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

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

#251

Post by sir_bearington » Sat, Apr 03, 2021, 10:52 PM UTC

ip26 wrote: post #123

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…

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.

Except we don't. Where's my single-core 100GHz processor?

Improvements still happen, but not always in the same way. If you implemented an application in 2003 assuming we'd have such a processor you'd be very disappointed. Counting on exponential improvements to continue is risky bet.

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

#252

Post by brucehoult » Sat, Apr 03, 2021, 10:55 PM UTC

lumost wrote: post #160

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 is now standard tech. Subaru has been making automatic breaking/adaptive cruise control a standard feature of all new model designs. Legacies MSRP at 22k, and the 18k impreza is due for a redesign in 2022. A quick google shows that the 2021 versa may be the cheapest car with automatic breaking at $16600 MSRP. https://www.subaru.com/engineering/safety.html https://www.nissanusa.com/shopping-tools/b…

My 2008 Outback 2.5XT has Eyesight adaptive cruise control including automatic breaking! Cost me US$6k a year ago with 55000 miles. Thirteen years old!

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

#253

Post by cbozeman » Sat, Apr 03, 2021, 10:56 PM UTC

chrisseaton wrote: post #245

cbozeman wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Negative, Ghost Rider. American spec ops prefer, and often use, Toyota Land Cruisers and HILUXs, for the very reason behind the Australian proverb! :)

> Negative, Ghost Rider Australian, not American. And I've literally seen it for myself, and I just also linked a photo of them doing it!

> Your special forces still use Land Rovers on operations!

I'm not Australian!

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

#254

Post by simonh » Sat, Apr 03, 2021, 10:56 PM UTC

clomond wrote: post #161

ben_w wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 electricit…

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

Build enough PV to generate 24 hours worth of power for the reactor in daylight hours, and store the excess in batteries to power the reactor overnight.

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

#255

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Apr 03, 2021, 11:00 PM UTC

cbozeman wrote: post #253

chrisseaton wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Negative, Ghost Rider Australian, not American. And I've literally seen it for myself, and I just also linked a photo of them doing it!

> Your special forces still use Land Rovers on operations! I'm not Australian!

[deleted]

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

#256

Post by semi-extrinsic » Sat, Apr 03, 2021, 11:05 PM UTC

ben_w wrote: post #141

clomond wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 electricit…

> how much would it cost to develop significant PV-powered electrolysis-and-Sabatier-process plant in any of the big coastal deserts, for exporting methane?

What are you thinking about as the carbon source? If coal, then this has been commercially viable for decades. In North Dakota there is a 1.5 gigawatt installation running since 1984. That one uses electricity from coal power IIUC, but today PV is cheaper than coal for electricity.

If you are talking about CO2 from direct air capture, the optimistic cost estimates of your CO2 feedstock are around $600/tonne. 1 tonne of CO2 gives ~137 kg of methane at 100% reaction yield, due to the molar weight ratio of CO2 to CH4.

So per tonne of methane produced, the CO2 cost alone is above $4000. For comparison a tonne of natural gas in the US today costs between $500 and $1000 for the end user.

This means that CO2 capture from air needs to become two orders of magnitude cheaper than today before this scheme works out.

I would say hydrogen electrolysis and then liquefaction for large scale distribution/export is way more realistic. This is what the EU seems to be going for together with Northern Africa.

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

#257

Post by brucehoult » Sat, Apr 03, 2021, 11:09 PM UTC

sgt wrote: post #70

tyingq wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

South Africa here. Our house uses about 20 kWh a day during the summer, with some minor AC usage in one of the rooms when needed. During the winter probably about 30kWh, and that excludes extra costs like wood for fireplace. My house is fully insulated and all windows are double glazed, so that keeps energy usage more efficient. I also have a solar heater (aka "geyser") which lowers energy costs even more. So with th…

Far north New Zealand, 4 bedroom house, no insulation, no double glazing, electric hot water and cooking. 9-10 kWh/day October-May, ~18 kWh/day June-September (dehumidifier). Wood burner (about US$150/winter) when the heat from the dehumidifier isn't enough to maintain 20 C.

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

#258

Post by alisonkisk » Sat, Apr 03, 2021, 11:11 PM UTC

chrisseaton wrote: post #188

mrfusion wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. What makes you say that?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firestone_and_Ford_tire_contro... "271 fatalities and over eight hundred injuries in the United States with more injuries and fatalities occurring internationally" and would have been detected by a TPMS which costs a few dollars.

A few dollars times tens of millions of cars.

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

#259

Post by manmal » Sat, Apr 03, 2021, 11:14 PM UTC

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 was built with Japanese climate in mind, where peak temperatures are usually not as high. I always found that strange, given that automotive components are usually tested for outlier conditions.

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

#260

Post by blake1 » Sat, Apr 03, 2021, 11:14 PM UTC

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…

It actually is pretty easy to predict the future, in a limited sense, a decade out: the cost of new technologies generally follows an exponentially declining “learning” curve. This has been extremely well studied in the case of the aircraft and semiconductor industries, and is the subject of hundreds/thousands of articles. Of course, some conditions must be met—hence the articles—like plentiful inputs, lack of monopoly power, and government (dis)incentives, but we’d see evidence of these constraining battery tech by now.

The input variable is the cumulative number of units, and of course we can’t be exact about the trajectory of that number, but we can infer from X MWh manufactured -> $/MWh.