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Electric vehicle battery costs rapidly declining, Tesla cited as leading

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Re: Electric vehicle battery costs rapidly declining, Tesla cited as leading

#171

Post by fouc »

shawn-furyan wrote: post #157
honkhonkpants wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're confused. _I_ am the one who said 5% and I think it's a reasonable working number. mikeash then replied, saying that Tesla will consume 22GWh (2018) and the battery market is only 35GWh/year (2013), implying that Tesla's share is so large it violates normal rules of market liquidity. Then I objected to that implication.

> I think you're confused. How delightfully condescending of you. Yes, I didn't realize that the 5% number came from you, that hardly makes me "confused". Taking that into light, it's not obvious to me how a very rough back of the envelop projection is significantly more ridiculous than a number pulled out of thin air. My whole problem is that you called it ridiculous when it was clearly meant to be a rough order of…

I wouldn't have taken the "I think you're confused" to be condescending. I mean I wouldn't interpret it as condescending and I don't think it was meant in that way.

Re: Electric vehicle battery costs rapidly declining, Tesla cited as leading

#172

Post by imron »

venomsnake wrote: post #116
mtgx wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what I'm afraid of. That China will push a "race to the bottom" not on just prices per se, but on lower prices with poorer quality batteries that hold much fewer charges and degrade faster, making you want to dump your EV battery after 3 years. But everyone will be too focused on their promotion of "cheap long range EVs" to notice.

Revolutionary idea ... make batteries replaceable. We had it back in the days. You could just remove the old batteries and put the new ones.

Tesla cars can do this in less than 2 minutes - faster than it takes to fill up a tank of gas.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5V0vL3nnHY

Re: Electric vehicle battery costs rapidly declining, Tesla cited as leading

#173

Post by mikeash »

maratd wrote: post #168
mikeash wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I don't understand what the guy is asking, for serious. If he wanted to talk about the consequences of a tax on coal, then he wouldn't have stated his hypothetical as "absent coal."

If you tax coal and make it expensive, people won't use it. They'll use X, whatever that is. Hence his comment "absent coal". Now that they're using X, which is more expensive than untaxed coal, some people won't be able to afford heating their hut/yurt/cave/whatever and will die.

Coal wouldn't disappear overnight even if a tax made it uncompetitive with other sources of electricity. There's a ton of infrastructure that would keep it going for quite a while. That's why I can't reconcile "today, absent coal" with this idea.

Anyway, to your point, I think there must be better ways to help poor people afford energy than to subsidize the electricity of wealthy people and industries. Set aside a small portion of the tax revenues for helping poor people pay for electricity. The important thing with taxing an externality is to capture the cost, what you do with the money matters much less.

Re: Electric vehicle battery costs rapidly declining, Tesla cited as leading

#174

Post by honkhonkpants »

mikeash wrote: post #164
honkhonkpants wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're confused. _I_ am the one who said 5% and I think it's a reasonable working number. mikeash then replied, saying that Tesla will consume 22GWh (2018) and the battery market is only 35GWh/year (2013), implying that Tesla's share is so large it violates normal rules of market liquidity. Then I objected to that implication.

I don't think 5% is right. You seemed to think that 30% year-over-year growth in the industry was a reasonable estimate. If it was 35GWh/year in 2013 then that puts it at about 77GWh today and 130GWh in 2018. That puts Tesla at around 10% of total production now, and 23% in 2018. I can't figure out which part of this you object to. You seem to accept all the numbers, but continue to argue about the shape of the box t…

I'll spot you 10%, but I think that's still within the realm of linear market behavior. I really don't agree with the original idea (now far upthread) that it required a visionary to lay the path for making all of Tesla's batteries. There are numerous firms around the world totally dedicated to market forecasts for major industries like batteries, car parts, and raw materials.

Re: Electric vehicle battery costs rapidly declining, Tesla cited as leading

#175

Post by [deleted] »

jacquesm wrote: post #104
walrus01 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Energy STORAGE is a huge bottleneck issue for anyone that follows renewable energy news as well... Solar power itself has been cheap enough to be viable for a long time, 330W 72-cell panels for roofs have been $0.64/watt for several years now. You can quite economically cover the roof of a building in enough high-efficiency 60 or 72-cell panels to generate far more kWh in a year than the building will consume in the…

Roughly the same dynamics that relate cloud apps vs self hosted apps to reliability relates solar power and grid power to reliability. The grid is - for now - the cheapest battery there is, and it gives you immediate redundancy. It will be far more reliable than anything you install on your roof and in your basement on a per-case basis, even if a grid outage takes down your whole neighborhood, town, or even country.…

[deleted]

Re: Electric vehicle battery costs rapidly declining, Tesla cited as leading

#176

Post by Gibbon1 »

jokoon wrote: post #148
narrator wrote: post #17

I find it amusing to see so many people questioning why Tesla didn't release a cheap Tesla sooner. The answer is: They don't have the batteries to do that. That's why they are building the GigaFactory. People don't get that, on a large industrial scale, you actually have to think about supply. They think you just spend money and supply shows up because they are used to thinking on a household scale where supply is ge…

Won't the next problem be the geopolitics of lithium? I guess what drives the price of batteries is the fabrication process?

I'll throw my $0.02 in here, I think the issue with lithium is price spikes due to production capacity not keeping up with demand.

Re: Electric vehicle battery costs rapidly declining, Tesla cited as leading

#177

Post by audleman »

coredog64 wrote: post #163
rahelzer wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When stimulus is suggested in a Keynesian context, it is not to create new factories, etc. It is to provide demand to fully utilize the productive capacity which the economy already has, but which is not currently being used because of lack of demand.

What if the spare capacity is for factory building factories (FactoryImplFactory for the Java programmers in the audience)?

Lol, you nut!

Re: Electric vehicle battery costs rapidly declining, Tesla cited as leading

#178

Post by audleman »

outworlder wrote: post #92
narrator wrote: post #17

I find it amusing to see so many people questioning why Tesla didn't release a cheap Tesla sooner. The answer is: They don't have the batteries to do that. That's why they are building the GigaFactory. People don't get that, on a large industrial scale, you actually have to think about supply. They think you just spend money and supply shows up because they are used to thinking on a household scale where supply is ge…

> I find it amusing to see so many people questioning why Tesla didn't release a cheap Tesla sooner. The answer is: They don't have the batteries to do that. That's why they are building the GigaFactory. Interestingly (for me), when I leased my leaf the sales guy was talking about how Nissan could make a car with a much better range, but chose not to. It was amusing hearing it from a (otherwise backwards) dealership.…

> Interestingly (for me), when I leased my leaf the sales guy was talking about how Nissan could make a car with a much better range, but chose not to

Wait, what? How did he justify that? That sounds like saying Apple could easily make a laptop with much better battery life but chose not to. Why would they ever do that?

Re: Electric vehicle battery costs rapidly declining, Tesla cited as leading

#179

Post by erikpukinskis »

xenadu02 wrote: post #154
ethbro wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To some extent stock pumping PR funds Tesla, which in turn provides them easier capital for funding the GigaFactory, which rationalizes the PR. It's only Theranos if you don't deliver.

> It's only Theranos if you don't deliver. Indeed; last time I checked, Tesla is shipping working cars and SpaceX is successfully putting satellites into orbit/delivering supplies to the ISS.

Not just shipping working cars, but consistently growing production by 40%+ per year.

Re: Electric vehicle battery costs rapidly declining, Tesla cited as leading

#180

Post by josephg »

audleman wrote: post #178
outworlder wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I find it amusing to see so many people questioning why Tesla didn't release a cheap Tesla sooner. The answer is: They don't have the batteries to do that. That's why they are building the GigaFactory. Interestingly (for me), when I leased my leaf the sales guy was talking about how Nissan could make a car with a much better range, but chose not to. It was amusing hearing it from a (otherwise backwards) dealership.…

> Interestingly (for me), when I leased my leaf the sales guy was talking about how Nissan could make a car with a much better range, but chose not to Wait, what? How did he justify that? That sounds like saying Apple could easily make a laptop with much better battery life but chose not to. Why would they ever do that?

Apple could easily make a laptop with better battery - it would just be bigger, heavier and more expensive.

Elon Musk claims the same thing about Tesla - that he could easily increase the range on Tesla's cars if they wanted to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wsixsRI-Sz4 . But with a range of ~300 miles he thinks they're fine.

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