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

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

#191

Post by mlindner » Sat, Apr 03, 2021, 9:03 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.

> So, this is about to stop. Very soon. Quantum tunneling, yield rates, etc are all starting to be cost prohibitive.

People have been saying that for over 10 years though. "Very soon" keeps being punted off by another 5 years every 5 years.

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

#192

Post by twelvechairs » Sat, Apr 03, 2021, 9:03 PM UTC

ajuc wrote: post #72

umvi wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is that? Is it because North Americans use electricity for cooking and heating whereas other countries use gas for that?

Air conditioning isn't needed in many EU countries except for a few days a year (so it's not worth to even install it in private homes, modern offices mostly have them though for some reason). Also depending on the country few people use cloth driers - you just hang your clothes on a cable and let them dry by themselves. Houses in colder parts of EU are also usually better isolated than in US ([1] that's a typical Po…

House size is basically proportional to the increased energy. The average US home is 2-2.5 larger than European homes [0]. This doesn't just mean more space to heat and cool but also more space for additional appliances.

[0] https://i0.wp.com/shrinkthatfootprint.com/wp-content/uploads...

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

#193

Post by philipkglass » Sat, Apr 03, 2021, 9:03 PM UTC

vmception wrote: post #173

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…

Is there a good way to quickly understand this for any topic? Like, take something you might not be interested in and just "don't get". Your conclusions will be very quick but based on the current state of things. The people that "do get it" might be crazy, or they might be seeing a longer trend that they've been following so long that they never articulated it, and aren't even capable of articulating it. How is one…

There is no easy shortcut. There are some people who have kept up with academic research, commercial developments, and trend lines over enough time to filter out short term noise. Some of them blog or write long comments on HN. But unless you are one of those people yourself, you won't be able to tell which writers are trustworthy.

You can rapidly filter a lot of noise out of energy news with knowledge of physics and chemistry from 100-level university courses (or equivalent) [1]. But most people never acquired this knowledge and a lot of those who have only retained it long enough to pass tests in school. 10 years later they don't remember the difference between power and energy or why some chemical reactions are exothermic and others endothermic.

[1] This knowledge is actually helpful to filter news in general when it makes assertions about the physical world.

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

#194

Post by theshrike79 » Sat, Apr 03, 2021, 9:05 PM UTC

VBprogrammer wrote: post #147

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!

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.

They already do. A battery swap/refresh/replacement for a Leaf is 5-10k€ over here, depending on how bad shape the original is and whether you want a larger battery in there.

It's kinda sorta doable by yourself, but it's a HVDC circuit so you _really_ need to know what you're doing.

Actual brand-name shops are slowly able to replace individual failed cell packs instead of just swapping the whole battery.

The big problem is that batteries aren't really failing and because of that the manufacturers don't really have a process in place for replacements, each operation is a custom job.

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

#195

Post by mlindner » Sat, Apr 03, 2021, 9:09 PM UTC

markdown wrote: post #167

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…

> a car lasts only 10-15 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.

There's a lot of variation in the US depending on where you live. In California the car can be so old the paint has all come off but there's hardly any rust on the car because the air is very dry, it doesn't rain much, temperature variation is low and salt isn't used on roads. On the other hand you can be places like Canada or the northern midwest where Temperature swings by 100F between summer and winter, salt is used heavily on roads to melt snow, rain is common during the warmer months, and humidity levels in the summer are high. This causes cars, especially those not in covered garages to quickly rust and not last more than 15 years or so before too many components and body frame have rusted away.

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

#196

Post by dzhiurgis » Sat, Apr 03, 2021, 9:10 PM UTC

oblio wrote: post #150

sokoloff wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

If you look at some people dedicated to testing EV’s - Tesla’s phantom braking has become huge driving factor away from their cars.

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

#197

Post by Tagbert » Sat, Apr 03, 2021, 9:10 PM UTC

markdown wrote: post #167

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…

> a car lasts only 10-15 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.

In the US, the average age of all cars is 12 years, so a 10-15 year lifespan is pessimistic.

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

#198

Post by theshrike79 » Sat, Apr 03, 2021, 9:11 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.

4k miles per year isn't really anything, no point in getting anything more than the bare minimum.

According to most studies EVs are more eco-friendly after around 50-100k miles depending on each individual country's energy production profile.

At 4k miles per year you'd need to drive a brand new EV for over 12 years to break even CO2 wise.

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

#199

Post by throwawayboise » Sat, Apr 03, 2021, 9:13 PM UTC

mrfusion wrote: post #187

waiseristy wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't forget TPMS! Probably one of the best safety-to-dollar-spent advancements in the last *13 years

Interesting. What makes you say that?

Blowing out an underinflated tire at high speed is probably a reasonably common cause of accidents.

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

#200

Post by dzhiurgis » Sat, Apr 03, 2021, 9:14 PM UTC

chrisseaton wrote: post #166

r00fus wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely you jest. What safety features on standard vehicles became indispensable in the past 10 years? Note: things like collision avoidance and adaptive cruise are still luxury features and the OG poster wouldn’t have bought those anyway.

Collision avoidance, speed limiting, adaptive speed limiting, adaptive headlights, lane keeping, blind-spot warning, ISO-FIX anchors, far stronger pillars, reversing cameras, lane exit monitors, SOS buttons and GPS reporting, far more air bags, door-cyclist collision warnings, seat-belt pre-tensioning, some have pre-collision suspension raising, etc, etc, etc. I just went from a 2009 Land Rover to a 2020 Land Rover,…

How do you people leave out ESC - it saved my life at least once or twice and it’s obvious how well they work.

What leaves me even more fumbled is how easily RWD Tesla’s spin out and crash with regen and snow. Take the gas pedal of and you’re going off roading. With normal car you’d struggle to even trigger ESC, let alone loose it.