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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

#271

Post by f6v »

ratsforhorses wrote: post #269
oblio wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we fix everything except for aircraft, we will have done enough. At that point aircraft can keep using fossil fuels for a while longer. Cars, trucks, buses, trains, HVAC, factories are what needs to be electrified ASAP.

Why not replace plane travel with hyperloop? Airplanes are high polluters, pay little taxes (none on fuel) , require massive bailouts and the only US civilian airplane maker is a soon to be anachronism... On the other hand...the infrastructure requirements for a cross coast hyperloop venture...especially if impulsed by government would resolve a lot of things...besides couldn't it be used for cargo..Amazon might be i…

> Why not replace plane travel with hyperloop?

You can’t replace a reliable mode of transportation with something that doesn’t exist yet. Even when it’s ready, it’d take decades. Political powers are reluctant to commit to something that’s going to take longer than their careers.

Then again, you don’t even need hyperloop. Germany has 250 km/h trains, those are more than enough for many routes.

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

#272

Post by 4gotunameagain »

londons_explore wrote: post #250
4gotunameagain wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not entirely true, capacity greatly depends on current draw and there is significant variability between brands (e.g. https://www.powerstream.com/AA-tests.htm ) Long time ago I stumbled upon a great website with a Wh/€ (the metric that really counts) for almost all brands, but I couldn't find it right now

Anything I own that's discharging at 2 Amps (!) no longer uses AA batteries. All those devices now have built in li-ion batteries. AA batteries are relegated to clocks, TV remotes, doorbells, and other low drain devices. In that scenario, all alkaline are pretty much the same.

I only use batteries to put them in socks and hit people.

In that scenario, all different battery types & chemistries are the same.

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

#273

Post by lovemenot »

quickthrowman wrote: post #66

I’ve been buying 18650 cells for 6 years and they’re always the same price shrug

The onesies-twosies 18650 market does not really represent the industry as a whole.

Demand currently outstrips supply. New applications are creating demand and there's expansion of existing users too.

Cost curve improvements won't arrive in every niche equally.

It's still early days. I guess this'll continue for a while yet.

The used 18650 market is going to be very interesting.

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

#274

Post by mymythisisthis »

jokteur wrote: post #254
oblio wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we fix everything except for aircraft, we will have done enough. At that point aircraft can keep using fossil fuels for a while longer. Cars, trucks, buses, trains, HVAC, factories are what needs to be electrified ASAP.

Trains can already be electrified without the need for batteries. For the case of buses, I think there is an elegant solution that they have begun to use in my city. Historically, they already have been electric cables around the city for pantograph buses. However, it is expensive to run electric cables around the city, so they are only a handfull of lines using this technology. Now they are introducing hybrid batter…

One big mistake Toronto, Canada, did was getting rid of its trolley buses in the 1990s https://transittoronto.ca/trolleybus/9503.shtml

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

#275

Post by mac01021 »

ben_w wrote: post #62
cogman10 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If musk is to believed, (and I think he's on point with this), $50/kWh will likely come within the next 5 years. So next 9 years? My expectation is beyond Tesla, the rest of the industry will have hit on that sub $50/kwh price point. That is going to make a lot of things really interesting. $2000 for a 30kWh home battery backup? Who wouldn't get one? To further this, with climate change leading to more and more extre…

> $2000 for a 30kWh home battery backup? Who wouldn't get one? Very few of the people that would currently benefit from a domestic backup battery could afford $2k, and most of the people who do have $2k to spare don’t live in places with unreliable electricity. The overlap isn’t zero, but… for example, I visited Kenya with an ex of mine, we met a local friend of hers, that friend would’ve benefited from a more reliab…

1. Here in CT with our abundance of trees, a large fraction of the state loses power for the better part of a week every couple of years when a windstorm comes up the coast.

2. Batteries need not just be for power outages. Net metering, granular demand-based energy pricing, etc are all reasons to get a battery for your house.

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

#276

Post by czierleyn »

andai wrote: post #267
harperlee wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And boats!

Are there any electric boats yet? Especially curious about the feasibility for shipping boats. The density seems to be less of a concern there.

I read about the Candela C7 boat last week. See https://candelaspeedboat.com/

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

#277

Post by azernik »

oblio wrote: post #234
azernik wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This illustrates a big problem in econometrics, specifically inflation measurement ("price indexes"): when comparing the prices of equivalent (baskets of) goods and services, "equivalent" gets harder and harder to define over longer time and space intervals. The classic example is light bulbs [1]. If you use naive comparisons of like goods across years, with weighting by percentage of expenditures, to measure consume…

> But what you won't capture is that these two goods are both providing lighting, and that the switch from one to another provides a sharp drop in the price of light that is not captured by the change in prices of either in isolation. I wonder if there was any way to compute light emitted per source. Then you could calculate a price per unit of light and whale-oil lamps would be obliterated by incandescent light buil…

There is! That paper I linked does exactly that. It uses light to illustrate the point because it's particularly easy to calculate the comparative amount of utility per unit of cost regardless of technology, and show how it diverges from what naive price indices would show.

It's harder for something like batteries, where there are multiple relevant performance parameters to reduce to one utility heuristic. And good luck when the utility is subjective (clothes), still under study (food and nutrition), or ill-defined (media).

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

#278

Post by tohmasu »

ganafagol wrote: post #249
mgoetzke wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the energy stored in it does not need to be paid :) That is why these companies make so much money of course.

Oil is free? Not sure where the Saudis got there riches from then. Otoh sitting in the sun for a few hours to charge some battery via rays from the sun is itself free.

>Otoh sitting in the sun for a few hours to charge some battery via rays from the sun is itself free.

Sounds wonderful, please show the math.

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

#279

Post by azernik »

cbhl wrote: post #236
oblio wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But what you won't capture is that these two goods are both providing lighting, and that the switch from one to another provides a sharp drop in the price of light that is not captured by the change in prices of either in isolation. I wonder if there was any way to compute light emitted per source. Then you could calculate a price per unit of light and whale-oil lamps would be obliterated by incandescent light buil…

Planet Money had an episode where they used the metric "minutes of light per day's wages". Here's the transcript: https://www.npr.org/transcripts/503769949 But there are qualitative changes that aren't captured by this -- street lights are brighter and whiter now than they were in the 1990s for example, and those were brighter than oil lamps before them.

Note: that's a more accessible podcast/write-up of the paper I linked in my comment as [1]. If people want the denser in (in both good ways and bad) version, look up there.

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

#280

Post by [deleted] »

Syonyk wrote: post #56
squarefoot wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, sorry for not stressing this enough: extra care must be taken when dealing with Lithium cells. They pack a lot of power in a small space, and can be extremely dangerous if mistreated; even physical damage with no heat involved can turn them into fireworks, so always treat them the right way. Never ever short them or apply excessive charge or discharge, use only good quality chargers and never ever let them unsup…

> ... because the fumes are extremely toxic and would seriously harm you before even getting a burn. I mentioned it elsewhere, but https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrofluoric_acid_burn is a very relevant read on the nature of "toxic." Most of the rest of the stuff isn't much friendlier.

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