a very long time in safety technology these days!

Time will tell but I've got my fingers crossed that in 15 years time any backstreet garage will exchange your battery on a car of that age for a cost proportionate to the fact that you could reasonably expect another 10 years of trouble free motoring. With luck with a 50% increase on its original capacity.

Re: Lithium battery costs have fallen by 98% in three decades

#148

Post by ben_w » Sat, Apr 03, 2021, 8:03 PM UTC

dmoy wrote: post #132

ip26 wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

drawing a line on a graph and saying "look how X Y is gonna be in Z years" is the same exact type of stupid And yet we do it every ~18 months with semiconductors. Imperfect to be sure, but if you don’t skate to where the puck is headed, you will miss opportunity.

> And yet we do it every ~18 months with semiconductors. So, this is about to stop. Very soon. Quantum tunneling, yield rates, etc are all starting to be cost prohibitive. Even if hypothetically it does, there's a very real limit - an atom is only 10x smaller than 2nm.

On the one hand, I remember people saying the same about nodes much larger than those we currently use.

On the other, yes: continue current trends and single atom transistors become standard in 10-32 years.

Re: Lithium battery costs have fallen by 98% in three decades

#149

Post by ffggvv » Sat, Apr 03, 2021, 8:06 PM UTC

so why should i buy an electric car now if batteries will be way better in a few years and mine will be obsolete with bad range?

Re: Lithium battery costs have fallen by 98% in three decades

#150

Post by oblio » Sat, Apr 03, 2021, 8:06 PM UTC

sokoloff wrote: post #129

chrisseaton wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> no need for collision or comprehensive insurance, no financing interest, and nearly no depreciation But you need to maintain it and have it inspected instead! And you're also paying with your safety - ten years is a very long time in safety technology these days!

Maintenance beyond consumables (brakes, wipers, and tires) costs less than the difference in excise tax ($25 tax per $1000 of imputed value every year). All cars are inspected annually here. At 4K miles per year (my average pre-COVID), if my risk is average, I’d expect to be in a fatal accident slightly less than once every 22K years. I’m OK without the latest driver aids at that low level of risk.

> I’m OK without the latest driver aids at that low level of risk.

Driver aid, ok. But passive safety?