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

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

#391

Post by theshrike79 » Sun, Apr 04, 2021, 2:43 PM UTC

Robotbeat wrote: post #215

callmeal wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Hrmm, so the cost and performance is much the same, but it adds value by creating a new talking point for Tesla owners to harangue others with. I know that hating on Tesla is a thing, but don't forget the higher torque, better efficiency, lower heat generation in the stator windings. And the fact that this type of motor first showed up in the Prius and Tesla made a better version of it. Yeah they're getting away wit…

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…

> how lack-luster Toyota has been in pure electric cars

It's not Toyota's fault, it's a government mandate in Japan. That's why the CEO of Toyota has bashed full EVs in public and why Toyota is the only manufacturer actually pushing fuel cell vehicles instead of going all-in on EVs like everyone else.

From Japan: Strategic Hydrogen Roadmap [0]

> Japan’s Prime Minister, Yoshihide Suga, recently announced that Japan will aim to achieve net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. To decarbonise its economy, Japan is increasingly looking to future fuels such as hydrogen and innovative technology.

> Japan’s Hydrogen Roadmap has an ambitious goal of: > 40,000 fuel cell vehicles by 2020; 200,000 fuel cell vehicles by 2025; and 800,000 by 2030; > 320 hydrogen refuelling stations by 2025; and 900 by 2030; and > 1,200 fuel cell buses by 2030.

> In Japan there are currently: > 3,800 fuel cell vehicles; > 135 hydrogen refuelling stations; > 91 fuel cell buses; and > 250 fuel cell forklifts.

Basically Japan's problem is two-fold. Their electric network is a 100V system, split to 50Hz and 60Hz sections because of historical reasons. There's no realistic way to build a charging network for electric cars in Japan.

The second part of the problem is that Japan is also heavily reliant on imported coal and natural gas for its electricity production[1] (around 60-70%).

They're betting on Hydrogen fuel cells, because that is the one thing they can produce themselves and not rely on other countries so heavily.

[0] https://www.mfat.govt.nz/en/trade/mfat-market-reports/market... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_Japan

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

#392

Post by pfdietz » Sun, Apr 04, 2021, 3:33 PM UTC

u320 wrote: post #182

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…

> There are numerous arguments about how we will always need coal power or nuclear power, or natural gas and they all base it on old studies with obsolete high costs of batteries. This is simply not true. I'm sure there are some bad articles out there but that's true for anything. See e.g. https://www.cell.com/joule/pdf/S2542-4351(18)30386-6.pdf where they authors find non-intermittent power production to be necessar…

No, they find "firming power" is needed. That could be hydrogen burned in turbines. Firming is not non-intermittent, it's dispatchable

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

#393

Post by danans » Sun, Apr 04, 2021, 3:37 PM UTC

godelski wrote: post #322

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…

> 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. My understanding is that phone batteries are extremely different from batteries for large storage. They have vastly different cycle and draw requirements (you can't quick draw on your phone battery). I don't think these studies a…

IIRC, Tesla's first car batteries were made from laptop cells.

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

#394

Post by m463 » Sun, Apr 04, 2021, 4:15 PM UTC

MomoXenosaga wrote: post #366

aidenn0 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There were similar things at the dawn of the jet age. Someone wrote a paper demonstrating that jet power could not improve over propeller power because radial-flow compressors generated too much drag and axial-flow compressors were too inefficient. What the author of the paper didn't know is that, contemporary to him, it was discovered that shaping each blade of an axial-flow compressor like an airfoil significantly…

You can't predict a breakthrough but they tend to change everything.

What's fascinating is that moores law was successful far longer than people imagined.

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

#395

Post by m463 » Sun, Apr 04, 2021, 4:20 PM UTC

turtlebits wrote: post #153

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…

The 2015 Leaf has the worst battery degradation of any EV. That's Nissan's fault. However, battery prices are going drop further. Your Leaf has a 24kWh pack. At the current $100/kwh price, thats $2400 for a completely new battery. In the future I'm sure you could get an even higher capacity replacement.

The main reason the leaf had bad degradation was the 24kwh battery size. People charged them to 100%, drove a good portion of their capacity each day, and cycled the battery often.

In comparison, a tesla could charge to 80%, never drain to below 20%, and charge weekly instead of daily.

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

#396

Post by wpietri » Sun, Apr 04, 2021, 4:21 PM UTC

Tade0 wrote: post #296

wpietri wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pandemi…

One kWh of batteries generally requires around 200g of lithium. Both by weight and price it's a crucial, but small component, so unless it suffered a 10x hike, its price isn't relevant. Meanwhile LiFePO4 batteries, which are currently the most popular chemistry(at least in China), contain no cobalt whatsoever.

Other analysts differ on whether these things will impact the retail price. But you make my point for me: this is an extremely complex problem, and making any simple assumption about future price is a mistake.

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

#397

Post by rsj_hn » Sun, Apr 04, 2021, 5:34 PM UTC

AlchemistCamp wrote: post #246

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.

Agreed. A first-order approximation leaves a lot to be desired, but it's better than a zeroth-order approximation.

A first order approximation is always less accurate than a zeroth order approximation for bounded functions, as the first order approximation will have unbounded error whereas the zeroth order approximation will not -- unless you are in the degenerate case of the first order itself being exactly zero. The first order approximation is infinitely worse. Most (all?) things in the world are bounded. Hence if you must choose between just a first and zero-th order approximation, the zero-th order is the way to go for long run predictions. Cue the XKCD comic about the expected number of weddings.

On the other hand, if you are not interested in making long run predictions but only short run predictions, then first order approximations will tend to be more accurate in a small region around the base, but that region might be quite small.

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

#398

Post by toomanybeersies » Sun, Apr 04, 2021, 6:07 PM 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.

Broadly speaking, after inflation, costs are more likely to stay the same than change significantly one way or the other.

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

#399

Post by crubier » Sun, Apr 04, 2021, 6:47 PM UTC

gpm wrote: post #379

spookthesunset wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think modern quads would be possible with combustion engines. They aren’t precise and responsive enough. Modern brushless motors paired with some pretty kickass electronic speed controllers and flight controllers create a pretty amazing thing. I mean modern quads can fly in “3D” mode and almost instantly reverse the direction of all the motors so the quad can fly in all orientations, right side up and upside…

Have the combustion engine drive a generator not the props, it's still more energy dense (but only scales so small).

Keep in mind that there are exactly a grand total of 4 moving parts in a quadrotor drone. This is the core reason for their success, robustness, ease of use and all.

If all quadrotors needed oil, gas, vibrated like crazy (bad for IMUs), had 100+ moving parts (engine, servo gears, etc...), weighted at least 1-2kg, ran super hot and noisy... we would not have had the "drone revolution".

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

#400

Post by sgt » Sun, Apr 04, 2021, 7:45 PM UTC

sjwright wrote: post #285

brucehoult wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's impressive. What's your usage pattern like? I mean, in our house there's regular use of washing machine, tumble dryer, dishwasher, TV's, swimming pool pump. Heck even the swimming pool takes a couple of kWh a day! Would be curious on how to live so frugally.