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

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

#131

Post by clomond » Sat, Apr 03, 2021, 7:38 PM UTC

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #78

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…

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…

Except when you consider where each technology fits within its own S-curve of adoption (X axis over time, Y axis is % of the technology adopted by the market).

When factoring in the shape of the exponential decreases in costs, and that penetration of most of these technologies is at or before the inflection point (between 5%-15% market penetration), it is more likely that the cost declines will ACCELERATE moving forward rather than slow down.

Why has it felt that laptops and PCs haven’t progressed as much in the 2010s as in the 1990s or 2000s? Because in 1995, there was not a computer on every desk in every home. But now not only is the market saturated with laptops and PCs, people are walking around with mini internet connected “super computers” everywhere they go.

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

#132

Post by dmoy » Sat, Apr 03, 2021, 7:40 PM UTC

ip26 wrote: post #123

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…

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 And yet we do it every ~18 months with semiconductors. Imperfect to be sure, but if you don’t skate to where the puck is headed, you will miss opportunity.

> And yet we do it every ~18 months with semiconductors.

So, this is about to stop. Very soon. Quantum tunneling, yield rates, etc are all starting to be cost prohibitive.

Even if hypothetically it does, there's a very real limit - an atom is only 10x smaller than 2nm.

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

#133

Post by StreamBright » Sat, Apr 03, 2021, 7:42 PM UTC

We just need a 100x increase in density and we are good to go.

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

#134

Post by tyingq » Sat, Apr 03, 2021, 7:42 PM UTC

natch wrote: post #121

tyingq wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article uses US dollars quite a lot. That's why I posted US stats, marked as such. I did update it with a UK average as well. Also, FWIW, the North American edition of the Economist accounts for more than half the readers. UK readers are less than 20% of the total.

Kragen was right, I was talking about the size of the world. The US is not representative of average or normal. Nor is the UK. And UK publications, due perhaps to colonial history, tend to take a more global view so I would not assume their notion of an average house is centered on the UK either.

Neither is air conditioning representative of the world, or people with a "house" that have $2k to spend on a 40kg lithium battery plus more on the other stuff like inverters, frames, installation. But all are clearly noted in the article as part of the target audience.

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

#135

Post by Animats » Sat, Apr 03, 2021, 7:43 PM UTC

baybal2 wrote: post #86

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…

> Say you have an opinion piece in a news paper that says that electric cars will always be expensive toys for the rich. Well, you don't see poor people buying EVs that much. That's car manufacturer statistics, which I believe deserves a good degree of trust. In the market for new cars, poor people buy cheapest IC cars, but not cheapest EVs. I will take the point that middle class is now buying budget EVs, but you do…

US manufacturers still see EVs as a premium option. Batteries are getting cheap, but it's not showing up in vehicle prices.

Jeep has backed off, yet again, from producing an all-electric Jeep Wrangler. They originally announced one for 2020. Then 2021. Then 2022. They shipped some "mild hybrid" things. They just showed an all-electric Jeep Wrangler, but it's a "concept car" only. And, for some reason, has a 6-speed manual transmission.

Even when Jeep was still talking about a 2022 Wrangler EV, it was announced as being available only at the highest "trim level", priced 2X over the base product.

Ford just slipped the electric Ford F-150 to the 2023 model year. "The estimation for the base price is $100,000" says one source. For a pickup truck whose current base price is $28,940. Ford's electric Mustang starts at $61,000. The base gas-powered Mustang is $27,155.

This seems to be a pattern with US manufacturers. Electrics cost 2x the price of the gas model.

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

#136

Post by r00fus » Sat, Apr 03, 2021, 7:43 PM UTC

ajuc wrote: post #72

umvi wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is that? Is it because North Americans use electricity for cooking and heating whereas other countries use gas for that?

Air conditioning isn't needed in many EU countries except for a few days a year (so it's not worth to even install it in private homes, modern offices mostly have them though for some reason). Also depending on the country few people use cloth driers - you just hang your clothes on a cable and let them dry by themselves. Houses in colder parts of EU are also usually better isolated than in US ([1] that's a typical Po…

Global Warming is changing that. Anecdotally in my observations, more new houses in France now have AC whereas it was rare only 5 years ago.

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

#137

Post by Armisael16 » Sat, Apr 03, 2021, 7:43 PM UTC

marcosdumay wrote: post #14

300africans wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here in Burkina faso, I use between 5 and 12kwh per day with air con some months taking it close to 15kwh. If the price keeps coming down and with some solar installation, one can leave the grid in a couple of years time

I imagine most of the aircon energy usage coincides with the times of peak photovoltaic generation. So if you calculate by total energy consumption, you'll overestimate things by a huge margin.

You can imagine that, but it isn’t true. AC usage is relatively low in the middle of the day because people let their houses warm up while their at work. It jumps at the end of the workday.

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

#138

Post by Gravityloss » Sat, Apr 03, 2021, 7:43 PM UTC

supernova87a wrote: post #87

I'm pretty interested to know what parts of this cost have hit their practical limit, and which still have cost to be squeezed out? -- Mineral scarcity/cost of mining -- Cost of processing, refining lithium -- Cost of making battery chemical contents -- Cost of assembling rest of complete battery Any info on how much more advance there is to go on these aspects? And, after all that is squeezed out, is lithium still g…

Lithium is not scarce. There are other substances in current batteries that are more so. But I know a nickel mine that was founded on a new process and assumed high future prices that didn't work out. They had hard times. You can google Talvivaara. Mostly known as an environmental problem.

Prospectors have found even better new nickel sources since. One is right below a 64 square kilometer nature preserve. After Talvivaara it's quite hard to get people to think it won't have large environmental impact.

There's lots of materials around if you are willing to pay a price for the extraction. Does it make sense, to bet on high nickel prices for the next twenty years?

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

#139

Post by nickik » Sat, Apr 03, 2021, 7:45 PM UTC

seveneightn9ne wrote: post #109

mavhc wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which countries? In what way does it wreck them?

Bolivia. The US-backed coup against Evo Morales may very well have been in part because of his intention to implement state control of lithium extraction, preventing foreign companies from ransacking the country's natural resource. https://www.humanrightspulse.com/mastercontentblog/bolivian-...

You shouldn't believe every conspiracy theory you read.

Basically one guy claimed lithium is the reason for a US backed coup. This is not proven and most expert don't believe this is true. Its neither proven that it was a US backed coup, and even if that was proven, lithium is very, very unlikely to be the reason.

Lithium is not gold or oil, lithium is everywhere, the reason you produced in this region of South America is because it is cheap to let the sun do a lot of the work. But the reality is, its still more like a complex chemical, more then a metal. The technology to refine it and get it to the grade needed to be valuable, is very difficult, and the outlandish claims made by the president about the government doing all of this extremely advanced processing (and even build cars) were simply political BSing.

It seems what is going on her is that a president made a lot of claims about the value of this resources, over-hyped its value and potential, and when opposed claimed lithium is the reason and its all the evil US fault. This is what I would call narrative building.

Lithium projects are happening literally all over the world, the waste majority of expansion of supply is not happening in South America anymore. If Bolivia ever wants to make real money from this resources they need foreign company that have DLE technology do it and tax them. With DLE much less manual work is required so it will not be an industry that creates massive amounts of jobs.

> salt flats that stretch across Chile, Argentina, and Bolivia and hold over 75%

This is flat out false.

> Bolivia’s Salar de Uyuni salt flat alone holds an estimated 17% of lithium globally.

Wrong.

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

#140

Post by rconti » Sat, Apr 03, 2021, 7:51 PM UTC

andi999 wrote: post #68

rconti wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No way. 90kWh/month? My Silicon Valley house consumed ~450kWh/month (15kWh/day) (before we bought an EV) which is very much on the low side from what I see here. 1100sqft. No A/C. Rarely run the heat. Every single light in the house is an LED. Gas appliances. 2 people, not home during the day.

Your neighbour is stealing power. 15kwh/day means you are permanently using 600 Watts. Do you have a stationary (desktop) computer? Or do you underestimate heating. You can burn through your whole years budget easily in less than two month. What about the oven, I mean do you bake?

Sounds about right. My house, at idle, uses 300w last time I measured it, probably more now. Most of that would be electronics. A rack in the garage with a 24 port PoE switch powering a couple of APs, and a router, a NAS, a handful of small devices, plus whatever drain is used by the various laptops and iMac at sleep, and the clocks on the various appliances, the small aquarium pump on the cat fountain.

The appliances, as I mentioned, are all gas, but still a clothes dryer and a washing machine consume some electricity, as does the pump on my furnace, as do ceiling fans in use when necessary.

And of course, the devices that cycle on and off all the time; the refrigerator, instant hot tap under the sink.

And then there's the actual electricity we consume during the times we're home to do things like light the house, watch television or use computers, listen to music, etc. It is quite easy to use 2000-2500w when home and active in the evenings.