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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

#291

Post by SigmundA »

winter_blue wrote: post #239
walrus01 wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If one looks at the Wh/kg of the very best li ion batteries right now (about 250Wh/kg) and then compares it to the Wh/kg in avgas or jet a or diesel, it's nuts. Even if you lose 40-60% to waste heat. The amount of energy contained in those fuels is ridiculously dense by comparison.

It looks like diesel holds ~10,700 Wh/kg[1]. That’s over 40 times the volumetric energy density. I hope people find an electrical energy storage system (ie a battery) that’s cheap, and with high mass and volumetric energy density, soon. That would be huge for solving the impending climate (and pollution) crisis. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density#In_chemical_r...

You must account for all the equipment to convert fuel into mechanical work as well. A battery is a large part of the equipment to covert electrons into useful electricity and electric motors and controller are comparatively light weight. Energy density is still higher I have done rough calculations that say batteries need to be at about 2000 wh/kg to be at parity with a diesel semi and the theoretic upper limit for lithium is 2600 wh/kg.

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

#292

Post by Forbo »

_Microft wrote: post #261
pdpi wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Producing synthetic fuels would remove carbon from the environment before releasing it on use again, leading to a net-zero effect. Unfortunately, that assumes producing those synthetic fuels has no carbon output other than the fuel itself.

The process may have as much carbon emissions as it needs and even more as long as none of them can eventually be traced back to fossil sources. „Fossil“ is the actually bad property of these fuels.

Methane and carbon being released from permafrost soil is an example of non-fossil sources, but yeah, the general sentiment of not releasing any more GHG into the environment is the objective for now. The more we can leave "captured" the better.

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

#293

Post by codeulike »

oblio wrote: post #287
codeulike wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How often do you drive 880km in one go? You've got to remember that with an EV, you start every day with a full 'tank'* (* as long as you've got somewhere to plug it in overnight, which is a problem in some places, granted)

Not often, but we're not going to buy 2 separate cars, 1 for regular trips and one for road trips. Range anxiety is a thing, especially since the "failure mode" is really bad. Super chargers are really rare compared to gas stations and if you run out of battery, with regular charging it takes 10 hours to charge. Maybe 880km is too much, but for sure I'd want 60% (so 660km) + something extra, maybe 50-80km, to not fee…

I've found re-charging on long journeys to be ok although it helps to have a plan A and a plan B and for best results you combine charging with lunch or something. But I do live in Europe where distances are shorter and chargers are more plentiful

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

#294

Post by lovemenot »

duck2 wrote: post #131
cogman10 wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

3d cells for nand aren't the same as 3d CPU cores. Nand is incredibly simple which makes it possible to do things like 3d cells which would otherwise be more complicated. There's a reason memory can generally beat computational cores to smaller node sizes. It's because highly uniform circuits are much easier to manufacture. A lot of problems present in CPU logic cores (such as cross talk) just aren't present to the s…

Maybe stuff like Upmem (many small CPUs embedded into memory) can take off then?

Sorry to have to ask.Could you please show a Wikipedia-like intro to Upmem?

It may be a simple typing problem, but Wikipedia doesn't seem to have it.

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

#295

Post by lovemenot »

mgoetzke wrote: post #255
arthurcolle wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't Three Body Problem kinda like this?

Is that book worth reading ? I am half-way through and I still don't see the point ;)

I read all three books. The first was a couple of years ago. But from memory, half-way through the first should be enough to tell. If you haven't seen anything worthwhile yet, you won't by continuing.

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

#296

Post by lovemenot »

maxerickson wrote: post #167
ortusdux wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It looks like $156 in 2019 & $137 in 2020. Estimates are $100/kwh by 2023-24 and $58/kwh by 2030. I do wonder how a dramatic shift towards Li powered cars will effect the price. We may see demand outpace supply for a decade or more. I hope it is the other way around because cheap lithium batteries flooding the market would have many positive implications. https://about.bnef.com/blog/battery-pack-prices-cited-below-..…

It's very unlikely that large companies would leave that much money on the table (they will invest in supply).

There is no doubt that energy storage will be huge and worth investment at massive scale.

As to Li-ion, well the future is good, but not so certain.

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

#297

Post by fitzie »

a more useful measure might be the trend of how much over the cost of materials does a li-ion cost. that excess cost, could be broken into the lack of automation, manufacturing inefficiencies (waste biproducts) and capital overhead. from Tesla "battery day" it is clear that reducing capital overhead was an important goal to reducing costs.

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

#298

Post by buescher »

Answerawake wrote: post #88
buescher wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't, and you don't know who is private labeling what, either. If you can get a data sheet, the better companies have more detailed data sheets. Personally, I like the Energizer (primary, i.e. disposable) lithiums for nice things like my old HP logic dart that will sit in a drawer for a long time between uses, and Panasonic (formerly Sanyo) Eneloop NiMH batteries for most other things, and the cheapo Costco batt…

I have a unproven suspicion that Rechargeable Energizer may actually be Panasonic cells. I tend to see them both marked as made in Japan and they both seem to be great quality.

Could be. I have no special insight into Energizer, but generally, the private-label product you buy today might not be the same six months from now. And even if they are Panasonic cells, they might not be identical to Eneloop, either.

The private-label guessing game cuts both ways, too: there are 2nd-tier alkaline manufacturers that swear they are a contract manufacturer for at least one of the major US brand names, with portions of their factory they can't show you because then you'd find out. Even if it's true, it doesn't mean the battery they sell you will be built to the same standards, with the same materials, or put through the same QA as the battery they make for someone in the battery business.

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

#299

Post by duck2 »

lovemenot wrote: post #294
duck2 wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe stuff like Upmem (many small CPUs embedded into memory) can take off then?

Sorry to have to ask.Could you please show a Wikipedia-like intro to Upmem? It may be a simple typing problem, but Wikipedia doesn't seem to have it.

I found a previous HN submission about them: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20766283

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

#300

Post by Syonyk »

lovemenot wrote: post #288
Syonyk wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Does this come with a “know what you are doing” caveat? Yes, and I'll suggest that a disturbingly large fraction of the people doing this on YouTube don't know what they're doing, and are being brutally unsafe with the batteries, even if it works. I've done battery pack rebuilding semi-professionally for a few years (I was rebuilding ebike packs for most of North America from about 2015 to 2018), and the people scr…

Thank you so much for sharing your experience. It's valuable. Do you know any best practices about who does this right, and how it can be done both safely and economically? If necessary with automation and large scale.

I really don't. I expect there are some people doing it, but I also expect they're not busy posting their stuff to YouTube. I learned what I learned with a lot of time spent in datasheets, PhD theses on lithium, and a background in electrical engineering that helped me make sense of the weird gaps. I'm no longer doing much with lithium beyond the occasional personal pack (which I still build to the same standards I built other packs to).

The best advice I have is to learn all you can from reading things, not watching things. The bits and pieces of solar/battery/energy work I've seen on YouTube as people link them tend heavily sensational and "WOW I NEARLY BLEW MYSELF UP!!!! big O YouTube emotion face" and I've no interest in any of that.

Also, you shouldn't assemble a pack with the batteries above about... oh, 3.5-3.6V/cell. Down there, there's typically not enough energy for the pack to get exciting if something does short. It'll get hot, it may vent a cell (again, do not breathe), but it probably won't have enough energy to enter a thermal runaway, which is something you want to avoid at all costs.

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