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

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

#311

Post by iamgopal » Sun, Apr 04, 2021, 2:29 AM UTC

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…

In the world where data is new oil, no body is going to give it for free or even for money as they themselves could use it for much higher profits. I assume all news assumptions or data to be wrong and look for after effect evidence that prove that it could be true.

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

#312

Post by kristopolous » Sun, Apr 04, 2021, 2:36 AM UTC

supernova87a wrote: post #87

I'm pretty interested to know what parts of this cost have hit their practical limit, and which still have cost to be squeezed out? -- Mineral scarcity/cost of mining -- Cost of processing, refining lithium -- Cost of making battery chemical contents -- Cost of assembling rest of complete battery Any info on how much more advance there is to go on these aspects? And, after all that is squeezed out, is lithium still g…

The biggest win versus something like petroleum is the versatility and commutability.

Let's pretend all of those things have awful trajectories, they don't, but let's pretend they do.

There's different battery tech such as organosilicon electrolytes, zinc magnesium, nanowire gels, sodium ion, there's lots of different ways of battery-ing and as long as you're getting the same electric profile, the devices honestly don't care in the slightest.

It's fundamentally a better approach

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

#313

Post by refulgentis » Sun, Apr 04, 2021, 2:41 AM UTC

nardi wrote: post #203

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…

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.

If we're being pedantic, it's worth flagging the former is not necessarily stupider

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

#314

Post by RhodoGSA » Sun, Apr 04, 2021, 2:59 AM UTC

simpleguitar wrote: post #267

Robotbeat wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm as big of a Tesla fan as any, but I'm both continuously impressed with how ahead-of-its-time the Prius was and continuously disappointed how lack-luster Toyota has been in pure electric cars. Toyota had like a decade lead on everyone else and just.... sat on it. Only invested in hybrids and hydrogen (which was and is a dead end). Toyota could've gone all-in on pure electric cars (and better plug-in hybrids than t…

For Toyota, it wasn't the engineering, design, nor the manufacturing that was the bottleneck. It was sourcing of the batteries. Toyota sold 100k Priuses it's first year (2005), and peaked at 237k Priuses in 2012. At that time, nobody had the capacity (nor the materials), to produce that many battery packs for full EV use. In hind sight, they could have committed fully to LiIon batteries for the future, but in early 2…

best currency for mars? Crypto.

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

#315

Post by jacobolus » Sun, Apr 04, 2021, 3:05 AM UTC

will4274 wrote: post #298

nardi wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's about mature and immature technologies. 20 years ago, photovoltaic cells had efficiency ranges in the single digits, but rising. When efficiency rises from 5% to 10%, it makes sense to assume that it keeps rising. But electric heaters had efficiency ranges around 95%, even when my parents were kids. Now they have even better efficiency - 99.8% in my newest apartment - which is only 5% better than 50 years ago -…

On the other hand, a heat pump bumps the efficiency of your electric heater to like 300%, because it works around the physical constraint. My understanding is that air-source heat pumps are continuing to noticeably improve decade-over-decade.

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

#316

Post by mr_toad » Sun, Apr 04, 2021, 3:17 AM UTC

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.

Heat pumps are an efficient way of heating in the winter, and double as AC in the summer.

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

#317

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Apr 04, 2021, 3:32 AM UTC

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

[deleted]

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

#318

Post by JeffL » Sun, Apr 04, 2021, 3:37 AM UTC

an_opabinia wrote: post #240

minhazm wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a common misconception that keeps getting repeated for some reason. It's silly to exclude the regulatory credit income but then also count things like stock based compensation and capitol expenditures for new factory builds. Tesla did $1.6 billion in regulatory credits in 2020. Tesla stock based compensation in 2020 was $1.7 billion due to Elon Musk's performance based compensation plan and TSLA skyrocketing.…

Is it a misconception? If the credit didn’t exist they would not be profitable. They lose money on the cars. They sell more cars, they lose more money. I like the company and I like electric cars, but I’m not stupid, I’m not misconceiving anything.

Yes it's a misconception. Their profit margin on cars is consistently over 20%. They have large overhead costs that are more or less fixed like R&D that get amortized more and more as sales go up. They have massive net free cash flow every quarter even while building out new factories that will increase production capacity by 50% every year for the next several years, further increasing economies of scale and operating margins.

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

#319

Post by kragen » Sun, Apr 04, 2021, 3:39 AM UTC

tyingq wrote: post #308

kragen wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Economist usually takes a worldwide perspective; that's why this article uses US dollars and French kilograms and meters, because those are the most widely recognized units, even though the article focuses mostly on developments in the US. As for your other comment, that air conditioning and spending US$2000 isn't "representative of the world," I think you will be very surprised if at some point you travel outsid…

"I think you will be very surprised if at some point you travel outside the US" I'm not quite sure what prompted you to drag this down to that level. FWIW, I spent several years living in Europe and the Middle East. In homes that weren't air conditioned even. And a fair amount of travel to many other places. "The rest of the world does not consist of Elbonian mud farmers as you seem to think" Wow. You have no reason…

Haha! I didn't realize you were imagining a battery bank as some kind of toy. I was thinking more like an alternative to a gasoline generator, which is not really "discretionary spending".

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

#320

Post by newyankee » Sun, Apr 04, 2021, 3:39 AM UTC

kristopolous wrote: post #312

supernova87a wrote: post #87

I'm pretty interested to know what parts of this cost have hit their practical limit, and which still have cost to be squeezed out? -- Mineral scarcity/cost of mining -- Cost of processing, refining lithium -- Cost of making battery chemical contents -- Cost of assembling rest of complete battery Any info on how much more advance there is to go on these aspects? And, after all that is squeezed out, is lithium still g…

The biggest win versus something like petroleum is the versatility and commutability. Let's pretend all of those things have awful trajectories, they don't, but let's pretend they do. There's different battery tech such as organosilicon electrolytes, zinc magnesium, nanowire gels, sodium ion, there's lots of different ways of battery-ing and as long as you're getting the same electric profile, the devices honestly do…

Also important to note that in theory a lot of the materials used can be recycled to a large extent. Although it also depends on how that recycling tech evolves, i am assuming it is better than recycling ICE cars ?