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

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

#311

Post by nickik » Tue, Jun 08, 2021, 5:31 PM UTC

eric-hu wrote: post #152

gerdesj wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your parent specifically stated 1991 not "before 1991". I think I understand what you mean but there was also a unfulfilled requirement before 1991. Back then (I'm 50.5 years old) cells didn't explode but then they also didn't set the world alight in terms of longevity either. We had Walkmans and crappy clones that drained the shitty rechargeable cells we had at the time in a few hours. OK those things drove mechanic…

Initial iPods used spinning disks. Solid state was not a factor in early iPod success. https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/iPod+Classic+Hard+Drive+Replace...

IPod with a 40G disk was the only Apple product I ever liked.

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

#312

Post by KorematsuFred » Tue, Jun 08, 2021, 5:48 PM UTC

FabHK wrote: post #224

Nice that the cost has come down. Unfortunately, that which makes electric cars and planes feasible, namely energy density (Wh/litre) and specific energy (Wh/kg), has not improved that rapidly. The article mentions a factor of 3.4 over 30 years for energy density, ie 4% p.a., or doubling every 17 years. I think electric aircraft need another doubling or two in specific energy to become feasible, so another few decade…

> I think electric aircraft need another doubling or two in specific energy to become feasible, so another few decades

We have plenty of fossil fuel so if most of the world stops burning gas we can run aircrafts on fossil fuels for centuries. Even emissions wont be a problem as cheaper energy on ground can be used to capture green house gases and store them someplace.

> I think electric aircraft need another doubling or two in specific energy to become feasible

My trucker friends loved the electric semi trucks but what they were upset about was the charging time. Every hour the truck is idle you are basically losing money, losing rhythm of driving and so on. I think with aircrafts it is going to be an even bigger issue.

Does anyone know what stops us from building tech where batteries are rapidly switched ?

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

#313

Post by extrapickles » Tue, Jun 08, 2021, 5:53 PM UTC

zabzonk wrote: post #64

CameronNemo wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lead acid batteries can emit fumes, so they are not useful in the same settings as li-ion batteries.

Aren't most lead-acid batteries sealed? The one in my mobility scooter certainly is.

Only smaller ones are, and they can still vent hydrogen in some cases. All sealed lead-acid batteries have shorter lifespans as you can’t add water to them to replace water lost to hydrogen gas production.

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

#314

Post by KorematsuFred » Tue, Jun 08, 2021, 6:07 PM UTC

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…

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

#315

Post by azernik » Tue, Jun 08, 2021, 7:21 PM UTC

KorematsuFred wrote: post #314

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…

You might like this as well: https://www.humanprogress.org/how-the-cost-of-light-has-fall...

Yup! That's a condensed version of a BBC write-up of that first paper I linked. Super influential in the field, but only percolated into popular media in the last decade.

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

#316

Post by ncmncm » Tue, Jun 08, 2021, 7:39 PM UTC

harperlee wrote: post #238

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.

And boats!

Intercontinental shipping is more likely to move to electrically-synthesized ammonia than to batteries.

Big aircraft are more likely to move to liquified hydrogen, synthesized on demand at major airports; initially burning it in turbines, eventually using fuel cells and electric drive.

Ammonia will be pretty easy to switch to; the main impediment today is just raw production capacity, which needs to be scaled up by three orders of magnitude. Ships can be retrofitted in place with new, bigger pressure-vessel fuel tankage and more complicated fuel piping. The changeover will need to be driven by regulation.

LH2 is quite a bit harder, but the rewards for success are huge. It might need entirely new turbojet engines, and maybe new airframes with room for bigger tankage. It certainly needs truly huge scale-ups in both methods and raw capacity to synthesize LH2, and in production of cheap aerogels to insulate the LH2 tanks.

The first usable LH2 transport aircraft will have an absolutely crushing advantage over kerosene-fueled craft anywhere they compete. Kerosene craft will gradually be pushed out to shorter routes and smaller airports. How fast this happens will depend mostly on how fast LH2 production can be scaled, and how fast new airframes can be approved and then delivered.

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

#317

Post by ncmncm » Tue, Jun 08, 2021, 8:05 PM UTC

Syonyk wrote: post #44

quickthrower2 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does this come with a “know what you are doing” caveat? I’d be scared of creating an electric firelighter in the process. Also assuming money is no object. Is it as good for the environment to recycle the old battery and buy a refurbed one.

> 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…

> HF, which you very definitely don't want to breathe. It doesn't hurt a bit while it's killing you, because it destroys the nerves first.

Sobering information.

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

#318

Post by mac01021 » Wed, Jun 09, 2021, 12:29 AM UTC

ben_w wrote: post #284

mac01021 wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Value for money is not my argument. I’m just saying loads of people for whom it would provide benefit don’t have $2k spare money to invest. To put a different spin on it: the price point for the cheapest consumer unit should be way lower than that… unless you force landlords to install it at their own cost (as a landlord myself: a $2k legally mandated expense would not be happy fun times, but I could and would suck i…

I understand your point.

I don't think of the infrastructure here as _bad_, though.

We do have the occasional outage after a storm, as I described. But, even if the uptime were as low as 99%, which it is not, I would not want to pay the cost of making the grid significantly more resilient than it is.

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

#319

Post by jiofih » Wed, Jun 09, 2021, 9:04 AM UTC

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.

Recreational boats, yes, a ton.

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

#320

Post by jiofih » Wed, Jun 09, 2021, 9:15 AM UTC

ncmncm wrote: post #316

harperlee wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And boats!

Intercontinental shipping is more likely to move to electrically-synthesized ammonia than to batteries. Big aircraft are more likely to move to liquified hydrogen, synthesized on demand at major airports; initially burning it in turbines, eventually using fuel cells and electric drive. Ammonia will be pretty easy to switch to; the main impediment today is just raw production capacity, which needs to be scaled up by t…

First and foremost, hydrogen production needs to be moved to renewable power. At current production levels it generates almost a billion tones of CO2 annually already.

And then, total efficiency for hydrogen fuel is much lower than batteries. In vehicles for example, while 70-80% of grid energy reaches a cars’ wheels, the figure for LH2 is about 25%, a lot more of it goes to production and transport than its actual purpose.

I think this clearly tells us that investing in new battery tech to increase density is a much more promising long term bet.