[HN Gopher] Lithium battery costs have fallen by 98% in three de... ___________________________________________________________________ Lithium battery costs have fallen by 98% in three decades Author : hhs Score : 361 points Date : 2021-04-03 16:03 UTC (6 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.economist.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.economist.com) | 1cvmask wrote: | Electricity consumption varies from household to household. | Reminds me of this piece: | | https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/GlobalWarming/story?id=29068... | | "Armed with Gore's utility bills for the last two years, the | Tennessee Center for Policy Research charged Monday that the gas | and electric bills for the former vice president's 20-room home | and pool house devoured nearly 221,000 kilowatt-hours in 2006, | more than 20 times the national average of 10,656 kilowatt- | hours." | brtkdotse wrote: | 10k kWh per year seems really low. Does that include heating? | reportingsjr wrote: | It does not, and the vast majority of people in the US have | natural gas heating. | BostonEnginerd wrote: | We use about 8500kWh per year in the northeast US. This does | not include space heating yet, but does include our Chevy | Volt charging. | wcarss wrote: | It's about 27kWh/day, and according to the stats in the link | fv6 provided elsewhere in this threadset, that's average for | a northeast US house. Houses in the south tend to use more | like 15-16k kWh/year, due to air conditioning mostly, leaving | the 2015ish national average for single detached homes closer | to 13k kWh. | | This post has been an interesting eye-opener for me. Somehow | I've never really thought about the numbers deeply, but, | having a 100-watt lightbulb on for 8 hours is almost 1kWh. My | and my partners' computers + home server, at a mix of | wattages and uses but mostly left on _a lot_ , are probably | using 15-20kWh _daily_. That 's... a lot of power. | ghaff wrote: | Most computing devices are more efficient that they used to | be, although there are more of them. I'm reminded of this | because I keep my house pretty cool in the winter and used | to be my office was relatively cozy even so because of all | the heat being thrown off by big CRTs and tower systems | under the desk. It's much less so today. | read_if_gay_ wrote: | 10k kWh per year roughly corresponds to consuming a constant | 1kW/h which sounds about right, if not a bit high, if you | exclude heating. But I don't think electric heating is common | in most places. | hannob wrote: | The US 10k kWh average is extremely high. | | The EU average is 3.7k kWh. | magicalhippo wrote: | Here in Norway the average is 16k kWh a year[1], or about | 44kWh a day, but then most uses electricity for heating, | hot water etc and it gets fairly cold during winter. | | [1]: https://forbrukerguiden.no/normalt-stromforbruk/ | MaxBarraclough wrote: | Is that really the accepted unit for measuring the power- | consumption of a home? Can't we just use kilowatts? | daliusd wrote: | Our family uses about 5k kWh per year. That includes a lot of | household appliances that run on electricity but heating is | not electric. | FpUser wrote: | >" $140 per kilowatt hour" | | I wish I could buy at this price. Maybe for some large | manufacturers. If one is shopping for eBike batteries privately | for example the price is sky high comparatively. | h2odragon wrote: | I recall the first time someone showed me lithium batteries, in a | radio control car that outperformed a real car. Even then, the | price while high wasn't the biggest barrier to getting large | quantities; you just couldn't _get_ as many as you wanted. Don 't | think that has ever eased. | | I think that's why TSLA is such a hot stock, people _feel_ there | 's much more market thats undeserved and TSLA seems to be the | only folks gearing up to build batteries until everyone has all | they want. | ffggvv wrote: | by that logic panasonic should be a 2 trillion dollar company | vilvo wrote: | Great progress. Still the lithium chemistry energy density is | nowhere near what is needed for flight and heavy traffic. We are | at 200-400Wh/kg and we need 2000Wh/kg. | neonate wrote: | https://archive.is/OiXyO | hristov wrote: | 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 perform original | research but relies on a study published 2 years ago, which study | relies on official data reported by companies six months before | publication. | | Perhaps nobody in this propagation chain meant to mislead. But in | the end they are using old data that assumes that battery costs | are five times what they are in reality and twenty times what | they will be in the near future (for example) and draws all the | wrong conclusions. | | Similar things are happening with articles and public comments | about renewable energy. There are numerous arguments about how we | will always need coal power or nuclear power, or natural gas and | they all base it on old studies with obsolete high costs of | batteries. These articles commit a further error by also | neglecting the every decreasing costs of solar and wind power. | These articles are even more egregious because while a car lasts | only 10-15 years a power plant is supposed to last at least 30 | (for coal or gas) and up to 60 (for nuclear). Furthermore, | nuclear plants take 5 to 10 years to even build. In those years | the costs of batteries and renewables will only go down further. | | In the financial press there were many articles about how Tesla | will never be profitable, how it is an extravagant way for | shareholders to subsidize luxury car buyers, how it will always | rely on government subsidies and will need more of them, etc. | Well, guess what the federal tax credit expired and lo and behold | tesla is profitable. | | They weren't necessarily lying. But they were using automotive | industry assumptions, and the auto industry with their internal | combustion engines is a mature industry with few opportunities | for cost reductions. But as far as batteries and electric motors | and power semiconductors go ... well we are just getting started | on them and hopefully we will have many opportunities for cost | reductions. | markdown wrote: | > a car lasts only 10-15 years | | Is this normal where you live (presumably the US)? I find that | really wasteful. Cars last twice that in my country, and we | have tropical, seaside (salt = rust) weather to deal with. | mlindner wrote: | There's a lot of variation in the US depending on where you | live. In California the car can be so old the paint has all | come off but there's hardly any rust on the car because the | air is very dry, it doesn't rain much, temperature variation | is low and salt isn't used on roads. On the other hand you | can be places like Canada or the northern midwest where | Temperature swings by 100F between summer and winter, salt is | used heavily on roads to melt snow, rain is common during the | warmer months, and humidity levels in the summer are high. | This causes cars, especially those not in covered garages to | quickly rust and not last more than 15 years or so before too | many components and body frame have rusted away. | Tagbert wrote: | In the US, the average age of all cars is 12 years, so a | 10-15 year lifespan is pessimistic. | bdcravens wrote: | 25% of cars are 16+ years, and the longevity of cars is | increasing | | https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/28/25percent-of-cars-in-us- | are-... | sokoloff wrote: | > while a car lasts only 10-15 years | | While it might be the case that today's EVs will not be | economically longer-lived than 15 years, the overall _average_ | age of a car in the US is 12 years, and most of my cars have | been bought with 10 or more years on them as it makes for very | inexpensive motoring (no need for collision or comprehensive | insurance, no financing interest, and nearly no depreciation). | | I bought my 2015 LEAF new and suspect it will not be | economically viable in 2030 while our 2005 Honda CR-V is 16 | years old now, still going strong, and most likely will still | be in service in 2030. | wazoox wrote: | The new Dacia Spring has a 27kWh battery and costs only | 12kEUR. In the electric car market, the situation is evolving | extremely rapidly. | chrisseaton wrote: | > no need for collision or comprehensive insurance, no | financing interest, and nearly no depreciation | | But you need to maintain it and have it inspected instead! | | And you're also paying with your safety - ten years is a very | long time in safety technology these days! | VBprogrammer wrote: | Time will tell but I've got my fingers crossed that in 15 | years time any backstreet garage will exchange your battery | on a car of that age for a cost proportionate to the fact | that you could reasonably expect another 10 years of | trouble free motoring. With luck with a 50% increase on its | original capacity. | theshrike79 wrote: | They already do. A battery swap/refresh/replacement for a | Leaf is 5-10kEUR over here, depending on how bad shape | the original is and whether you want a larger battery in | there. | | It's kinda sorta doable by yourself, but it's a HVDC | circuit so you _really_ need to know what you're doing. | | Actual brand-name shops are slowly able to replace | individual failed cell packs instead of just swapping the | whole battery. | | The big problem is that batteries aren't really failing | and because of that the manufacturers don't really have a | process in place for replacements, each operation is a | custom job. | r00fus wrote: | Surely you jest. What safety features on standard vehicles | became indispensable in the past 10 years? | | Note: things like collision avoidance and adaptive cruise | are still luxury features and the OG poster wouldn't have | bought those anyway. | brucehoult wrote: | My 2008 Subaru Outback 2.5XT (JDM model) has camera-based | adaptive cruise control, lane departure warning, lead | vehicle start warning ("stop looking at your phone"), and | pre-collision braking. Also AWD, 265 HP turbo engine. I | bought it for NZ$10k (US$6000) in May last year, with | 87000 km. https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EnuwXA6VcAAH9MJ.jpg | chrisseaton wrote: | Collision avoidance, speed limiting, adaptive speed | limiting, adaptive headlights, lane keeping, blind-spot | warning, ISO-FIX anchors, far stronger pillars, reversing | cameras, lane exit monitors, SOS buttons and GPS | reporting, far more air bags, door-cyclist collision | warnings, seat-belt pre-tensioning, some have pre- | collision suspension raising, etc, etc, etc. | | I just went from a 2009 Land Rover to a 2020 Land Rover, | so almost exactly 10 years, and one of the the main | reasons I did it was safety features. They weren't | standard on my model before and they are now. It's night | and day. | mattlondon wrote: | Also things like eCall (1) that became mandatory a couple | of years ago without much fanfare: Fully automatic | call/report to emergency services in a serious accident. | | I think passive safety of modern cars has significantly | improved too - they periodically up the ante on what it | takes to get full scores in EuroNCAP for instance (2). A | "top rating" car from 10 years ago would probably now be | scarily-bad compared to the latest requirements that new | models ace. | | 1 - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECall | | 2 - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euro_NCAP | waiseristy wrote: | Don't forget TPMS! Probably one of the best safety-to- | dollar-spent advancements in the last *13 years | mrfusion wrote: | Interesting. What makes you say that? | chrisseaton wrote: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firestone_and_Ford_tire_con | tro... | | "271 fatalities and over eight hundred injuries in the | United States with more injuries and fatalities occurring | internationally" and would have been detected by a TPMS | which costs a few dollars. | throwawayboise wrote: | Blowing out an underinflated tire at high speed is | probably a reasonably common cause of accidents. | mrfusion wrote: | Does being under inflated increase the risk? I always | figured it was debris or just worn out tires? | sokoloff wrote: | Underinflation adds to sidewall flexing which increases | the heating and wear on the tire, which increases the | risk. A few psi isn't the issue, but seriously under- | inflated tires are a safety issue for traction and | blowout risks. | [deleted] | sokoloff wrote: | That was federally mandated in fall of 2007. | dzhiurgis wrote: | How do you people leave out ESC - it saved my life at | least once or twice and it's obvious how well they work. | | What leaves me even more fumbled is how easily RWD | Tesla's spin out and crash with regen and snow. Take the | gas pedal of and you're going off roading. With normal | car you'd struggle to even trigger ESC, let alone loose | it. | sokoloff wrote: | My 2005 Honda has ESC (Honda calls it VSA-Vehicle | Stability Assist) so it's probably similar to ABS in | these conversations: widely present and not a last | 10-years' addition. I think Toyota had it on all | passenger models since 2004. | hellbannedguy wrote: | I have heard horror stories about the | mechanical/electrical reliability of Range Rovers. | | The number one complain has been the powertrain. I know | the automatic transmission is the weak spot in most | vehicles, but I have heard of complete failures before | 100k. | | Could you give your evaluation of the vehicle? | cbozeman wrote: | There's an Australian expression, "If you want to go into | the bush, take a Land Rover. If you want to get out of | the bush, take a Land Cruiser." | chrisseaton wrote: | Your special forces still use Land Rovers on operations! | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Australian_SOTG_patrol | _Oc... | cbozeman wrote: | Negative, Ghost Rider. American spec ops prefer, and | often use, Toyota Land Cruisers and HILUXs, for the very | reason behind the Australian proverb! :) | chrisseaton wrote: | > Negative, Ghost Rider | | Australian, not American. | | And I've literally seen it for myself, and I just also | linked a photo of them doing it! | cbozeman wrote: | > Your special forces still use Land Rovers on | operations! | | I'm not Australian! | chrisseaton wrote: | Not a Range Rover, sorry, a Defender. | | I wouldn't own anything else to be honest. I've always | driven one, and I also work professionally with a fleet | of them and I don't have any problems at all. My last | personal one never needed any work at all over ten years. | Even if they were unreliable, if it's the kind of form | factor you're after I don't think anything really | challenges them on the market. | | I think they're also a uniquely egalitarian vehicle - if | you see someone driving a Land Rover it could be a | farmer, a teenager in their first car, a parent doing the | school run, an Army unit on exercise, a professional | footballer, literally the Queen, or anything in between. | You can drive the same car to the rubbish dump and to | Royal Ascot and it looks completely appropriate in both | cases! I don't think there's any other vehicle even | remotely like that. | lumost wrote: | Collision avoidance is now standard tech. Subaru has been | making automatic breaking/adaptive cruise control a | standard feature of all new model designs. Legacies MSRP | at 22k, and the 18k impreza is due for a redesign in | 2022. A quick google shows that the 2021 versa may be the | cheapest car with automatic breaking at $16600 MSRP. | | https://www.subaru.com/engineering/safety.html | https://www.nissanusa.com/shopping-tools/build- | price?models=... | brucehoult wrote: | My 2008 Outback 2.5XT has Eyesight adaptive cruise | control including automatic breaking! Cost me US$6k a | year ago with 55000 miles. Thirteen years old! | sokoloff wrote: | Maintenance beyond consumables (brakes, wipers, and tires) | costs less than the difference in excise tax ($25 tax per | $1000 of imputed value every year). All cars are inspected | annually here. | | At 4K miles per year (my average pre-COVID), if my risk is | average, I'd expect to be in a fatal accident slightly less | than once every 22K years. I'm OK without the latest driver | aids at that low level of risk. | theshrike79 wrote: | 4k miles per year isn't really anything, no point in | getting anything more than the bare minimum. | | According to most studies EVs are more eco-friendly after | around 50-100k miles depending on each individual | country's energy production profile. | | At 4k miles per year you'd need to drive a brand new EV | for over 12 years to break even CO2 wise. | oblio wrote: | > I'm OK without the latest driver aids at that low level | of risk. | | Driver aid, ok. But passive safety? | dzhiurgis wrote: | If you look at some people dedicated to testing EV's - | Tesla's phantom braking has become huge driving factor | away from their cars. | ghaff wrote: | I have a 10 year old vehicle. The current model has the | basic advanced safety features (auto-braking, adaptive | cruise control). But, no, I wouldn't get a new vehicle | just to get those features. And this is coming from | someone who does generally buy new cars. | sokoloff wrote: | I expect I'd get more passive safety improvement from | buying a 5000# 2011 car/SUV than a 3500# 2021 car/SUV, | but if I move my risk from once every 22K (or even 20K) | years to once every 25K or 30K years, it's not clear | that's meaningfully different. | | I'd probably be much better off to take less stress at | work over car payments and/or lose 5 pounds on an all- | risks basis. | turtlebits wrote: | The 2015 Leaf has the worst battery degradation of any EV. | That's Nissan's fault. | | However, battery prices are going drop further. Your Leaf has | a 24kWh pack. At the current $100/kwh price, thats $2400 for | a completely new battery. In the future I'm sure you could | get an even higher capacity replacement. | dehrmann wrote: | That _might_ have been an intentional choice if they knew | either they 'd sell to suckers and leave them on the hook | for the new battery, or have to subsidize a new battery in | 5 years, knowing it would be cheaper, like writing a call | on batteries. | theshrike79 wrote: | The battery had literally zero temperature management, no | heating or cooling. They literally could've added a 12 | volt chassis fan to make it not suck so bad. | | Rapidgate was a thing, the battery heated up when | driving, you stop to recharge -> battery heats up even | more -> overheat -> limiters engage and you're charging | at hand crank levels of power. | sokoloff wrote: | The LEAF has a battery heater. It does suck for having | only passive cooling. | tonyedgecombe wrote: | The funny thing is their electric vans do have thermal | battery management. | vmception wrote: | Is there a good way to quickly understand this for any topic? | | Like, take something you might not be interested in and just | "don't get". Your conclusions will be very quick but based on | the current state of things. | | The people that "do get it" might be crazy, or they might be | seeing a longer trend that they've been following so long that | they never articulated it, and aren't even capable of | articulating it. | | How is one supposed to form opinions on new topics where the | state rapidly changes? | philipkglass wrote: | There is no easy shortcut. There are some people who have | kept up with academic research, commercial developments, and | trend lines over enough time to filter out short term noise. | Some of them blog or write long comments on HN. But unless | you are one of those people yourself, you won't be able to | tell which writers are trustworthy. | | You can rapidly filter a lot of noise out of energy news with | knowledge of physics and chemistry from 100-level university | courses (or equivalent) [1]. But most people never acquired | this knowledge and a lot of those who _have_ only retained it | long enough to pass tests in school. 10 years later they don | 't remember the difference between power and energy or why | some chemical reactions are exothermic and others | endothermic. | | [1] This knowledge is actually helpful to filter news in | general when it makes assertions about the physical world. | throwaway0a5e wrote: | 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 fragile electronics. It took | another decade to make it into power tools. Now it's viable in | high end commuter vehicles. If it was easy to predict the | future a decade out with any reliability we wouldn't be having | this discussion. | ip26 wrote: | _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. | sir_bearington wrote: | Except we don't. Where's my single-core 100GHz processor? | | Improvements still happen, but not always in the same way. | If you implemented an application in 2003 assuming we'd | have such a processor you'd be very disappointed. Counting | on exponential improvements to continue is risky bet. | dmoy wrote: | > 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. | | <10nm stuff was already delayed. There's plans for 3nm. | It's unclear yet whether 2nm will work. | | Even if hypothetically it does, there's a very real limit - | an atom is only 10x smaller than 2nm. | mlindner wrote: | > So, this is about to stop. Very soon. Quantum | tunneling, yield rates, etc are all starting to be cost | prohibitive. | | People have been saying that for over 10 years though. | "Very soon" keeps being punted off by another 5 years | every 5 years. | ben_w wrote: | On the one hand, I remember people saying the same about | nodes much larger than those we currently use. | | On the other, yes: continue current trends and single | atom transistors become standard in 10-32 years. | usrusr wrote: | I think it boils down to we will hit a wall, but we don't | know exactly when we'll hit it. (and how hard, chances | are that higher-hanging-fruit refinements will make the | transition to stagnancy so gradual that we may not notice | at all) | | A jump from "all past predictions failed" to "and so will | all future predictions" seems rather bold to me. In the | end it's like a somewhat upended variation of the "x | decades to practical fusion" thing where we all hope that | the old joke that x might be a natural constant is | eventually proven wrong. | ghaff wrote: | Well, the main direction of refinements at this point | seem to be around composable/heterogeneous computing | where we basically have a lot of hardware optimized for | specific workloads and throw the complexity at the | software people. i.e. now deal with GPUs, DPUs, FPGAs, | xCPUs, etc. instead of (largely) just a standardized set | of CPU instructions. | ip26 wrote: | Sure. But there's been questions about the viability of | the next node for at least twenty years. If you played it | safe and stuck with the current node, you'd have been | wrong & at a process disadvantage 14 times out of 14. | | No improvement trend goes on forever. But why is _this_ | the moment lithium ion hits the wall? It's like trying to | call the end of a bull market. | cbozeman wrote: | Not according to Jim Keller. He believes we still have | plenty of room, and no offense to you, but I'll take his | word before yours. | clomond wrote: | 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. | rini17 wrote: | For example there isn't agreement where on the S-curve fits | hydrogen as automotive fuel. Or if it has a future at all. | Same with other alternative technologies. The S-curve is | only a hindsight device. | bsder wrote: | > Why has it felt that laptops and PCs haven't progressed | as much in the 2010s as in the 1990s or 2000s? | | Because computer development is driven by _network upload | bandwidth_. And maximum network upload bandwidth has been | stagnant for almost 15 years. | | And vast network upload bandwidth increases are quite | technically possible--but has been politically damped | rather than adoption curve damped. | ben_w wrote: | > 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). | | Unfortunately, even a very small amount of noise in the | data makes is basically impossible to know where you are in | an S-curve. | | Much safer to make predictions based on the far more | limited good news that PV+battery is already cheaper than | coal for electricity or ICE for cars. | | Hmm... question for anyone who knows: with current tech, | how much would it cost to develop a significant PV-powered | electrolysis-and-Sabatier-process plant in any of the big | coastal deserts, for exporting methane? | clomond wrote: | > Unfortunately, even a very small amount of noise in the | data makes is basically impossible to know where you are | in an S-curve. | | While true, my point is that when combined with the fact | that we are pre-inflection point, and the economics now | stand on their own (renewables, Electric Vehcile TCO and | various Energy Storage applications being already | cheapest, competitive or very close too) it is not | unreasonable when mapping out the 5-15 year future to bet | on an acceleration of cost declines over a deceleration. | Particularly because the actual driver of unit cost | declines (Wrights Law/Moore's Law) is the doubling / | magnitude of units manufactured and put through the | system, for which with all the factories being ramped up | and planned - point to the positive in my view on it. | | Regarding your PV-powered and electrolysis-Sabatier | (electrofuel) methane, I think there are two important | considerations. In order for methane (or other e-fuels | like hydrogen or longer chain hydrocarbons) to be made | economically, the capital cost of the equipment needs to | be utilized as close to 100% of the time as possible. We | already know that PV excess will be centered around the | daytime peak (5-7 hours per day) meaning that there would | also need to be plenty of excess wind to balance this out | to get anywhere close to 100% utilization of the excess | energy. Until the electricity grids get sufficiently | saturated with renewables broadly, most e-fuel | applications will continue to not be competitive, | particularly as things like energy storage applications | (possibly run off an e-fuel) are likely to be economical | prior there being an opportunity for the export of excess | e-fuels. That's more at the a end of the S-Curve as far | as I can tell. | simonh wrote: | Build enough PV to generate 24 hours worth of power for | the reactor in daylight hours, and store the excess in | batteries to power the reactor overnight. | nardi wrote: | 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. | ekianjo wrote: | Nope, it's the same thing: excess of confidence in | predicting the future. | LMYahooTFY wrote: | The commenter was point out the nuance between the two, | it's obviously about confidence in an assertion. You just | re-reduced it to what was already obvious? | wpietri wrote: | 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. | AlchemistCamp wrote: | Agreed. | | A first-order approximation leaves a lot to be desired, but | it's better than a zeroth-order approximation. | nolok wrote: | These are the exact same kind of stupid: they assume | everything data set will always be constant or linear. | minitoar wrote: | Are there many gains to be had on electric motors? I guess I | sort of assumed those had seen quite a bit of optimization | already. | iknowstuff wrote: | > The engineers of Tesla motor's shocked everyone when they | abandoned the versatile induction motor in Model 3 cars. They | used a totally different motor called IPM-SynRM. Let's | understand why the Tesla engineers made this crucial design | change. | | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=esUb7Zy5Oio | ninjinxo wrote: | Hrmm, so the cost and performance is much the same, but it | adds value by creating a new talking point for Tesla owners | to harangue others with. | callmeal wrote: | >Hrmm, so the cost and performance is much the same, but | it adds value by creating a new talking point for Tesla | owners to harangue others with. | | I know that hating on Tesla is a thing, but don't forget | the higher torque, better efficiency, lower heat | generation in the stator windings. And the fact that this | type of motor first showed up in the Prius and Tesla made | a better version of it. Yeah they're getting away with | saying they invented it Prius were touting their | continuously variable transmission instead of thier | motors. | Robotbeat wrote: | I'm as big of a Tesla fan as any, but I'm both | continuously impressed with how ahead-of-its-time the | Prius was and continuously disappointed how lack-luster | Toyota has been in pure electric cars. Toyota had like a | decade lead on everyone else and just.... sat on it. Only | invested in hybrids and hydrogen (which was and is a dead | end). | | Toyota could've gone all-in on pure electric cars (and | better plug-in hybrids than they had at the time) a good | decade ago but instead they continue to waste money on | hydrogen.... Only now finally announcing pure-electric | cars in the US: | https://www.theverge.com/2021/2/10/22187113/toyota- | electric-... | | It's really sad. It's really bad for the climate that | they just sat on the Prius drivetrain, which is 95% of | the way to a pure electric car, for over two decades (it | was released in 1997... it's 2021 right now!). | | Literally, people have modded (i.e. added extra battery | capacity) Priuses from 2003 to be pure electric even at | highway speeds with the same motor and controller. They | had everything sitting right there. It's incredibly | frustrating. | dzhiurgis wrote: | Heat scavenging is probably biggest efficiency gain you can | get. Tesla was relatively late to add heat pumps, but did | innovate with octovalve (which has like 8 modes of heat | distribution, one of which is storing something like 2kwh of | heat in battery volume itself). | fulafel wrote: | They are so close to 100% efficiency that the possible gains | are modest. | aaronblohowiak wrote: | what is the cost of the motor vs the cost of the input | materials? what % of the cost of a vehicle is the cost of | the electric motor? My understanding (however limited here) | is that car-worthy motors are still priced at a bit of a | premium to their input materials, but it doesnt really | matter because overall they are still not that expensive | compared to batteries. | sbeller wrote: | Look at it the other way round: they could reduce losses | from 6% to 4%, which lead further savings in needing less | cooling tech. | Robotbeat wrote: | Yes. A big improvement over the last few decades is rare | earth magnets, which have reduced the mass, increased the | power and efficiency. (Rare earth magnets in car motors can | be and are recycled, FWIW.) | | Additionally, the power electronics have improved a lot, too, | and continue improving. | | As others have noted, Tesla went from their induction motors | (which use no rare earths) to a somewhat more efficient | combination of switched reluctance and brushless DC motor | using some rare earth magnets. | | There are also various improvements to rare earth magnets. | Magnetic energy density improves somewhat. Cooling schemes | improve. Even alternatives to rare earth magnets (certain | phases of iron or nickel, for instance) have been and are | studied. | | I think improvements in cooling schemes is a big part of | future improvements. As well as reduction in eddy current | losses through better litz wire, maybe playing with the grain | structure of the conductor, etc. | | Longer term, there's also the possibility of superconducting | motors. Although that's mostly for larger scale applications, | (near-)room temperature superconductors also have been | demonstrated and folks are searching for methods to allow | them to work at lower pressures. | | So I think there's actually lot of room for improvements | beyond low effort prototypes from big automakers. Tesla is | doing really well with high efficiency powertrains. There's | also the added dimension of integration with reduction | gearing (as electric motors like to spin fast). | an_opabinia wrote: | While I agree with you broadly, Tesla loses money on its car | business. It was profitable for a full year because of the | money it makes from selling carbon credits. That's not exactly | a federal subsidy but it's not making cars either. So I feel | like going at this all angry complaining about imprecision or a | lack of focus on details comes off ironic. | minhazm wrote: | This is a common misconception that keeps getting repeated | for some reason. It's silly to exclude the regulatory credit | income but then also count things like stock based | compensation and capitol expenditures for new factory builds. | | Tesla did $1.6 billion in regulatory credits in 2020. Tesla | stock based compensation in 2020 was $1.7 billion due to Elon | Musk's performance based compensation plan and TSLA | skyrocketing. So the car business is clearly profitable. | | Then there's the capitol expenditure on building out new | factories and expanding their production capacity. From | Tesla's 2020 Q3 10Q filing: | | > we currently expect our capital expenditures to be at the | high end of our range of $2.5 to $3.5 billion in 2020 and | increase to $4.5 to $6 billion in each of the next two fiscal | years. | | They're planning on spending up to $12 billion between | 2021-2022 to build out new factories and expanding their | capacity. Their car business is clearly profitable, they're | just spending all of the money to grow. | an_opabinia wrote: | Is it a misconception? If the credit didn't exist they | would not be profitable. They lose money on the cars. They | sell more cars, they lose more money. I like the company | and I like electric cars, but I'm not stupid, I'm not | misconceiving anything. | aidenn0 wrote: | There were similar things at the dawn of the jet age. Someone | wrote a paper demonstrating that jet power could not improve | over propeller power because radial-flow compressors generated | too much drag and axial-flow compressors were too inefficient. | What the author of the paper didn't know is that, contemporary | to him, it was discovered that shaping each blade of an axial- | flow compressor like an airfoil significantly improved | efficiency. Thus a "physics problem" became a "manufacturing | problem" | baybal2 wrote: | > 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 don't have real economy class EVs selling that | well in the West, and in China as well. | | Wuling Mini EV will classify as a true economy class EV, but | what people lauding it don't say it that Chinese IC vehicles in | the same price range outsell Mini EV many, many times over. | nickik wrote: | Well, this is the argument against EV from the beginning. | Literally people were shitting on Tesla because they started | with a the Roadster. | | Now they have a much, much better car for significantly lower | price produced at much, much higher volume. | | This is just gone continue, each generation produced will | move down market. | | Poor people will never buy new cars, but 2nd hand Bolt EV are | already a bargain considering what you save on fuel cost. | | As more EV are produced, more EV are gone be sold second | hand. And at the same time new cheaper EV are gone be | interceded in the market. | | There is no inherent reason why an EV should be more | expensive then a gas car, but there is a 100 year technology | and infrastructure gap, this gap needs to be filled by the | rich, upper middle class and now the middle class. | | This is basically the same with every new mass technology. | cbozeman wrote: | Bolts are a bargain right now because of a safety issue so | serious it has a STOP-SELL RECALL order, meaning | dealerships aren't allowed to sell them until its fixed, | which happens sometime this month. | | https://electrek.co/2021/02/18/bolt-ev-recall-chevy- | software... | WebDanube wrote: | I'm not a free market apologist by any means, but we also | didn't see "poor people" or folks in the lower economic | strata buy mobile devices and smartphones when they became | first available, at least not the scale we're seeing now | (without mentioning the fact that the devices were crazy | expensive when first launched, adjusting for inflation). | | Economy of scale is a thing, and imo it's OK to use the rich | and the wealthy as 'guinea pigs' of sorts (which mostly is | voluntary as the wealthy are more likely to make riskier bets | on new tech than people living paycheck-to-paycheck). | | As EV market extends downwards on the economic 'pecking | order,' I'm really hoping even more drastic cost reduction | and lower barriers of entry into the EV market for folks that | are not rich. | iagovar wrote: | An expensive phone is about 500-1000EUR. A cheap EV is in | the 20K neighborhood, and the functionality is pretty bad | compared to a cheap second-hand utility car (pretty hard to | travel outside your city). Even when regulations push | prices up, it's still far more economical to buy a cheap | gas car than a cheap EV. | | Even in Europe there are plenty of countries where many | people can't afford an EV. They can afford second-hand ICE | cars. So unless there can be a second-hand market of EVs | for about 6K without worrying about the battery, and with a | similar functionality of a second-hand ICE car, then yes, | EVs will be for upper income brackets. | | And I'm not even mentioning that most people lives in | apartment buildings, and it's very likely that your car | sleeps in the street. | | I've seen this discussions around here. People won't buy | EVs in the near future because they are expensive, have | very low range, you have to have a house, or own a flat | (because nobody will pay for a charger installation in a | rented flat) with garage, etc. | | What people is buying is little electric Scooters. Most of | them are <500EUR and you can charge em everywhere. It makes | sense for travelling inside a city. Spending 20K for not | being able to go from Santiago to Madrid, doesn't make any | sense. | the8472 wrote: | Nissan leafs are get into the price range and they're | basically first-generation mass-market EVs. Yes people do | buy these. And in some european cities street- | side/lamppost chargers already are a thing. Multiple | conditions are only going to get better, not worse. | iagovar wrote: | Nissan Leafs are ~20k for Km0 offers in Spain. They are | very limited cars in range, functionality is behind than | a 10K Km0 Fiat Panda. Street chargers are scarce, and | usually expensive, and I have a hard time picturing a | charger in every parking space in my city. | the8472 wrote: | > Km0 offers | | That hardly qualifies as a second-hand market car. | | > Street chargers are scarce, and usually expensive | | In the past they didn't exist. Today they're scarce. In | the future it'll look different. This thread is about | trends after all. | | > And I have a hard time picturing a charger in every | parking space in my city. | | We can start smaller of course, it only needs to be | scaled up with EV adaoption, not reach 100% penetration | immediately. The electric scooters you mentioned would | benefit too. | noahtallen wrote: | There's still a large difference between upper-middle class | and upper class. I think many middle class jobs can support | owning a Tesla Model 3 or other mid-range new car but not a | Porsche. | | When I hear "expensive toy for the rich", I think of a | millionaire's 3rd lambo, not Bill's Silverado lease. Initial | Teslas were sports cars, and now it's squarely in middle | class territory. Still a big improvement and a big market, | and in several years, that leads to a good second-hand market | and even cheaper EVs. | | I think for many (not all, of course) people the problem is | not price as much as practicality. I could probably be | convinced to spend more for an EV, but without chargers in | most apartment buildings and with limited charging networks | where I might go, it's not justifiable yet. | xyzzy21 wrote: | Not when I can buy an ICE and operate for cheaper - note | the nearest "charge station" to me is 30+ miles away and | then the next nearest is 100+ miles beyond that. | | The drop in diesel and gasoline prices recently only | cements the value of an ICE vehicle. | turtlebits wrote: | Unless you drive a lot, you can charge at home? | | It costs me about $6.00 to charge my 60kwh EV, which has | a range of 238 miles. | toast0 wrote: | It's been a while since I rented a place to live, but | charging infrastructure for rentals is a big issue. | | You can't buy an EV if you can't charge at home. And you | won't buy an EV if you can charge at home if you're not | sure you can charge it if you move. (Not to mention if | you think you might move to another state, not being able | to drive your car there is a question mark) | noahtallen wrote: | That's why I mention practicality! I think yes, for | people who strictly buy the cheapest car that's not bad, | it will be some time before EVs are viable. | | But many people, including myself, think that EVs are | better in general. If I was comparing a $15k car to a | $20k car, I could be convinced to spend more on an EV if | I was just comparing the vehicles themselves in an ideal | environment. But that decision doesn't make sense until | the "practicality" problem is solved. | iagovar wrote: | > I think many middle class jobs can support owning a Tesla | Model 3 | | In a handful of countries. | noahtallen wrote: | I can't disagree with that. I feel like the EV | conversation is centered on "richer" countries anyways | because of infrastructure and tech. I'd be curious to | learn how EVs are being approached in countries which are | still developing infrastructure | lanstin wrote: | They have electric tuk-tuks already. I think batteries / | electric motor are inherently simpler to operate, if not | fabricate, than ICE so likely to be cheaper at the mass | scale. Even solar + batteries + electric motor. And they | scale up and down - you can tiny electric things and | giant electric things. | baybal2 wrote: | > I feel like the EV conversation is centered on "richer" | countries anyways because of infrastructure and tech. | | I'd say EV are making inroads there exactly because of | _no_ infrastructure, and tech. | | In Vietnam, people choose electric scooters over petrol | largely because their maintainance free nature, and no | need for fluids, or waiting at petrol pumps. | | People like that they don't risk expensive, and lengthy | breadown of their scooter when their job depend on it. | audunw wrote: | > 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, since they're way more reliable than on older | used ICE. | | The other things helping people buy cheaper EVs here is that | it's easier to deal with the shorter range since you have | fast charging stations everywhere now. | | So what needs to improve is: - More used EVs (just have to | get middle class people to buy more EVs and wait 5-10 years) | - Better charging infrastructure (again, get the middle class | to buy EVs to help fund the build-out) - Cheaper EV batteries | (again, just get whoever can to buy more EVs, to fund R&D and | drive economies of scale) | | That's why it's so damaging when countries make EV incentives | with caps. Just make it a percentage of the price (or cut all | taxes) and don't worry about the benefits going to rich | people buying luxury EVs. Increase income taxes on the rich | instead if that's a problem. This is like the one case where | trickle-down economics kind of work, since buying expensive | EVs now makes future EVs and charging stations cheaper. | | 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. | baybal2 wrote: | > 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 believe the same, if you race for the lowest cost | possible, eventually an EV will be cheaper than the | cheapest IC powered car for those exact reasons. | | ... But as I said above. Wuling MiniEV costs like $5500, | which is cheaper than low-end Chinese petrol, or diesel | engined sedans priced at $7000-$8000, but is still | massively, massively outsold by IC cars in its price | bracket despite China's massive subsidies for EVs, and | quite draconian curbs on IC powered cars. | Robotbeat wrote: | In part because the MiniEV has really low range (think | first generation Leaf) whereas any IC car is gonna be | like a Model 3 at least. | | 200 miles (on the EPA cycle) really is the minimum for a | pure electric car IMHO. 250 miles, really. Otherwise it | looks like less of a value than an IC car. | baybal2 wrote: | Depends who you ask. For most people in the world, even | 60km-80km will be more than enough. | tonyedgecombe wrote: | > 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. | Animats wrote: | 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. | JumpCrisscross wrote: | > _you don 't see poor people buying EVs that much_ | | You do, however, see upper middle class people buying them. | Which wasn't the case a decade ago, when the Leaf came out | [1]. | | [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nissan_Leaf | 908B64B197 wrote: | How about hybrids like Priuses? | Gibbon1 wrote: | > you don't see poor people buying EVs that much | | Poor people buy 5 to 15 year old used cars. There aren't that | many 5-15 year old used EV's. | | Yet. | waheoo wrote: | This same problem has plagued climate science as well, giving | munition for deniers and otherwise just confusing the public. | | You want to see the real writing on the wall? | | The IPCC report takes 10 year old settled science and makes | models using it. | | The real, more recent data is much, much worse. | u320 wrote: | > There are numerous arguments about how we will always need | coal power or nuclear power, or natural gas and they all base | it on old studies with obsolete high costs of batteries. | | This is simply not true. I'm sure there are some bad articles | out there but that's true for anything. | | See e.g. | https://www.cell.com/joule/pdf/S2542-4351(18)30386-6.pdf where | they authors find non-intermittent power production to be | necessary even under an assumption of a further 75% drop (from | 2018 levels) in battery prices. | ExcavateGrandMa wrote: | I swear I've sold my drones and can't buy new one :/ | dragosmocrii wrote: | The article says that today a battery pack the size of a backpack | and that weighs about 40kg, can power a house for a day. Is that | really so? Would that be a normal house, being powered for an | entire day? I find it hard to believe that battery would pack | that much energy | turtlebits wrote: | The wording in the article isn't great, but they are referring | to the power consumption for a household in 1990. | shoo wrote: | Another anecdote: I rent a 50m^2 apartment. Electricity | consumption for the apartment, averaged over trailing 12 | months, is 4.5 kWh / day. This excludes: energy for stove | top/oven (natural gas) and energy for hot water (paid for as | part of rent, cannot see the details). Consumption for two | people, including one person working from home full time. | Relatively modern apartment that is warm enough in winter | without active heating. | | This will not be representative of energy usage in houses, | larger apartments with many exterior sides & lots of exposed | glass. | | edit: house prior to that was an older 100 m^2 semi-detached | house with much worse insulation. Similar setup with natural | gas for cooking & hot water. Annual electricity consumption was | 1750 kWh / year so about 4.8 kWh / day on average, for two | people. Not so different to the current situation. Curious. | From memory we ran the air conditioner on a few days in summer | and electric heating in the depths of winter. From memory the | house was somewhat unpleasantly cold some of the time so | perhaps we tended to put on warm clothing rather than try to | heat the whole place. | kccqzy wrote: | That sounds reasonable. My house is about twice your size and | so is my electricity consumption (8.8 kWh/day last billing | cycle). Also doesn't exclude stove/oven/hot water as these | are all powered by natural gas. | | I was shocked by a few other comments saying 30 kWh/day. Is | it because they use electricity to cook and heat water? | tyingq wrote: | A Tesla Powerwall 2 weighs 114.0 kg and provides 13.5 kWh. | | Average US household electricity consumption is 877 kWh/month, | which would be 29kWh/day. | | Either they mean a very efficient/small house, or homeowners | with unusually frugal habits. | | Edit: Average UK household electricity consumption appears to | be around 10kWh/day. | dv_dt wrote: | It's enough for the twilight evening usage for a household | when paired with a solar system. | adrianmonk wrote: | Your point still stands, but there's probably some small | correction factor necessary since the article seems to be | talking about the weight of the cells only. | | Although I'd bet the weight of the cells does make up the | majority of the mass of a Powerwall, other components might | have significant weight. From some quick, cursory research, | it seems to have a metal frame/cover and apparently has some | kind of liquid cooling. (Also, minimizing weight for a | Powerwall seems less important than for an EV.) | sgt wrote: | South Africa here. | | Our house uses about 20 kWh a day during the summer, with | some minor AC usage in one of the rooms when needed. | | During the winter probably about 30kWh, and that excludes | extra costs like wood for fireplace. | | My house is fully insulated and all windows are double | glazed, so that keeps energy usage more efficient. I also | have a solar heater (aka "geyser") which lowers energy costs | even more. So with that in mind, I really can't believe | they're using less than this in Europe... | bobthepanda wrote: | They might be just using less electricity but other means | to generate their needs. | | I've heard that the EU has a lot more district heating | (which wouldn't show up in an electricity bill, AFAIK) and | I'd imagine a fair deal of older buildings have a boiler | using oil or gas or something else to burn. | | AC is also just not very prevalent. | nicoburns wrote: | > I'd imagine a fair deal of older buildings have a | boiler using oil or gas or something else to burn. | | In the UK gas boilers are common even in newbuild homes. | I don't know a single person with AC (though it's common | in offices). | natch wrote: | The average US house is not the average house, nor is it | representative of normal in the world we live in, which | happens to dwarf the US by a factor of roughly 25. | tyingq wrote: | I don't assume they mean something smaller than a factor of | 25 either. 1.2kWh would be substantially less than 40kg. | kragen wrote: | No, no, the world is 25 times bigger than the US, by | population. So it's ridiculous to equate houses with US | houses, especially when reading a British publication. | tyingq wrote: | 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. | natch wrote: | 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. | tyingq wrote: | 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. | kragen wrote: | 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 outside the US. The rest of the world does not | consist of Elbonian mud farmers as you seem to think. Air | conditioning is common throughout the warmer parts of the | world; the majority of the world's population has access | to air conditioning, though not always at home. The gross | world product is about US$17500 per person per year, PPP. | Someone wrote: | Or houses not in the USA. | http://shrinkthatfootprint.com/average-household- | electricity...: | | _"The average American or Canadian household in 2010 used | about twenty times more than the typical Nigerian household, | and two to three times more than a typical European home"_ | umvi wrote: | Why is that? Is it because North Americans use electricity | for cooking and heating whereas other countries use gas for | that? | nightski wrote: | We average 400-500 in the spring, fall, and winter. In | the summer with AC however we'll double that. We are in a | northern climate, I have to imagine in the south it gets | pretty spendy for AC. | ajuc wrote: | 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 Polish house | for example), and more people live in flats in blocks | instead of independent houses (so heat loses are vastly | reduced because you only have 1 or 2 outdoors walls). | | Homes are also simply bigger in US. Average home size | (including flats) in my country is a little over 70 | square meters. It's probably bigger in western Europe but | not by that much. | | Also big houses usually have 2/3 stories instead of being | very "wide". | | And electric heating/cooking isn't very popular, but I | think that depends on the country. | | It all goes back to electricity prices - in Poland in | 1980s most houses had no isolation, everybody heated with | coal which had fixed (and very low) prices. Then | communism ended, prices were free to change with the | market, some taxes were introduced, and suddenly | everybody isolated their houses in like 10 years. | Otherwise you burned money like crazy. | | [1] https://s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/pressland- | cms/cache/__... | twelvechairs wrote: | House size is basically proportional to the increased | energy. The average US home is 2-2.5 larger than European | homes [0]. This doesn't just mean more space to heat and | cool but also more space for additional appliances. | | [0] https://i0.wp.com/shrinkthatfootprint.com/wp- | content/uploads... | baybal2 wrote: | > ([1] that's a typical Polish house for example), | | I believe a typical Polish "house" will be an apartment. | ajuc wrote: | 42% of Poles live in apartaments. It was slightly above | 50% several years ago. | thesteamboat wrote: | Sorry to nitpick, but I assume you mean EU houses are | better _insulated_ than those in the US, rather than | isolated. | ajuc wrote: | Yup. False friend. Thanks for teaching me a new word :) | r00fus wrote: | 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. | bluGill wrote: | Global warming is not that much difference. People just | can afford ac now so they buy it. | polote wrote: | Reversible ac are more energy efficient that heater, x3 I | think | throwawayboise wrote: | People are also fatter and less tolerant of warm weather. | tyingq wrote: | I suspect big houses, poor insulation, air conditioning, | and gluttony. | | Most of the US houses I've been in use either gas or fuel | oil for heating. | galangalalgol wrote: | We have lots of elctric furnaces or heat pumps in the | southern and western states where winters are milder. The | air conditioning is the real usage. The insulation in new | homes is good, but the insulation to keep heat out needs | to be in walls as much as ceilings which is harder to | retrofit. Modern AC systems help quite a lot and keeping | heat away from ac ducting in the attic by insulating them | amd adding roof vents and radiant barrier to keep the | attic cool. Lighter colors so your south facing wall | doesn't fry eggs (literally) also help. | fwsgonzo wrote: | Probably due to differences in standards, like wall | isolation (I don't know the english terms). My house has | 25cm isolation in the walls and 40cm isolation under the | roof. I also have 3-layer windows and a thick metal door. | The ventilation system is isolated and the air heat is | reused to save electricity. This is for a 260sqm house. | fulafel wrote: | US housing is very roomy, often features AC and poor | insulation, and electricity is cheap and avergae incomes | are high. | geoduck14 wrote: | It's cause we're #1!!! | | /s | 300africans wrote: | 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 | marcosdumay wrote: | 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. | Armisael16 wrote: | 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. | _JamesA_ wrote: | Is that still true in the work from home post covid era? | nicoburns wrote: | > AC usage is relatively low in the middle of the day | because people let their houses warm up while their at | work | | Presumably if electricity was free during th day and | expensive at night, that habit would change rapdily. | baybal2 wrote: | How is life in Burkina Faso? | petra wrote: | So 29kWH/day. Say you get half of that from your solar panels | at sunrise. 13.9kWh is almost the other half. | ghaff wrote: | It also looks like a Powerwall 2 costs about $7,500 plus | about another $5K for installation. | | I use about 20kWh per day--I have a somewhat smaller house-- | and vaguely looked into whole house batteries a few months | back and concluded they would only make sense if I had it | wired into just a few critical systems like my furnace. But, | at the end of the day, I should still just get a propane- | fueled generator at this point if I ever got anything. | | So $2K for a battery that can power a house for a day seems | almost an order of magnitude off if they literally mean power | an entire normal house. | quickthrowman wrote: | > But, at the end of the day, I should still just get a | propane-fueled generator at this point if I ever got | anything. | | Yes, a propane or natural gas generator is a lot more | flexible/higher capacity | gok wrote: | At best it would store about 8kWh, so... it would have to be a | pretty efficient house. | Phenomenit wrote: | I think that depends on how much heating/cooling is being | used.it should be enough for just lights and devices. | Tade0 wrote: | 40kg translates to 4-9kWh depending on the chemistry, meanwhile | houses in the UK draw around 3kWh/day averaged over a year so | unless a house is woefully inefficient, it checks out. | andi999 wrote: | 3kWh/day so around 1100 kwh/a seems to me on the low side. | Two person household in Germany uses 3600kwh/a electricity. | Do you have sources? | spockz wrote: | 3kWh seems way too low. We consumed on average 7.3kWh/day. | According to our energy supplier this was on the low side for | our house type and family size. | tzs wrote: | Every UK source I can find puts it at around 8-10 kWh/day. | E.g., | | https://smarterbusiness.co.uk/blogs/average-gas- | electricity-... | | https://www.electriciancourses4u.co.uk/useful- | resources/how-... | | https://www.ovoenergy.com/guides/energy-guides/how-much- | elec... | rconti wrote: | 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. | andi999 wrote: | 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? | CyberDildonics wrote: | Ever heard of a refrigerators and freezers? | PeterisP wrote: | A decent refrigerator should consume less than a kWh per | day, perhaps 1.5 kWh/day for refrigerator + standalone | freezer - this is something that has changed over the | last couple decades, at least in the EU there has been a | strong push towards more efficient appliances and | refrigerators consume much less power than older models. | ghaff wrote: | He did say gas appliances which I assume would include | the oven and might include a dryer. Presumably not the | refrigerator though (there are propane refrigerators but | you wouldn't normally get one if you have electricity). I | probably draw 400-500 watts even if I'm traveling. | rconti wrote: | 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. | labawi wrote: | > Average US household .. 29kWh/day | | > houses in the UK .. 3kWh/day | | Seems believable from what I've heard. | turbinerneiter wrote: | I think in the US it's common to heat and cool badly | insulated houses with electricity, whereas in europe almost | nobody cools, heat comes from other sources and insulation | is taking way more seriously, especially for anything built | recently. | | The best way to reduce your energy bill (whichever source) | is to live in the right climate zone I guess. | ghaff wrote: | Electric heat isn't super common, especially in | standalone houses, in areas where you need a lot of heat | in the US. I don't know the numbers off the top of my | head but electricity costs a lot more than gas or oil. | You're right about the AC but I still use 20 kWh even | with no AC (and no electric heat). | nicoburns wrote: | Do you have any idea what that is going on? Just really | inefficient appliances? | ghaff wrote: | I don't think anything is "going on" given that my | consumption is about average for my area. I do have 3 | fridges which are all pretty old at this point which is | certainly some ongoing load. I also have at least the | usual number of electronic devices consuming at least | standby loads. Then there are the usual intermittent | things like electric dryer, dishwasher, etc. | turbinerneiter wrote: | Thanks for the insight. I vaguely remembered that people | run the ac in reverse for heat, but that is probably only | in paces that almost need no heating. | | Do you know why you use that much? | | Do you heat your water with electricity? | | Fridge, freezer, tv, WiFi, Desktop PC, charging phones | and laptop, ligths. | ncallaway wrote: | - AC is a very common consumer of large amounts of | electricity (depending on the region, many regions will | have almost no AC while other regions will have it in | every building running almost constantly) | | - Electrical heat is not the most common form of heating, | but it's been growing a lot and is also a big consumer | when it is used | | - Laundry Washer/Dryer are pretty large consumers (mostly | the dryer) | | - Water heaters are often electrical | | - Electrical ovens and stove ranges are pretty common, | which can pull quite a bit depending on how much use they | receive | | - Microwaves pull a bit, but not huge | nicoburns wrote: | (electric tumble) dryers are an interesting point. | They're getting more common, but most people I know in | the UK either don't have one, or have one but don't use | it for normal washes (they use a washing line or a | clothes horse). | ghaff wrote: | AC is a big one. Where I live in New England, we usually | have a couple spells where I really need to turn on my | office window unit for a week or so. Those months can | drive my electricity consumption up by 200 kWH or more | for the month--and that's just one small window unit run | intermittently during the day to cool one small room. | ghaff wrote: | Not really. My electricity usage is considered normal so | I've never really looked into it. | | Additional freezer, washer & dryer, oven (I have a | propane range but many do not), microwave, there's some | additional water heating in the dishwasher as well as for | drying, TVs, other electronics like printer stereo etc., | furnace/water heater are oil but still have pumps etc. | turbinerneiter wrote: | That's fascinating as it's not really that different from | myself. | | I'm alone in a flat tough, I guess you are a family? | ghaff wrote: | Nope. 1800 sqft house. re: the freezers, I just like to | cook a lot. | bcrosby95 wrote: | AC is extremely efficient for what it's doing, but it | only works because the temperature difference is | relatively minor. Where they can get away with it, they | use something similar to AC for heating in the US. | | But it doesn't work everywhere for heating. Consider that | even in the hottest climates in the US, you're cooling | your air by 30 degrees. But in the coolest climates, | you're heating your air by 60 degrees. | | My sister has this system in Philadelphia, but when it | gets cold enough the more inefficient raw electric | heating kicks in, and that really chews through | electricity like no other. | benjohnson wrote: | The 3kWh figure for UK is just electricity - add 12kWH for | heating energy from gas to get a more reasonable number | given that people in the UK generally don't live in shacks. | | https://www.theenergyshop.com/guides/average-gas-and- | electri... | ghaff wrote: | Yes, although the 30 kWh US figure doesn't include a lot | of gas/oil heat in the North/mountains either. (It does | include a lot of AC but average electricity consumption | is still a _lot_ higher apparently in the US even taking | that into account. I assume bigger houses is one reason.) | abdullahkhalids wrote: | 1 KWh/day for Fridge. Lights should do less than | 0.5KWh/day. Washing machine is maybe 0.3KWh/day. Maybe, | other electronics might add up to 1-2KWh/day. Cooling is | not required most of the year. Maybe fans for a couple of | months. Heating is separate (EDIT: UK figure), as others | have noted. | | What else are you using electricity on? | kragen wrote: | Heating, which can easily be 5 kW, 120 kWh/day; many US | houses are heated electrically, so it's not always | separate. Air conditioning can easily be 3 kW, or 72 | kWh/day, although it's usually only on during the | daytime, so figure 30 kWh/day; it's common to run a 240 | VAC circuit in the US for the air conditioner because the | 2.4 kW of a standard 120 VAC 20 A circuit is | insufficient. Incandescent lights could easily be 1 kW | (which you get to offset against the heating part of the | year), which is another 24 kWh/day. A household stove is | usually about 4 kW if you're cooking on two burners, but | you're probably only cooking about 2 hours a day, so | that's 8 kWh/day if you cook at home. (Some people cook | with other fuels, but others use electric stoves.) Hot | water heaters are also a few hundred watts, I think; an | on-demand tankless hot-water heater is on the order of 3 | kW, but in the US hot-water tanks are far more common, | constantly leaking heat through their fiberglass | insulation. | | In Arizona and New Mexico, where I grew up, common | inefficient houses need air conditioning during the day | _and_ heating at night much of the year. | | So it's easy to see how, even if cooling is not required | most of the year, you could easily use 50 kWh/day of | electrical energy in the kinds of huge houses people have | in the US. | galangalalgol wrote: | I think AC is usually 440v around here. It is the largest | consumer. | ncallaway wrote: | > Heating is separate, as others have noted. | | Heating isn't separate for me. For me, cooling isn't | required most of the year (probably similar to UK | weather), but for many parts of the US cooling is | required almost year-round. | ghaff wrote: | Really? Houses in the US draw 10x on average relative to the | UK? That seems unlikely. | | ADDED: I can believe there's some difference because of AC | but I basically don't have AC (just one window unit I run a | few days a year), have oil heat, and have a somewhat smaller | than average house but I still use about 20kWh/day. | | The delta does seem to be real though. | kragen wrote: | I wonder if your house is smaller than the world average or | even the UK average? It probably has less thermal mass than | the UK average. What are you spending your 800 watts on? | maxerickson wrote: | My highest months come out to less than 10 kWh per day. | This is work from home + running the furnace (blower and | pumps) and running a humidifier. Lots of months will be | less than 200 KWh total. | | This is a medium size house in a colder region of the US. | | Do you have an electric hot water heater? That would | probably boost my use a lot. | f6v wrote: | Very much depends on the home. Tesla Powerwall 2 seems to be | 13.5 kWh at 114 kg. Energy consumption can be anything from 30 | to 40[1]. So one Powerwall 2 unit probably won't get you | through the day if you use that much. | | [1] https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/use-of- | energy/electricit... | natch wrote: | Getting you through the day is not really the point though. | | The point is | | 1) shifting some consumption during peak hours off of peak | rates | | and | | 2) having backup to get you through a limited outage, not | necessarily at your full normal consumption level but without | having to be in the dark / without internet / without phone | and possibly car charging. | | Nobody should evaluate this by whether one battery pack by | itself provides all the energy anyone needs for everything | with no limits. It's one component with several good use | cases. | spockz wrote: | I'm not sure about regulations in the US but in The | Netherlands you cannot just attach a battery and think you | are independent of the grid. To protect the net and people | working on the net, power sources behind the meter must | disengage when the net/mains power drops. This effectively | disables your independence plan. If you want to be | independent you have to get some expensive mechanism | installed that will decouple your house from the net in | case of net failure and bring it back when the mains is up | again. And you need get it certified periodically. | | So unless you have enough generation to completely decouple | from the net you are not really independent or it will cost | you. | kragen wrote: | This is correct in the US as well, except that I'm not | sure about the periodic certification thing. | natch wrote: | 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. | spockz wrote: | 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. | jccooper wrote: | Transfer switches are standard for pretty much any | generator setup. An automatic one is a bit more | expensive, but hardly a deal breaker. | spockz wrote: | Okay. Perhaps I used the wrong sources when I researched | what it would take to be able to handle outages. The | costs for the installation and periodic "transfer switch" | were significant, moreover because doing it as a private | individual instead of a company was hard to arrange. | kragen wrote: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density_Extended_Refere... | lists "battery, Lithium ion" as 0.46-0.72 MJ/kg. | : user@host:~; units 2529 units, 72 prefixes, 56 | nonlinear units You have: 40 kg * 0.6 MJ/kg | You want: MJ * 24 / 0.041666667 | | (The 13.5 kWh in 114 kg tyingq cites for a Powerwall 2 in | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26682770 works out to 0.43 | MJ/kg, which includes some power electronics as well as the | batteries themselves. The US$12500 price ghaff cites in | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26682837 works out to | under 4 kJ/US$, or US$925/kWh, which is a terribly high price | even for lithium-ion.) | | 24 MJ would be 1 MJ/hour for 24 hours, or 3 MJ/hour for 8 | hours, about 300 or 800 watts, respectively. Some houses use | much more than that; others use much less. If you're looking at | your electric bill, 500 watts would be about 370 kWh per month: | You have: 500 watts * 1 month You want: kWh | * 365.2422 / 0.0027379093 | | 40 kg of lithium-ion batteries are indeed roughly the size of a | backpack ([?]20 liters), though I wouldn't call it a _small_ | backpack. Around here, the retail price for the batteries would | probably be closer to US$2400 retail than the less than US$2000 | they cite, but that 's not an error in their calculations; it's | just that they're using a lower price of US$140/kWh. | | The article claims that in the early 01990s this quantity of | batteries would have cost US$75k. I'm pretty sure this is | wrong. This quantity of _lithium-ion_ batteries might have cost | US$75k, but even today lead-acid batteries cost half what | lithium-ion batteries do. | | I don't think the price of lead-acid batteries has changed that | much over the last 25 or even 50 years, though admittedly I | don't have any 30-year-old battery catalogs to check pricing | in. Lithium-ion batteries in the 01990s would have weighed only | a little more than lithium-ion batteries today, so it looks | like they're using the pricing of lithium-ion batteries and the | weight of lead-acid batteries. | | If you're powering your house from batteries, you should | probably do it with lead-acid batteries, not lithium-ion | batteries. The big disadvantage of lead-acid batteries is that | they weigh roughly three times what lithium-ion batteries do | (per joule), so lead-acid electric cars had roughly a third the | range of lithium-ion electric cars. But the weight is not | enough to matter for a house. | | There is enough lithium in Earth's crust to power the world | economy through the night. There is, I think, not enough lead. | So although lead is currently cheaper, lithium is more | scalable. Other less developed candidate options include sodium | batteries and aluminum fuel cells. | | Nickel-iron batteries might be even cheaper, though I'm not | sure, and they're definitely more scalable. Nobody sells them | anymore, though lots of telecom centers still run on them. | | It's unfortunate that the article cites a _power capacity_ , | "1.2 gigawatts-worth of storage", but not an _energy capacity_ | , for the US's utility-scale storage rampup last year. 1.2 | gigawatts for five minutes would be 100 MWh, in the quaint | units used in the energy markets; 1.2 gigawatts for 12 hours | would be 14'400 MWh. There is a very significant difference | between these; one requires 144 times as much battery behind it | than the other. By contrast, the difference between 100 MWh | over 5 minutes (1.2 gigawatts) and 100 MWh over 12 hours (0.008 | gigawatts) is mostly a matter of what shape the batteries are | and how much active cooling is needed. One wonders if this is | not simply an error because the author did not know the | difference between gigawatts and gigawatt-hours. | [deleted] | ffggvv wrote: | so why should i buy an electric car now if batteries will be way | better in a few years and mine will be obsolete with bad range? | ec109685 wrote: | If it meets your needs today and tomorrow, go for it! | baybal2 wrote: | FYI, the cost of individual cells has long, long gone below $100 | per kWh in wholesale volumes. | | And believe the cost of a pack itself is very quickly approaching | $100/kWh as well if not crossed it already. | | Making batteries is still a rather profitable business with | double digit margins, it's just latest equipment, and cathode | materials became way more expensive, and hard to get than what | small battery makers can afford. | | Despite China dominating the metallic cobalt supply chain, the | cathode materials market are dominated by Japanese chemical | companies, and I suspect some form of collusion is there. | | With cathode being the most expensive part of the lithium battery | cell, it's hard to fathom how a free market price for it can be | many times the cost of input materials for years on end. | amelius wrote: | > FYI, the cost of individual cells has long, long gone below | $100 per kWh in wholesale volumes. | | Electric bicycle batteries are still $500 for 500Wh (consumer | price, but 10x as expensive). | jeffbee wrote: | Wish I could find one that cheap. The Bosch PowerPack 500 is | $900 retail and Specialized recently raised the price of the | 600Wh pack in certain bikes to $1300. The price is so silly I | pried open my obsolete Specialized pack and just replaced the | cells myself. | nickik wrote: | Collusion is kind of a strong statement. There is a fair bit of | competition, its not only China and only Japan, and in these | places its not one company. There are cathode companies in | Korea as well. There are also multiple cell manufactures in | multiple countries. | | Tesla on battery day gave a pretty good exploitation of why the | price is what it is, and they didn't say 'we need to solve this | by trust busting'. | | Elon Musk basically said 'if you attach a GPS tracker to a | nickel atom its journey would be crazy'. Many, many steps are | involved. Many processes, that then need to be reprocessed, and | reprocessed again, and reprocessed again with a lot of shipping | in between. | | The problem is the industry was to small so far to really | consolidate all these steps, localize production and mining. | Rather many chemicals need are just bought in the form they | were available from other industries, and then processed were | built on top of that. | | This video is a pretty nice visualization of the current | process: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4i1T6s_NdAQ | StreamBright wrote: | We just need a 100x increase in density and we are good to go. | bdcravens wrote: | Today I bought a new lawn mower, weed eater, and blower, all | electric, with batteries, for less than $600 total (not even the | cheapest models). They have comparable power to gas-driven | models. | Shivetya wrote: | Just be sure when using a electric mower you opt for the higher | amp batteries. They are also far more limited by wet or tall | grass and heaven forbid trying both at once. | | Many push mowers will come with a 4amp or higher battery while | blowers, weed eaters, and such, use 2 to 2.5amp battery. While | the lower amp batteries can work in the mower they will heat up | faster and may actually stop if the load they are put under | ramps up too fast. | | Still even the cost of a 4amp or higher is well worth it to | never have oil or gasoline in my garage. Just understand the | limitations. I mow a little under 10k square feet which can | require a recharge of one or both batteries depending on | conditions. | Ekaros wrote: | I wonder how much there is left to reduce costs? 98% cost | reduction for physical chemical products is pretty good. And many | additional gains are likely increased complexity... | ed25519FUUU wrote: | We need to go a _lot lower_. Prices are still high for retail | investor. Was just quoted $16K for an LG 16kwh matter. That's | $1k per kWh after installation costs. And a 16kwh battery | doesn't even supply my house with 1 day of power. | neolog wrote: | Why are they measuring in kg instead of kWh? | Retric wrote: | Because the kWh is unchanged, but the weight and cost | decreased. | neolog wrote: | Cost per what? | Retric wrote: | Cost per kWh and weight per kWh. But, also cost and weight | per home as the home's energy needs are largely unchanged. | neolog wrote: | The graph that's interesting for homes is cost per kWh | but the page doesn't show that. | ErikVandeWater wrote: | It doesn't seem too clickbaity. $73k/$75k = 97% (assuming the | figures are correct). Knowing that the weight is reduced is | good, because the weight determines where the batteries are | useful; no matter how low the price per kW h goes, if the kW | h/g is too low, the battery isn't going on a spaceship. | supernova87a wrote: | 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 going to be | the thing for 30 years? | ghaff wrote: | >is lithium still going to be the thing for 30 years | | The biggest thing I'm aware of that seems to be going on right | now is trying to make Lithium metal batteries work at scale | | https://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/the-smarter-grid/the-return... | iknowstuff wrote: | Some of this was answered during Tesla's battery day if you're | into it. | | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6T9xIeZTds | Fordec wrote: | I think Lithium is one of the last issues with current battery | tech when you compare the additives and support mechanisms for | getting the energy out of the battery and into useful work. | Cobalt cathodes, Rare earth metals in the magnets of motors, | elements like Scandium in light weight alloys, Tantalum | capacitors etc. have all _more_ eyebrow raising supply chains. | | There will come a point where the economics of Lithium will | require looking at, definitely in the scale-up phase. That is | probably under 30 years. But there's a lot of lower hanging | fruit before the industry collectively properly get onto | looking into direct battery chemistry alternatives like Sodium- | Air. | jillesvangurp wrote: | > -- Mineral scarcity/cost of mining | | It's one of the more common elements on earth. There is no | scarcity. Just cost of extraction. | | > -- Cost of processing, refining lithium | | Generally dropping. Also batteries can be recycled after their | decades of useful life. It's not an expended resource, unlike | anything oil based. Otherwise economies of scale apply. It's | getting cheaper. | | >-- Cost of making battery chemical contents | | Non zero. But they last long (decades) and you can recycle. | Maybe compare to a gallon of diesel which you extract, refine, | and transport at great cost. Then you burn it and lose the | ability to recycle it. It's almost obscene how inefficient that | is in comparison. So the answer is infinitely better than | anything ICE. | | >-- Cost of assembling rest of complete battery | | Seriously?! I refer you to the latest production statistics of | the likes of Tesla, VW, LG and a few other manufacturers that | have failed to collapse during the recent economic crisis by | virtue of doing a generally great job of growing their business | in the middle of a global pandemic. Unlike some ICE | manufacturers. | | Lithium might eventually be displaced by something better. | Better as in even cheaper to harvest, manufacturer, package and | leverage. The bar is pretty high at this point. | Gravityloss wrote: | 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? | 908B64B197 wrote: | I also wonder how much work it is to recondition older battery | packs. | | Weight and volume is really important for a car, but for a | residential installation? Not so much. | nickik wrote: | 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. Depending on how you build | your battery, the inputs are much cheaper. Iron Phosphate | cathodes (LFP) are much, much cheaper. Manganese cathodes are | also quite cheap and will be entering the market soonish. | Cobalt has already been largely phased out, because it was to | expensive. | | Beyond that, localization of mining can add a lot of value. | Currently a nickel atom travels a long time before it end up in | your driveway. So without actually improving mining, a lot of | cost can be removed. | | There are however huge improvements to the chemical and the | manufacturing aspects being made. Over the next decade the | manufacturing of the cells will be so fast, that it will be a | small part of the cost. Tesla I think is the most advanced in | this right now, the assembly lines they presented are quite | insane in terms of output per investment. And others are | working on things like that too. | | There are huge inefficiency still in the chemical processing, | both in terms of how it is done, and how much its transported. | | This video shows how the current cathode manufacturing works | (from a company that wants to improve it but still): | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4i1T6s_NdAQ | | Once you get all of those cost out, reaching as low as | 30-40$/kwh is achievable even for a high nickel cathode, and | significantly less for a LFP battery or Manganese heavy | cathodes. Tesla Battery Day target is for 56$/kwh (educated | guessing by people) for high nickel but that is for the next 5 | years. | | There is significant further upside potential even then. | Eliminating transition free metals from the cathode would cut | cost significantly if it could be replaced with much cheaper | materials. This is very active target of research right now, | including by a Tesla funded high-reputation university lab. | | Removing graphite and increasingly replacing it with silicon | and eventually with nothing (using Lithium form the cathode to | plate an anode) has a lot of potential as well to reduce cost. | | Once we are talking 20 years, Lithium Sulfer is a great | candidate both for automotive and long distance planes. These | batteries would be incredibly cheap because Sulfer is waste | material now. | | Lithium is unlikely to go away anytime soon. There are | potentially superior materials out there, but lithium has a lot | of places to go still. | | You might want to watch: | | - The Limiting Factor (exactly about your question basically) | https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIFn7ONIJHyC-lMnb7Fm_jw | | - EV Stock Channel (mostly about supply chain) | https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMfEjqHQS4u8W5etV0uAG_A | | - Benchmark Minerals (lots of free contend and talks from | companies in the supply chain) | https://www.benchmarkminerals.com/ | | - Cell Ciders podcast | (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/cell- | siders/id15584413...) | | Also, consider watching Tesla Battery Day and pay attention to | detail, they actually do a really great job explaining the | costs and how to improve them in the next 2-7 years. | baybal2 wrote: | Ones which can be squeezed more | | > -- Cost of making battery chemical contents | | > -- Cost of assembling rest of complete battery | | Mining, and refining is pretty efficient at this point, even | when Chinese dominate the market. It's cathode materials which | is the single biggest cost point. Cathode materials are | dominated by Japanese companies, especially nickel based ones. | | LFP is so cheap because making cathode powder for them is a | fairly low-tech process with many Chinese garage scale chem | companies jumping on it 10 years ago. | | Nickel based cathodes are on other hand fairly hard to make | with competitive capacities because control of particle size, | structure, and shape is a tightly held chemical black magic. | | For this reason, I don't expect the new generation of 200WH/kg+ | LFP cathodes to be that cheap in comparison to nickel ones. | kragen wrote: | https://archive.fo/OiXyO is lacking images; is there an | alternative? | harias wrote: | This seems better: | https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:FeVho1... | kragen wrote: | Thanks! | spookthesunset wrote: | It'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. | cbozeman wrote: | Zero-Point Energy Modules when? | aszantu wrote: | lithium is just cheap because it wrecks some 3rd world countries | natural resources. If they'd slap the price of recovery times it | will need to regrow nature in that place, it wouldn't be as | cheap. | nickik wrote: | This is mostly nonsense. | | The majority of lithium in battery comes from West Australia. | Its fairly conventional hard rock mining. | | There are some environmental concerns in the production of | lithium carbonate from evaporation ponds in deserts of South | America. However to say that it 'wrecks' 3rd world countries | natural resources is a bit of an odd statement. | | The only real issue is that evaporation ponds use water from | underground aquifer. This is very salty mineral rich water and | the water use is not as high as farming would be and there is a | lot of these aquifers. | | In the future, as lithium consumption growth much of the growth | will come from more hard rock mining in mostly first world | countries, clay mining (unlimited amounts all over the world) | and direct lithium extraction (gigantic amounts of extraditable | lithium in aquifers all over the world) from aquifers where the | water is pumped right back, just with half as much lithium in | it. | | Evaporation ponds are basically a legacy technology and the | boom in lithium will likely mean that they are gone be phased | out over the next couple decades in favor of DLE. | mavhc wrote: | Which countries? In what way does it wreck them? | seveneightn9ne wrote: | 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.h | umanrightspulse.com/mastercontentblog/bolivian-... | nickik wrote: | 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. | mensetmanusman wrote: | We would just scale up extraction from the ocean, lithium is | very prevalent. | [deleted] ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-04-03 23:00 UTC)