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The price of lithium-ion batteries has declined by 97% in the last three decades

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Re: The price of lithium-ion batteries has declined by 97% in the last three decades

#201

Post by jillesvangurp »

ta2162 wrote: post #174
JeffL wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people do most of their charging at home. Our off peak cost at night is 5 cents per kWh. Much, much cheaper than superchargers.

>Our off peak cost at night is 5 cents per kWh. Must be nice. Triple that in California (where most EVs are).

I on purpose focused on super chargers to drive the point home. 15 cents is still a lot cheaper than super charger prices. You can drive that down further by e.g. using solar power. That high price is an excellent incentive to invest in roof top solar.

Re: The price of lithium-ion batteries has declined by 97% in the last three decades

#202

Post by ZeroGravitas »

rsj_hn wrote: post #198

Pretty misleading title. In 1990 you could buy a AA duracel for 30 cents[0] update: older model. Alkaline may have been higher (see comments). Presently at Walmart you can get them for about 68 cents (24 pack for 16.24[1]). That's a nominal price increase of roughly 100%, although of course in real terms, it is flat (30 cents in 1990 were about 63 cents today). But those are alkaline batteries. This article is compar…

> What’s promising is that prices are still falling steeply: the cost halved between 2014 and 2018. A halving in only four years.

Re: The price of lithium-ion batteries has declined by 97% in the last three decades

#203

Post by IncRnd »

sova wrote: post #70
bin_bash wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

hasn't it always referred to transistor count and not performance?

Oxford Dictionary says: "the principle that the speed and capability of computers can be expected to double every two years, as a result of increases in the number of transistors a microchip can contain." Which notably mentions performance. I have often interpreted Moore's Law to be the fact that doubling improvements in performance will continue roughly every 16-18 months, but not always directly proportionally to t…

Oxford Dictionary doesn't know what Moore's law is, then.

Moore's law was an observation by Gordon Moore, co-founder of Intel, relating to the doubling of transistors per densely integrated circuit chip every 24 months. Originally, it was every 12 months, then every 24 months, etc.

Moore's second law, which isn't as well known, relates to the exponentially increasing capital cost of manufacturing ICs.

Re: The price of lithium-ion batteries has declined by 97% in the last three decades

#204

Post by h0l0cube »

rsj_hn wrote: post #198

Pretty misleading title. In 1990 you could buy a AA duracel for 30 cents[0] update: older model. Alkaline may have been higher (see comments). Presently at Walmart you can get them for about 68 cents (24 pack for 16.24[1]). That's a nominal price increase of roughly 100%, although of course in real terms, it is flat (30 cents in 1990 were about 63 cents today). But those are alkaline batteries. This article is compar…

Replace 'price' with 'production cost', and factor in inflation, and maybe there's a decline over time even for alkaline batteries. But at such a low production cost, the shelf-space is likely to be the biggest factor at point of sale. That, and the mark-up will be set at whatever the market will bear.

Re: The price of lithium-ion batteries has declined by 97% in the last three decades

#205

Post by flexie »

rsj_hn wrote: post #198

Pretty misleading title. In 1990 you could buy a AA duracel for 30 cents[0] update: older model. Alkaline may have been higher (see comments). Presently at Walmart you can get them for about 68 cents (24 pack for 16.24[1]). That's a nominal price increase of roughly 100%, although of course in real terms, it is flat (30 cents in 1990 were about 63 cents today). But those are alkaline batteries. This article is compar…

Did anyone really read the title thinking that the article was about alkaline batteries? I think not.

The title is not misleading. It's incomplete, as titles are by nature. Titles are not supposed to include all caveats and modifications. The title also doesn't say that the decline is measured in dollars. Probably the price has dropped much less or much more when measured in other currencies that have moved relative to the dollar. The title also doesn't mention whether it's adjusted for inflation. It also doesn't specify whether that's the price at the consumer level or the price paid by manufacturers. Whether it's when you buy the battery in America or somewhere else on the planet.

As long as a title doesn't deliberately seek to mislead, it's not misleading. The intended audience expected this to be about lithium ion batteries.

Re: The price of lithium-ion batteries has declined by 97% in the last three decades

#206

Post by arnaudsm »

rsj_hn wrote: post #198

Pretty misleading title. In 1990 you could buy a AA duracel for 30 cents[0] update: older model. Alkaline may have been higher (see comments). Presently at Walmart you can get them for about 68 cents (24 pack for 16.24[1]). That's a nominal price increase of roughly 100%, although of course in real terms, it is flat (30 cents in 1990 were about 63 cents today). But those are alkaline batteries. This article is compar…

Semi-related rant : I'm baffled that most AA batteries don't display their capacity. It's literally the most important spec. Models vary between 400 and 3400 mAh!

Re: The price of lithium-ion batteries has declined by 97% in the last three decades

#207

Post by teruakohatu »

flexie wrote: post #205
rsj_hn wrote: post #198

Pretty misleading title. In 1990 you could buy a AA duracel for 30 cents[0] update: older model. Alkaline may have been higher (see comments). Presently at Walmart you can get them for about 68 cents (24 pack for 16.24[1]). That's a nominal price increase of roughly 100%, although of course in real terms, it is flat (30 cents in 1990 were about 63 cents today). But those are alkaline batteries. This article is compar…

Did anyone really read the title thinking that the article was about alkaline batteries? I think not. The title is not misleading. It's incomplete, as titles are by nature. Titles are not supposed to include all caveats and modifications. The title also doesn't say that the decline is measured in dollars. Probably the price has dropped much less or much more when measured in other currencies that have moved relative…

> Did anyone really read the title thinking that the article was about alkaline batteries? I think not.

Lithium-Ion were not in widespread use 30 years ago. So if we are just considering the price of Lithium-Ion, that would be the price from the first commercial product, which I expect was expensive for the time (it dropped in price around 30% in just a few years).

I read the title and thought it was battery capacity/$, not Lithium-Ion specifically.

Re: The price of lithium-ion batteries has declined by 97% in the last three decades

#208

Post by [deleted] »

pryelluw wrote: post #128
dceddia wrote: post #126

Funny, it seems like batteries for my car are like 2-3x what they used to be.

Well, the technology on 12v car batteries has continued to advance. /s It’s ridiculous how expensive they’ve become. More so when there is no R&D costs associated. Manufacturers simply slap on a different name and sell it at a premium.

[deleted]

Re: The price of lithium-ion batteries has declined by 97% in the last three decades

#209

Post by tablespoon »

rsj_hn wrote: post #198

Pretty misleading title. In 1990 you could buy a AA duracel for 30 cents[0] update: older model. Alkaline may have been higher (see comments). Presently at Walmart you can get them for about 68 cents (24 pack for 16.24[1]). That's a nominal price increase of roughly 100%, although of course in real terms, it is flat (30 cents in 1990 were about 63 cents today). But those are alkaline batteries. This article is compar…

> In 1990 you could buy a AA duracell for 30 cents[0]. Presently at Walmart you can get them for about 68 cents (24 pack for 16.24[1]). That's a nominal price increase of roughly 100%, although of course in real terms, it is flat (30 cents in 1990 were about 63 cents today). But those are alkaline batteries

I think you're misreading your sources. The NYTimes article says zinc-carbon AAs cost $0.30 each in 1990 (which, IIRC, are pretty crappy). The article doesn't give a clear price for alkaline AAs, but it sounds like they used to cost about $0.50-$0.75 each back then ($1.02-$1.53 each in today's dollars).

Then there's also the fact that in 1990, probably the only alkaline batteries available to consumers were name-brands in smallish packages. Nowadays some store-brand batteries are pretty good and cheaper. For example, you can get AmazonBasics AA alkalines for $0.90 each in a 4-pack, and $0.45 each in a 20-pack [1]. These are apparently manufactured by Fujitsu [2].

[1] https://www.amazon.com/AmazonBasics-Performance-Alkaline-Bat...

[2] https://onezero.medium.com/unraveling-the-secret-supply-chai...

Re: The price of lithium-ion batteries has declined by 97% in the last three decades

#210

Post by rsj_hn »

tablespoon wrote: post #209
rsj_hn wrote: post #198

Pretty misleading title. In 1990 you could buy a AA duracel for 30 cents[0] update: older model. Alkaline may have been higher (see comments). Presently at Walmart you can get them for about 68 cents (24 pack for 16.24[1]). That's a nominal price increase of roughly 100%, although of course in real terms, it is flat (30 cents in 1990 were about 63 cents today). But those are alkaline batteries. This article is compar…

> In 1990 you could buy a AA duracell for 30 cents[0]. Presently at Walmart you can get them for about 68 cents (24 pack for 16.24[1]). That's a nominal price increase of roughly 100%, although of course in real terms, it is flat (30 cents in 1990 were about 63 cents today). But those are alkaline batteries I think you're misreading your sources. The NYTimes article says zinc-carbon AAs cost $0.30 each in 1990 (which…

That's a good point. I'll make the correction. It's still nothing near the percentage of the headline but is more accurate.
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