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Lithium battery costs have fallen by 98% in three decades

economist.com

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

#201

Post by sokoloff »

theshrike79 wrote: post #190
dehrmann wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That might have been an intentional choice if they knew either they'd sell to suckers and leave them on the hook for the new battery, or have to subsidize a new battery in 5 years, knowing it would be cheaper, like writing a call on batteries.

The battery had literally zero temperature management, no heating or cooling. They literally could've added a 12 volt chassis fan to make it not suck so bad. Rapidgate was a thing, the battery heated up when driving, you stop to recharge -> battery heats up even more -> overheat -> limiters engage and you're charging at hand crank levels of power.

The LEAF has a battery heater. It does suck for having only passive cooling.

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

#202

Post by mrfusion »

throwawayboise wrote: post #199
mrfusion wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. What makes you say that?

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

Does being under inflated increase the risk? I always figured it was debris or just worn out tires?

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

#203

Post by nardi »

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #78
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…

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…

These are not the same kind of stupid. One makes the assumption that costs will always be the same, and the other makes the assumption that cost decreases are linear, or predictable. The former is much stupider.

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

#204

Post by tonyedgecombe »

theshrike79 wrote: post #190
dehrmann wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That might have been an intentional choice if they knew either they'd sell to suckers and leave them on the hook for the new battery, or have to subsidize a new battery in 5 years, knowing it would be cheaper, like writing a call on batteries.

The battery had literally zero temperature management, no heating or cooling. They literally could've added a 12 volt chassis fan to make it not suck so bad. Rapidgate was a thing, the battery heated up when driving, you stop to recharge -> battery heats up even more -> overheat -> limiters engage and you're charging at hand crank levels of power.

The funny thing is their electric vans do have thermal battery management.

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

#205

Post by sokoloff »

waiseristy wrote: post #176
chrisseaton wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

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

That was federally mandated in fall of 2007.

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

#206

Post by throwawayboise »

r00fus wrote: post #136
ajuc wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Global Warming is changing that. Anecdotally in my observations, more new houses in France now have AC whereas it was rare only 5 years ago.

People are also fatter and less tolerant of warm weather.

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

#207

Post by dzhiurgis »

minitoar wrote: post #80
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…

Are there many gains to be had on electric motors? I guess I sort of assumed those had seen quite a bit of optimization already.

Heat scavenging is probably biggest efficiency gain you can get. Tesla was relatively late to add heat pumps, but did innovate with octovalve (which has like 8 modes of heat distribution, one of which is storing something like 2kwh of heat in battery volume itself).

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

#208

Post by _JamesA_ »

Armisael16 wrote: post #137
marcosdumay wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I imagine most of the aircon energy usage coincides with the times of peak photovoltaic generation. So if you calculate by total energy consumption, you'll overestimate things by a huge margin.

You can imagine that, but it isn’t true. AC usage is relatively low in the middle of the day because people let their houses warm up while their at work. It jumps at the end of the workday.

Is that still true in the work from home post covid era?

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

#209

Post by sokoloff »

mrfusion wrote: post #202
throwawayboise wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Does being under inflated increase the risk? I always figured it was debris or just worn out tires?

Underinflation adds to sidewall flexing which increases the heating and wear on the tire, which increases the risk. A few psi isn’t the issue, but seriously under-inflated tires are a safety issue for traction and blowout risks.
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