Were lithium batteries really that popular in 1990? I would think think that they were just starting to get popular so that would make a lot of sense.... but in the last 10 years the price probably didn't change that much.
Lithium battery costs have fallen by 98% in three decades
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Re: Lithium battery costs have fallen by 98% in three decades
#302It’s remarkable what energy dense batteries have enabled. Drones and the entire quadcopter scene wouldn’t be possible without them. Some maneuvers made on a 5” quad can pull more than 100 amps on a 6S, 22V battery. That is around 2,200 watts—more than most consumer microwave ovens! The fact that a battery weighing no more than half a kilogram can supply this much power almost instantly is truly remarkable.
To be fair, people were doing a LOT with model airplanes ~60 years ago with kerosene engines.
I don’t think modern quads would be possible with combustion engines. They aren’t precise and responsive enough. Modern brushless motors paired with some pretty kickass electronic speed controllers and flight controllers create a pretty amazing thing.
I mean modern quads can fly in “3D” mode and almost instantly reverse the direction of all the motors so the quad can fly in all orientations, right side up and upside down.
Re: Lithium battery costs have fallen by 98% in three decades
#303Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Well, you don't see poor people buying EVs that much. You don't see poor people buying new cars that much. Which for now is pretty much the same thing as not buying EVs, since almost all EVs on the road are relatively new. That's starting to change here in Norway. There's a decent amount of used EVs entering the second-hand market. And if you can deal with the short range it's definitely preferable to buy one, sinc…
> And I think cheap BEVs will be a HUGE benefit to poor people in the future, since it saves on gas and maintenance costs in the long term. I’ve been wondering whether the opposite is true. We might find the cost of replacing the battery puts a floor on the price of old EV’s. I wouldn’t be surprised if we are coming to the end of bangernomics.
We already have million-KM batteries, and we're headed toward million-mile batteries.
Even if the battery does die, I wouldn't be surprised to see a lot of secondhand batteries with half a million Ks of mileage put up relatively cheap. You don't need to go straight to brand-new.
Re: Lithium battery costs have fallen by 98% in three decades
#304It’s remarkable what energy dense batteries have enabled. Drones and the entire quadcopter scene wouldn’t be possible without them. Some maneuvers made on a 5” quad can pull more than 100 amps on a 6S, 22V battery. That is around 2,200 watts—more than most consumer microwave ovens! The fact that a battery weighing no more than half a kilogram can supply this much power almost instantly is truly remarkable.
Those batteries still cost ~$40 USD each from a high end brand. Hoping those can fall in price a bit too.
Some goggle DVR, can check out the current amp draw on bottom left. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b4V9DMUtTPY
Re: Lithium battery costs have fallen by 98% in three decades
#305Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree with what you said but it seems you may have meant to reply to a different comment. Independence is another topic, certainly related somewhat, although it didn’t come up in my comment... interesting nonetheless.
Actually I did. I interpreted the limited outage from point 2 as the supplier not being delivering power for a short period. If that were to happen in a normal situation here the regulation says your sources have to cut off as well. Unless you install some additional gear. So without additional Equipment just having solar and a power wall wouldn’t help during outages.
Nighttime is another situation in which the supplier does not deliver power, at least for solar.
Yes you need cords, appliances, and other equipment, including extra equipment if you are not connected to the grid, that is a given.
Re: Lithium battery costs have fallen by 98% in three decades
#306How is this possible given that we will apparently have a lithium shortage by 2025?
Re: Lithium battery costs have fallen by 98% in three decades
#307Earlier quoted context omitted.
> "I bought my 2015 LEAF new and suspect it will not be economically viable in 2030" Why not? There are already companies who specialize in replacing early-model LEAF batteries with new, higher-capacity ones. By 2030, I imagine this could be a pretty widespread industry - perhaps even rebuilding/remanufacturing OEM battery packs with new cells. And so long as the battery still works, that LEAF will always be "economi…
Because it will cost around $2-3K for the battery replacement on a car chassis that’ll be worth around $2K to get back to a range and set of features that won’t be competitive with the then-current (no pun intended) EVs or other $5K cars. If you want to spend $5K on a car in 2030, you’ll have way better options than a 75 mile range, 6kW charging (20-24 miles per hour) 2015 LEAF (CHAdeMO will be fully dead by then and…
I wish a battery replacement was 2 grand. Try like 8 if you can find one.
Re: Lithium battery costs have fallen by 98% in three decades
#308Earlier 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.
The Economist usually takes a worldwide perspective; that's why this article uses US dollars and French kilograms and meters, because those are the most widely recognized units, even though the article focuses mostly on developments in the US. As for your other comment, that air conditioning and spending US$2000 isn't "representative of the world," I think you will be very surprised if at some point you travel outsid…
"I think you will be very surprised if at some point you travel outside the US"
I'm not quite sure what prompted you to drag this down to that level. FWIW, I spent several years living in Europe and the Middle East. In homes that weren't air conditioned even. And a fair amount of travel to many other places.
"The rest of the world does not consist of Elbonian mud farmers as you seem to think"
Wow. You have no reason to go there. Fuck off. Saying that lacking $2k of discretionary money to spend on lithium batteries is "Elbonian mud farmers". Wtf. I've certainly had times I my adult life where I didn't have $2k of discretionary money.
Re: Lithium battery costs have fallen by 98% in three decades
#309Earlier quoted context omitted.
These are not the same kind of stupid. One makes the assumption that costs will always be the same, and the other makes the assumption that cost decreases are linear, or predictable. The former is much stupider.
They are exactly the same kind of error in that both assume stability over time. One assume prices are stable; the other assumes the rate of change is stable.
To be honest this whole debate is a bit academic. In one situation someone is saying "this thing costs a lot of money and so is a toy for the rich". At the time of the statement it's probably true! You might get into an error by saying "it will always be like that because it's expensive now".
But the issue is that, _even at the time of the statement_, the price has been decreasing over time! It's falsifiable at the time of the statement! You don't need to see the future to dismantle that argument.
Inversely, costs have gone down over time for a long time. You could make the inference that there's a floor, of course, and it's reasonable to do so! But it's hard to disprove the claim that prices will keep on going down.
The former is just on its face wrong based on the current facts, the latter is a judgement call about the future. Totally different beasts, and driven from different things.
Re: Lithium battery costs have fallen by 98% in three decades
#310I'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…
I have looked into this quite a bit. Non of the materials in the battery are really scares. Building up the capacity both in terms of mining and refining will likely be slower then demand growth however, so in the next 5-10 years its hard to say raw material input prices coming down a huge amount. This effectively generates a lower bound in the mid term for battery prices. However, its not as bad as it sound. Dependi…
thanks for sharing your wealth of knowledge on EV & power storage, comments like this are why I love reading hackernews :) Now I need to spend a few hours absorbing this information.