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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

#281

Post by sokoloff »

Reason077 wrote: post #277
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…

> "I bought my 2015 LEAF new and suspect it will not be economically viable in 2030" Why not? There are already companies who specialize in replacing early-model LEAF batteries with new, higher-capacity ones. By 2030, I imagine this could be a pretty widespread industry - perhaps even rebuilding/remanufacturing OEM battery packs with new cells. And so long as the battery still works, that LEAF will always be "economi…

Because it will cost around $2-3K for the battery replacement on a car chassis that’ll be worth around $2K to get back to a range and set of features that won’t be competitive with the then-current (no pun intended) EVs or other $5K cars.

If you want to spend $5K on a car in 2030, you’ll have way better options than a 75 mile range, 6kW charging (20-24 miles per hour) 2015 LEAF (CHAdeMO will be fully dead by then and most 2015 LEAFs don't even have it.)

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

#282

Post by astrange »

manmal wrote: post #259
theshrike79 wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Is that historical or recent Japanese climate? It's gotten worse lately - Tokyo at 35C 100% humidity is still not Death Valley but it's unpleasant for humans and presumably batteries too.

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

#283

Post by rictic »

sir_bearington wrote: post #251
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.

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.

Scaling may take us to some strange places, but it's worth noting that an Apple M1 chip has >100x the transistors of a 2004-era Pentium 4, and achieves ~500x the FLOPs at a fraction of the power draw.

Yes this isn't single-threaded performance, but I think we should keep in mind that exponential improvement in price/performance over many decades is possible, if never certain.

Sources - https://www.alternatewars.com/BBOW/Computing/Computing_Power... - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_M1

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

#284

Post by Qwertious »

semi-extrinsic wrote: post #256
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…

> 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 co…

To add to that: I'm not convinced that exporting even renewably-sourced methane is particularly renewable - methane has fugitive emissions when piped etc that are far worse pound-for-pound than CO2.

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

#285

Post by sjwright »

brucehoult wrote: post #257
sgt wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Remarkable. I’m in Sydney, my house sounds similar by description but I have gas hot water and stovetop. My house uses over 5 kWh/day for ambient/idle power alone.

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

#286

Post by pfdietz »

simonh wrote: post #254
clomond wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

The largest energy draw is making the hydrogen. Store that and operate the reactor 24/7.

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

#287

Post by justatdotin »

manmal wrote: post #263
bdcravens wrote: post #180

Today I bought a new lawn mower, weed eater, and blower, all electric, with batteries, for less than $600 total (not even the cheapest models). They have comparable power to gas-driven models.

Last time I looked, lawn mowers were not glaring examples of battery driven tech, just like vacuum cleaners. They provided 2-3x less energy output than their wired counterparts, and required charging after just 20 minutes.

I use a range of mowers, and I love the battery one because it is so maneuverable. One battery is enough for my house block. I have a second battery and I sometimes use it for larger areas, simply because it is so light and fast. After 40 mins I'm happy to stop for a beve while the first finishes recharging.

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

#288

Post by Brakenshire »

zdragnar wrote: post #280
Brakenshire wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The rate of change has been stable over the last 15 years, do you bet it continues for a 16th year or that it stops this year?

They'll never be free. They'll never be cheaper than the raw materials that go into them, or the copper to wire them together and into the car. At some point, there's going to be a price floor that the research, materials supply and competition simply won't break through. Guessing when that is going to happen is more luck than anything. I do not see it continuing to get exponentially cheaper for long, though. LiFePho…

I wouldn’t anticipate suddenly hitting a price floor, but instead the rate of reduction tapering off, which we’re not seeing yet in a clear way. There’s still a long way to go before we hit the limits from resource costs. And the current rate doesn’t need to continue for long before we start hitting price parity. In some cases we’re already there.

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

#289

Post by wpietri »

Brakenshire wrote: post #262
wpietri wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are exactly the same kind of error in that both assume stability over time. One assume prices are stable; the other assumes the rate of change is stable.

The rate of change has been stable over the last 15 years, do you bet it continues for a 16th year or that it stops this year?

The paper says "We estimate that between 1992 and 2016, real price per energy capacity declined 13% per year". Where do you get your data for the last 5 years?

Regardless, 1 year isn't the correct duration for a bet. People average owning a car for ~6 years, and the average lifespan is something like 12 years.

But depending on terms, I might take a year-over-year bet for battery prices. Demand is high and the pandemic has caused significant supply chain problems. They could well have gone up this year. And indeed, a quick look at news reports suggests key components, including lithium and cobalt, are surging in price. Fine examples of why assuming a historical average has future meaning can get you into trouble.

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

#290

Post by Qwertious »

taneq wrote: post #273
simonh wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

At that point, just use battery storage and bypass the reactor entirely.

For domestic day-to-day consumption, absolutely.

The main argument for hydrogen AFAICT is that it can be exported overseas or stored for inter-seasonal use.

Batteries can't do that, as 1) when compared to literal rocket fuel, they're impractically heavy to put on a cargo ship for bulk transport, and 2) batteries trickle-discharge so after a month or two the battery will be flat.

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