Lithium battery costs have fallen by 98% in three decades

While true, my point is that when combined with the fact that we are pre-inflection point, and the economics now stand on their own (renewables, Electric Vehcile TCO and various Energy Storage applications being already cheapest, competitive or very close too) it is not unreasonable when mapping out the 5-15 year future to bet on an acceleration of cost declines over a deceleration. Particularly because the actual driver of unit cost declines (Wrights Law/Moore's Law) is the doubling / magnitude of units manufactured and put through the system, for which with all the factories being ramped up and planned - point to the positive in my view on it.

Regarding your PV-powered and electrolysis-Sabatier (electrofuel) methane, I think there are two important considerations. In order for methane (or other e-fuels like hydrogen or longer chain hydrocarbons) to be made economically, the capital cost of the equipment needs to be utilized as close to 100% of the time as possible. We already know that PV excess will be centered around the daytime peak (5-7 hours per day) meaning that there would also need to be plenty of excess wind to balance this out to get anywhere close to 100% utilization of the excess energy. Until the electricity grids get sufficiently saturated with renewables broadly, most e-fuel applications will continue to not be competitive, particularly as things like energy storage applications (possibly run off an e-fuel) are likely to be economical prior there being an opportunity for the export of excess e-fuels. That's more at the a end of the S-Curve as far as I can tell.

Non of the materials in the battery are really scares. Building up the capacity both in terms of mining and refining will likely be slower then demand growth however, so in the next 5-10 years its hard to say raw material input prices coming down a huge amount. This effectively generates a lower bound in the mid term for battery prices.

However, its not as bad as it sound. Depending on how you build your battery, the inputs are much cheaper. Iron Phosphate cathodes (LFP) are much, much cheaper. Manganese cathodes are also quite cheap and will be entering the market soonish. Cobalt has already been largely phased out, because it was to expensive.

Beyond that, localization of mining can add a lot of value. Currently a nickel atom travels a long time before it end up in your driveway. So without actually improving mining, a lot of cost can be removed.

There are however huge improvements to the chemical and the manufacturing aspects being made. Over the next decade the manufacturing of the cells will be so fast, that it will be a small part of the cost. Tesla I think is the most advanced in this right now, the assembly lines they presented are quite insane in terms of output per investment. And others are working on things like that too.

There are huge inefficiency still in the chemical processing, both in terms of how it is done, and how much its transported.

This video shows how the current cathode manufacturing works (from a company that wants to improve it but still): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4i1T6s_NdAQ

Once you get all of those cost out, reaching as low as 30-40$/kwh is achievable even for a high nickel cathode, and significantly less for a LFP battery or Manganese heavy cathodes. Tesla Battery Day target is for 56$/kwh (educated guessing by people) for high nickel but that is for the next 5 years.

There is significant further upside potential even then. Eliminating transition free metals from the cathode would cut cost significantly if it could be replaced with much cheaper materials. This is very active target of research right now, including by a Tesla funded high-reputation university lab.

Removing graphite and increasingly replacing it with silicon and eventually with nothing (using Lithium form the cathode to plate an anode) has a lot of potential as well to reduce cost.

Once we are talking 20 years, Lithium Sulfer is a great candidate both for automotive and long distance planes. These batteries would be incredibly cheap because Sulfer is waste material now.

Lithium is unlikely to go away anytime soon. There are potentially superior materials out there, but lithium has a lot of places to go still.

You might want to watch:

- The Limiting Factor (exactly about your question basically) https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIFn7ONIJHyC-lMnb7Fm_jw

- EV Stock Channel (mostly about supply chain) https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMfEjqHQS4u8W5etV0uAG_A

- Benchmark Minerals (lots of free contend and talks from companies in the supply chain) https://www.benchmarkminerals.com/

- Cell Ciders podcast (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/cell-siders/id15584413...)

Also, consider watching Tesla Battery Day and pay attention to detail, they actually do a really great job explaining the costs and how to improve them in the next 2-7 years.

Is this normal where you live (presumably the US)? I find that really wasteful. Cars last twice that in my country, and we have tropical, seaside (salt = rust) weather to deal with.

You can't buy an EV if you can't charge at home. And you won't buy an EV if you can charge at home if you're not sure you can charge it if you move. (Not to mention if you think you might move to another state, not being able to drive your car there is a question mark)