[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 : 598 points
Date : 2021-04-03 16:03 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.economist.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.economist.com)
| blendo wrote:
| A study with newer data discussed here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26686969
| 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
| metandre wrote:
| I just hope at some point we will just stop using lithium thanks
| to better battery tech
| 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.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > Furthermore, nuclear plants take 5 to 10 years to even build.
|
| But that's the problem.
|
| The cost of solar and batteries is declining rapidly. For how
| long? We don't know. Exponential curves eventually flatten out.
| We had Dennard scaling until we didn't.
|
| So the question is, do they get cheap enough before they hit
| the wall?
|
| We have two choices. Choice one, build new nuclear plants, and
| then if alternatives are even cheaper, we pay the
| current/historical price for electricity for a while instead of
| some lower price (or the investors in the nuclear plants lose
| money, take your pick). This also gives us new nuclear plants
| to use to destroy all the stupid plutonium created by old
| nuclear plants, even if it costs more, and we really do have to
| get rid of that stuff.
|
| Choice two, we don't, and bet everything that the alternatives
| get cheap enough before we hit the wall. In which case we're
| _completely screwed_ if we bet wrong, because it takes a long
| time to build new nuclear plants, so if we don 't start now by
| then it'll be too late.
| ComodoHacker wrote:
| So, diversify and do both?
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| Exactly.
|
| And for extra points, this phases out oil and coal faster.
| 1TWh of solar replaces 1TWh of coal, but 1TWh of solar and
| 1TWh of nuclear replaces 2TWh of coal.
| adrianN wrote:
| They are already cheap enough. Renewables are much cheaper
| than nuclear and competitive with fossil fuels. We don't need
| another factor 10 cost improvement. All we need is political
| will to implement the change. We could be running 70%
| renewable in a couple of years if we wanted to. To get to
| 100% we might need to improve the cost effectiveness of
| power-to-gas facilities, but there is zero reason today not
| to replace the majority of our energy consumption with
| renewables.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| They're cheap enough when they're not being used as
| baseload. To get to 100% renewable you would need to pay
| for storage and then have enough over-supply to deal with
| extended periods of overcast. That's a lot more expensive.
|
| This is another reason to do both. Use nuclear for baseload
| and you remove all the storage you would need for solar to
| work overnight. Meanwhile demand is higher during the day
| when solar is generating, so still use that there. It
| reduces the amount of storage you need from the entire
| night to just the high demand period between sunset and
| when people go to bed.
|
| > All we need is political will to implement the change.
|
| You only need political will for subsidies.[1] You only
| need subsidies if it's not actually cheaper.
|
| [1] Or regulatory approval, but let's not bind everything
| in red tape all around, shall we?
|
| If it is cheaper then people just do it on their own
| without any government involvement.
| HeadsUpHigh wrote:
| Real engineering reviewed a paper that claimed we have
| cheap enough renewables to do ~80% of electricity from
| them right now. For the rest 20% we would need massive
| price drops on the battery side but just that 80% alone
| would cause a pretty massive decrease in price due to
| economies of scale.
| adrianN wrote:
| Using nuclear for baseload doesn't work economically.
| Nuclear plant economics are such that you want to run
| them 100% all the time. Renewables sometimes produce
| pretty close to 0 energy. If you don't want to invest
| into storage you need nuclear capacity to cover close to
| all demand. If you have that capacity you don't need
| renewables. I don't think we can build nuclear plants
| quickly enough to prevent catastrophic warming.
|
| If you instead use renewables, batteries, and power-to-
| gas you can also reach net-zero emissions without waiting
| twenty years until you have enough nuclear plants.
| Renewables and batteries are already cheap enough to
| compete with fossil fuels, and provide enough stability
| to reach a high percentage of the energy demand. 50%
| renewables is doable with hardly any storage at all.
| Power-to-gas can provide the storage needed for seasonal
| variations, but there are still cost problems with that.
|
| Imo the lack of political will for the energy
| transformation mostly takes the form of unpriced
| externalities for fossil fuels. There still is no carbon
| price that is even close to the actual damages. Damages
| from the extraction of fossil fuels are not paid for by
| the companies either. Coal plants still emit tons of
| Mercury without paying for it. Aviation fuel is
| essentially untaxed. The list goes on and on.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > Using nuclear for baseload doesn't work economically.
| Nuclear plant economics are such that you want to run
| them 100% all the time.
|
| That's what baseload _is_.
|
| > Renewables sometimes produce pretty close to 0 energy.
|
| Which is why they need storage, and storage is expensive.
| If you do half nuclear and half renewables, you only need
| half as much storage.
|
| Less than half, because you can use pricing to shift
| demand.
|
| Suppose you have 50 GW of nominal demand, but solar
| generation is at 10% of normal because it's overcast. You
| can get demand down to 40GW through price incentives. If
| you had 50 GW of solar which is down to 5 GW, you would
| need to cover 35 GW from storage. If you had 25 GW of
| solar which is down to 2.5 GW, and 25 GW of nuclear, you
| only have to cover 12.5 GW from storage. Less than half
| as much.
| jerven wrote:
| Baseload tends to be about 40% of max load in most grids.
| i.e. having base production doesn't really change the
| economics of storage or over-provisioning etc. On the
| other hand because there is always, in this theoretical
| grid 60% overproduction potential your base load has real
| difficulty making money about 1/3rd of the time.
|
| Baseload, is really minimal load in the grid. There are
| many ways to produce the minimal amount. Real difficult
| part is to provide the max load demand on the grid.
|
| Basically current nuclear technology is inflexible in
| economic terms (also quite a bit in practical terms),
| shown historically by most grid storage being deployed
| when nuclear was being built out.
| godelski 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.
|
| My understanding is that phone batteries are extremely
| different from batteries for large storage. They have vastly
| different cycle and draw requirements (you can't quick draw on
| your phone battery). I don't think these studies are being
| nefarious, but looking at different batteries, where this
| article is averaging. Reading the article it doesn't give any
| inclination that they are differentiating these types of
| batteries.
| danans wrote:
| IIRC, Tesla's first car batteries were made from laptop
| cells.
| 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.
| yellowapple wrote:
| And meanwhile, my Highlander will be old enough to drink in
| a couple years, has lived everywhere from the East Coast to
| the Bay Area to (currently) the Great Basin, has been taken
| offroad on multiple occasions, has handled dozens of
| blizzards like a champ, and (knock on wood) is still
| hanging in there, even with my rather inconsistent
| maintenance.
|
| So I'd say a lot of this depends on the model, and possibly
| the make.
| 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-...
| cookiengineer wrote:
| In general I agree with the renewable energy movement, and also
| with the ideas that come with modern approaches to electric
| mobility (like car sharing etc).
|
| The only point I have left that I have to agree with, and
| that's a huge one, is recycling.
|
| Our governments across the planet have failed to enforce
| sustainable recycling pipelines in the plastics industry, how
| would this be any different?
|
| Why is my laptop battery useless after a year and has only 60%
| power capacity?
|
| How is this even legal that warranty for batteries is 6 months?
|
| I think that in order to make more sustainable battery tech, we
| need better recycling pipelines for it. And more important: all
| the plastics, chips, and pcbs needed around it need to be 100%
| recycled, not upcycled. And manufacturs reusing only 10% of
| their materials aren't worth a shit.
|
| The ironic thing today is that a simple plumbum/acid based
| battery is more sustainable than a lithium ion one. It's energy
| density, however, is a joke. But it never gets useless, and is
| maintainable, and, more importantly, doesn't lose energy
| density over time so it's ideal for buildings that have a
| longer lifetime than a car.
| richardw wrote:
| Checkout Ambri. Lots of videos on YouTube. I'd love to
| invest.
|
| https://ambri.com/technology/
|
| Anyone got any cons?
| max_ wrote:
| It doesn't matter how much the price falls.
|
| The real question to answer is the efficiency compared to
| existing energy sources.
| 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.
| VBprogrammer wrote:
| > Leaf is 5-10kEUR
|
| Those are pretty wide error bars, last time I looked at
| used Leaf's they were selling for somewhere in that
| range. Admittedly first gen leafs with the 24KWh battery.
| 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.
| alisonkisk wrote:
| A few dollars times tens of millions of cars.
| 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.
| [deleted]
| 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.
| xedeon wrote:
| > What leaves me even more fumbled is how easily RWD
| Tesla's spin out and crash with regen and snow.
|
| Where did you get this info from? This is contrary from
| everything that I've heard from my local Tesla owners
| group. To the point that they don't even have to swap to
| snow tires during winter.
|
| Some video examples:
|
| [1] https://youtu.be/v_bfRm5hGN4?t=203
|
| [2] https://youtu.be/v_bfRm5hGN4?t=272
|
| [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSokMC3fncs
| 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!
| [deleted]
| chrisseaton wrote:
| The context was their use in Australia though.
| 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.
| manmal wrote:
| The Leaf was built with Japanese climate in mind, where
| peak temperatures are usually not as high. I always found
| that strange, given that automotive components are
| usually tested for outlier conditions.
| astrange wrote:
| Is that historical or recent Japanese climate? It's
| gotten worse lately - Tokyo at 35C 100% humidity is still
| not Death Valley but it's unpleasant for humans and
| presumably batteries too.
| kybishop wrote:
| A Korean car company made a car with the Japanese climate
| in mind? Perhaps you meant the Korean climate?
| sokoloff wrote:
| Are you under the mistaken impression that Nissan, maker
| of the LEAF, is a Korean car company? (They are a
| Japanese company.)
| jsight wrote:
| AFAIK, it also overheats under CHAdeMO charging in very
| cold temperatures. I don't think it was the climate, just
| saving $$.
| 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.
| m463 wrote:
| The main reason the leaf had bad degradation was the 24kwh
| battery size. People charged them to 100%, drove a good
| portion of their capacity each day, and cycled the battery
| often.
|
| In comparison, a tesla could charge to 80%, never drain to
| below 20%, and charge weekly instead of daily.
| bratcomplex wrote:
| In the future? Talk about the present
| http://www.dalasevrepair.fi/
| Reason077 wrote:
| > _" I bought my 2015 LEAF new and suspect it will not be
| economically viable in 2030"_
|
| Why not? There are already companies who specialize in
| replacing early-model LEAF batteries with new, higher-
| capacity ones. By 2030, I imagine this could be a pretty
| widespread industry - perhaps even rebuilding/remanufacturing
| OEM battery packs with new cells.
|
| And so long as the battery still works, that LEAF will always
| be "economically viable" because unlike combustion vehicles,
| there are practically no ongoing maintenance costs.
| sokoloff wrote:
| Because it will cost around $2-3K for the battery
| replacement on a car chassis that'll be worth around $2K to
| get back to a range and set of features that won't be
| competitive with the then-current (no pun intended) EVs or
| other $5K cars.
|
| If you want to spend $5K on a car in 2030, you'll have way
| better options than a 75 mile range, 6kW charging (20-24
| miles per hour) 2015 LEAF (CHAdeMO will be fully dead by
| then and most 2015 LEAFs don't even have it.)
| deelowe wrote:
| I wish a battery replacement was 2 grand. Try like 8 if
| you can find one.
| Reason077 wrote:
| A $5k, 75-mile used EV still offers a lot of utility and
| value because it will cost almost nothing to run and
| maintain.
|
| No doubt you'll be able to buy great $5k combustion cars
| in 2030, but ongoing fuel and maintenance means their
| true cost is a lot more than that! And in some parts of
| the world, increasingly stringent emissions controls mean
| that combustion cars become more expensive, or even
| illegal, to drive in cities.
|
| You're right about CHAdeMO, but anyone buying a 75 mile
| EV isn't going to care too much about fast charging
| anyway. And by 2030, someone may have come up with a
| retrofit and/or adapter to make old LEAFs compatible with
| CCS?
| sokoloff wrote:
| A 2018 model 3 or X might be a sub-$5K (in 2021 dollars)
| car by 2030. If they are, very few batteries will be
| replaced in old LEAFs. The faster that new EVs
| mature/evolve, the less comparative value older ones have
| meaning they will be getting scrapped when the next
| battery replacement is needed.
|
| I do all the maintenance on our cars (ex- tires, body,
| and warranty/recalls). The LEAF has already had one
| battery repair under warranty (at around 17K miles, out
| of service for several weeks and likely a $2K+ repair at
| future independent rates-was 2 techs for most of a day
| plus pages of special sealants and consumables)
|
| Other than that it has needed wipers and windshield fluid
| and that's it. If that pattern keeps up, they're still
| headed to the scrapyard en masse, I think.
| theshrike79 wrote:
| I think there will be a secondhand market offering
| battery upgrades for older EVs. So they just won't
| install the exact same battery, but a bigger one or a
| smaller one (lighter, but same capacity).
|
| 10 years of R&D on batteries by some of the biggest
| corporations in the world should provide some new
| innovations.
| 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.
| agumonkey wrote:
| I have a similar issue with climate change strategies. The
| people behind are surely more educated and mentally skilled
| than I, but I have a feeling they couldn't avoid ignoring false
| assumptions in the current model, which leads to bad policies
| and wasted time (and also anxiety).
| 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.
| rictic wrote:
| Scaling may take us to some strange places, but it's
| worth noting that an Apple M1 chip has >100x the
| transistors of a 2004-era Pentium 4, and achieves ~500x
| the FLOPs at a fraction of the power draw.
|
| Yes this isn't single-threaded performance, but I think
| we should keep in mind that exponential improvement in
| price/performance over many decades is possible, if never
| certain.
|
| Sources - https://www.alternatewars.com/BBOW/Computing/Co
| mputing_Power... - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_M1
| 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.
| imtringued wrote:
| We'll get to 256 core server chips and that will be the
| end of the line. You are forgetting that the advertised
| version number denoted by nm is about what size a
| theoretical planar transistor would need to have to be
| equivalent to the advertised process.
|
| Since that number is purely theoretical, we can construct
| a theoretical scenario in which its theoretical nature
| would become absolutely obvious. Take a 7nm process node
| transistor and stack it 100 times. Such a process would
| be called a 0.07nm process.
| 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.
| vkou wrote:
| It has stopped, though. Single-threaded performance,
| either in absolute value, or per dollar has not been
| following Moore's law for more than a decade.
|
| And outside of data centers, single-thread performance is
| still king.
|
| Performance per watt has improved, but that's not a
| metric the typical end user cares much about.
| jononor wrote:
| Performance per watt is key for all portable devices, ie
| the laptops and phones that many do almost all of their
| end-user computing on.
| 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.
| fpoling wrote:
| 2nm is just a commercial name. The real features are much
| bigger, see, for example,
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/10_nm_process. So we are
| quite far from 10 atoms per transistor.
|
| The biggest problem is lithography. ASML managed
| unexpectedly for many in the industry including Intel to
| solve technological problems with extreme ultraviolet
| sources, but shrinking transistors significantly further
| requires soft x-rays and the perspectives of that now for
| mass lithography are much more uncertain than for EUV ten
| years ago.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > Even if hypothetically it does, there's a very real
| limit - an atom is only 10x smaller than 2nm.
|
| That's certainly a real limit, but what is it a limit on?
| It is not obvious from first principles that it takes _n_
| atoms to implement _n_ transistors.
| 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.
| ksec wrote:
| And Jim Keller is not a Fab / Processing guy. And if you
| actually listen to what he said, he is predicting plenty
| of room to improve, not it will improve every 24 months,
| which arguably has already stopped happening since ~2017
| 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.
| ksec wrote:
| S curve only starts to plot itself once it hits an
| inflation or deflation point. For hydrogen it is so far
| from that.
| 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?
| semi-extrinsic wrote:
| > how much would it cost to develop significant PV-
| powered electrolysis-and-Sabatier-process plant in any of
| the big coastal deserts, for exporting methane?
|
| What are you thinking about as the carbon source? If
| coal, then this has been commercially viable for decades.
| In North Dakota there is a 1.5 gigawatt installation
| running since 1984. That one uses electricity from coal
| power IIUC, but today PV is cheaper than coal for
| electricity.
|
| If you are talking about CO2 from direct air capture, the
| optimistic cost estimates of your CO2 feedstock are
| around $600/tonne. 1 tonne of CO2 gives ~137 kg of
| methane at 100% reaction yield, due to the molar weight
| ratio of CO2 to CH4.
|
| So per tonne of methane produced, the CO2 cost alone is
| above $4000. For comparison a tonne of natural gas in the
| US today costs between $500 and $1000 for the end user.
|
| This means that CO2 capture from air needs to become two
| orders of magnitude cheaper than today before this scheme
| works out.
|
| I would say hydrogen electrolysis and then liquefaction
| for large scale distribution/export is way more
| realistic. This is what the EU seems to be going for
| together with Northern Africa.
| ben_w wrote:
| Thanks! While this does not fully change your conclusion
| for air-capture CO2, I am confused by this:
|
| > 1 tonne of CO2 gives ~137 kg of methane at 100%
| reaction yield, due to the molar weight ratio of CO2 to
| CH4.
|
| I think it's more like 363 kg given the ratio of molar
| weights: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=co2%20molar
| %20weight%2F...
|
| (Looks like an extra factor of two, but I can't figure
| out why, everything I play with in WolframAlpha is a
| factor of two in the wrong direction)
| Qwertious wrote:
| To add to that: I'm not convinced that exporting even
| renewably-sourced methane is particularly renewable -
| methane has fugitive emissions when piped etc that are
| far worse pound-for-pound than CO2.
| 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.
| pfdietz wrote:
| The largest energy draw is making the hydrogen. Store
| that and operate the reactor 24/7.
| taneq wrote:
| At that point, just use battery storage and bypass the
| reactor entirely.
| Qwertious wrote:
| For domestic day-to-day consumption, absolutely.
|
| The main argument for hydrogen AFAICT is that it can be
| exported overseas or stored for inter-seasonal use.
|
| Batteries can't do that, as 1) when compared to literal
| rocket fuel, they're impractically heavy to put on a
| cargo ship for bulk transport, and 2) batteries trickle-
| discharge so after a month or two the battery will be
| flat.
| ben_w wrote:
| In fairness, pure hydrogen is also leaky and hard to work
| with. That's why I was asking about the economics of
| turning it into methane... and yet, one of the other
| replies I got pointed out that methane is also a bit
| leaky, so we might want to reform it (or whatever the
| word for "opposite of cracking" is) all the way up to a
| room temperature liquid.
|
| I barely remember the process from school, something like
| this rings a bell:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catalytic_reforming
| blake1 wrote:
| It actually is pretty easy to predict the future, in a
| limited sense, a decade out: the cost of new technologies
| generally follows an exponentially declining "learning"
| curve. This has been extremely well studied in the case of
| the aircraft and semiconductor industries, and is the subject
| of hundreds/thousands of articles. Of course, some conditions
| must be met--hence the articles--like plentiful inputs, lack
| of monopoly power, and government (dis)incentives, but we'd
| see evidence of these constraining battery tech by now.
|
| The input variable is the cumulative number of units, and of
| course we can't be exact about the trajectory of that number,
| but we can infer from X MWh manufactured -> $/MWh.
| 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.
| refulgentis wrote:
| If we're being pedantic, it's worth flagging the former is
| not necessarily 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?
| Qwertious wrote:
| Investing in government bonds vs investing in penny
| stocks: both are the same thing, as they are both an
| excess of confidence in predicting the future.
| 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.
| nswest23 wrote:
| No, the first error is that costs are fixed (stupidest),
| the second is that they are easily forecast (just kinda
| stupid).
| Brakenshire wrote:
| The rate of change has been stable over the last 15
| years, do you bet it continues for a 16th year or that it
| stops this year?
| zdragnar wrote:
| They'll never be free. They'll never be cheaper than the
| raw materials that go into them, or the copper to wire
| them together and into the car.
|
| At some point, there's going to be a price floor that the
| research, materials supply and competition simply won't
| break through.
|
| Guessing when that is going to happen is more luck than
| anything. I do not see it continuing to get exponentially
| cheaper for long, though.
|
| LiFePho has removed most of the precious metals out of
| the equation, and the demand for electric cars will
| continue to compete against the growth in demand for
| battery storage for renewables. For an analogy, lumber
| prices have shot through the roof over the past few years
| where I live due to construction booms. Nothing about the
| technology has changed, and supply hasn't fluctuated
| greatly. These same pressures are going to be pushing
| against lithium batteries getting exponentially cheaper
| over the next few years. I don't doubt that they will
| find room to bring prices down, but there _is_ a floor
| out there somewhere close by.
| fpoling wrote:
| Well, the theoretical floor is much further if one goes
| beyond Lithium. There are various prototypes that oxides
| aluminum potentially reaching energy densities greater
| than gasoline. Now, those are currently only reversible
| in the sense of using aluminum smelter to restore
| aluminum from the oxidized form. Still we do not know if
| reversible process is not possible at all in a compact
| device and the supply of aluminum is vast.
| mrfusion wrote:
| Even as a single use battery it would be amazing. Carry
| around a 20 lb battery in your EV as a backup to get you
| to a charger.
|
| Electric airplanes could carry these for takeoff and
| maybe jettison at a preplanned location for recycling.
| Brakenshire wrote:
| I wouldn't anticipate suddenly hitting a price floor, but
| instead the rate of reduction tapering off, which we're
| not seeing yet in a clear way. There's still a long way
| to go before we hit the limits from resource costs. And
| the current rate doesn't need to continue for long before
| we start hitting price parity. In some cases we're
| already there.
| gfxgirl wrote:
| There's a floor but it's not just price of raw materials.
| It includes performance of same raw materials just used
| better. So a battery today with X amount of raw materials
| puts out Y power. A battery in 10 years with the same
| amount of X raw materials puts out Y^4 power. At least
| according to E=MC^2 it's a long way before we reach the
| floor.
| wpietri wrote:
| The paper says "We estimate that between 1992 and 2016,
| real price per energy capacity declined 13% per year".
| Where do you get your data for the last 5 years?
|
| Regardless, 1 year isn't the correct duration for a bet.
| People average owning a car for ~6 years, and the average
| lifespan is something like 12 years.
|
| But depending on terms, I might take a year-over-year bet
| for battery prices. Demand is high and the pandemic has
| caused significant supply chain problems. They could well
| have gone up this year. And indeed, a quick look at news
| reports suggests key components, including lithium and
| cobalt, are surging in price. Fine examples of why
| assuming a historical average has future meaning can get
| you into trouble.
| Tade0 wrote:
| One kWh of batteries generally requires around 200g of
| lithium. Both by weight and price it's a crucial, but
| small component, so unless it suffered a 10x hike, its
| price isn't relevant.
|
| Meanwhile LiFePO4 batteries, which are currently the most
| popular chemistry(at least in China), contain no cobalt
| whatsoever.
| wpietri wrote:
| Other analysts differ on whether these things will impact
| the retail price. But you make my point for me: this is
| an extremely complex problem, and making any simple
| assumption about future price is a mistake.
| Brakenshire wrote:
| BNEF do a price survey, prices have continued to decline
| at the same rate. The decline was exactly 13% again last
| year.
|
| Lithium prices have gone down in the last few years, and
| Cobalt isn't a necessary component.
| rtpg wrote:
| To be honest this whole debate is a bit academic. In one
| situation someone is saying "this thing costs a lot of
| money and so is a toy for the rich". At the time of the
| statement it's probably true! You might get into an error
| by saying "it will always be like that because it's
| expensive now".
|
| But the issue is that, _even at the time of the
| statement_, the price has been decreasing over time! It's
| falsifiable at the time of the statement! You don't need
| to see the future to dismantle that argument.
|
| Inversely, costs have gone down over time for a long
| time. You could make the inference that there's a floor,
| of course, and it's reasonable to do so! But it's hard to
| disprove the claim that prices will keep on going down.
|
| The former is just on its face wrong based on the current
| facts, the latter is a judgement call about the future.
| Totally different beasts, and driven from different
| things.
| wpietri wrote:
| Both are assumptions about the future. Neither is
| falsifiable at the moment of speaking. What would be
| falsifiable is a statement about the historic rate of
| change.
|
| I agree that it's generally more likely that a 15-year
| trend will continue than change. If we're talking about a
| year, that is. But 5 years? 15 years? 100 years? 1000
| years? At some point, the general assumption changes.
|
| But without trend data, I also agree that assuming price
| stability a better general assumption than assuming a
| major price drop. Historically, very few things keep
| getting cheaper. It requires a) large society willing to
| keep making R&D investments, and b) a technological
| domain with a lot of possible ways to keep lowering
| costs.
|
| And what I mostly agree with is the proverb, "It is
| difficult to make predictions, especially about the
| future."
| will4274 wrote:
| It's about mature and immature technologies. 20 years ago,
| photovoltaic cells had efficiency ranges in the single
| digits, but rising. When efficiency rises from 5% to 10%,
| it makes sense to assume that it keeps rising. But electric
| heaters had efficiency ranges around 95%, even when my
| parents were kids. Now they have even better efficiency -
| 99.8% in my newest apartment - which is only 5% better than
| 50 years ago - because there is a physical limit.
|
| Technology follows an S curve. First it increases slowly,
| then faster, then more slowly again. It's silly to assume
| mature technologies will keep getting better at the same
| rate and silly to assume immature technologies won't get
| better. Without specifying the technology, one assumption
| isn't really sillier than the other - physical limits are
| unintuitive.
| jacobolus wrote:
| On the other hand, a heat pump bumps the efficiency of
| your electric heater to like 300%, because it works
| around the physical constraint. My understanding is that
| air-source heat pumps are continuing to noticeably
| improve decade-over-decade.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Any electric heater, even those decades ago, was 100%
| efficient. They turn electricity watts into heat watts.
| Where is the energy loss? Light? That also becomes heat.
| Air movement? Also heat. Loss due to heat allong the cord
| to the heater? Thats heat too. Unless they are emitting
| large numbers of neutrinos, all electric heaters are
| simply resistors that perfectly turn electricity into
| heat.
|
| Put nearly any electrical device in a box, anything from
| a television to a cement mixer, and it will raise the
| temperature of the air in that box by exactly the same
| amount as the watts it draws from the power source. A
| 500w television puts out exactly as much heat as a 500w
| heater.
| will4274 wrote:
| I was actually referring to electric _water_ heaters, so
| the loss is to the air.
| AlchemistCamp wrote:
| Agreed.
|
| A first-order approximation leaves a lot to be desired, but
| it's better than a zeroth-order approximation.
| superluserdo wrote:
| Not necessarily.
|
| If you're coming up to the end of a logistic ("S") curve,
| then assuming a linear growth (or worse, a fixed rate of
| increase each year, ie exponential growth) is much worse
| of an assumption than assuming zero change, if you
| extrapolate too far.
| aktan_00zerp wrote:
| s;kkdfjgjdfkjgkfgkjdkfg
| rsj_hn wrote:
| A first order approximation is always less accurate than
| a zeroth order approximation for bounded functions, as
| the first order approximation will have unbounded error
| whereas the zeroth order approximation will not -- unless
| you are in the degenerate case of the first order itself
| being exactly zero. The first order approximation is
| infinitely worse. Most (all?) things in the world are
| bounded. Hence if you must choose between just a first
| and zero-th order approximation, the zero-th order is the
| way to go for long run predictions. Cue the XKCD comic
| about the expected number of weddings.
|
| On the other hand, if you are not interested in making
| long run predictions but only short run predictions, then
| first order approximations will tend to be more accurate
| in a small region around the base, but that region might
| be quite small.
| nolok wrote:
| These are the exact same kind of stupid: they assume
| everything data set will always be constant or linear.
| toomanybeersies wrote:
| Broadly speaking, after inflation, costs are more likely to
| stay the same than change significantly one way or the
| other.
| clairity wrote:
| that's a learning or experience curve[0]. related is the
| technology adoption curve, characterized for instance by the
| bass diffusion model[1].
|
| [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experience_curve_effects
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bass_diffusion_model
| 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.
| theshrike79 wrote:
| > how lack-luster Toyota has been in pure electric cars
|
| It's not Toyota's fault, it's a government mandate in
| Japan. That's why the CEO of Toyota has bashed full EVs
| in public and why Toyota is the only manufacturer
| actually pushing fuel cell vehicles instead of going all-
| in on EVs like everyone else.
|
| From Japan: Strategic Hydrogen Roadmap [0]
|
| > Japan's Prime Minister, Yoshihide Suga, recently
| announced that Japan will aim to achieve net zero
| greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. To decarbonise its
| economy, Japan is increasingly looking to future fuels
| such as hydrogen and innovative technology.
|
| > Japan's Hydrogen Roadmap has an ambitious goal of: >
| 40,000 fuel cell vehicles by 2020; 200,000 fuel cell
| vehicles by 2025; and 800,000 by 2030; > 320 hydrogen
| refuelling stations by 2025; and 900 by 2030; and > 1,200
| fuel cell buses by 2030.
|
| > In Japan there are currently: > 3,800 fuel cell
| vehicles; > 135 hydrogen refuelling stations; > 91 fuel
| cell buses; and > 250 fuel cell forklifts.
|
| Basically Japan's problem is two-fold. Their electric
| network is a 100V system, split to 50Hz and 60Hz sections
| because of historical reasons. There's no realistic way
| to build a charging network for electric cars in Japan.
|
| The second part of the problem is that Japan is also
| heavily reliant on imported coal and natural gas for its
| electricity production[1] (around 60-70%).
|
| They're betting on Hydrogen fuel cells, because that is
| the one thing they can produce themselves and not rely on
| other countries so heavily.
|
| [0] https://www.mfat.govt.nz/en/trade/mfat-market-
| reports/market... [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_Japan
| simpleguitar wrote:
| For Toyota, it wasn't the engineering, design, nor the
| manufacturing that was the bottleneck. It was sourcing of
| the batteries.
|
| Toyota sold 100k Priuses it's first year (2005), and
| peaked at 237k Priuses in 2012. At that time, nobody had
| the capacity (nor the materials), to produce that many
| battery packs for full EV use. In hind sight, they could
| have committed fully to LiIon batteries for the future,
| but in early 2000s, it wasn't clear at all what
| technology would actually win. The contenders were, as I
| recall, hydrogen, rechargeable batteries, and bio-fuels.
| Toyota had concept vehicles for each of those, and the
| hybrid-electric was the practical compromise at the time.
| Toyota, being a large scale manufacturer, could not
| design a car around a critical component which were in
| short supply, like LiIon batteries.
|
| Tesla decided to go the rechargeable route, invested
| heavily in battery manufacturing, and bet on LiIon analog
| of Moore's Law. Since they weren't going to sell 100k
| vehicles any time soon, they could scale along the way.
| Tesla didn't deliver 200k vehicles until 2018. (On a side
| note, Tesla also had Elon leading it. _All_ of his
| 'crazy ventures' lead to colonizing Mars. What kind of a
| vehicle would be most practical on Mars? Not gasoline.
| Not hydrogen. Yep, EV. And what internet technology is
| the most practical on Mars? Yep, satellite
| constellations. What transport technology is the most
| practical on Mars? Underground tunnels. And so on.)
|
| Currently, _all_ the automakers except Tesla are
| scrambling to secure battery capacity. Tesla is in a very
| nice position right now.
| RhodoGSA wrote:
| best currency for mars? Crypto.
| simpleguitar wrote:
| Hahaha, didn't think of that one!
|
| DogeCoin FTW!
| minitoar wrote:
| Haha, I wonder if there is some sort of coin protocol
| that could be compatible with the deep space network.
| That latency seems like it could really mess things up.
| yellowapple wrote:
| > All of his 'crazy ventures' lead to colonizing Mars
|
| Counterpoint: that flamethrower, which probably won't be
| of much use in a thin atmosphere lacking oxygen.
| Tuna-Fish wrote:
| Not just that, but Toyota also made the bet that solid-
| state batteries will be better than aqueous electrolyte
| li-ion ones, and that they will be available soon. With
| that assumption, it would be foolish to invest a lot into
| li-ion battery manufacturing.
|
| Turned out, solid state batteries are much harder to
| mass-produce than they thought. Supposedly they will have
| prototype this year.
| elihu wrote:
| There's some gain to be had in terms of efficiency, but not
| much. Induction motors are I think generally approaching 90%,
| and SRIPM-type motors are in the mid 90's.
|
| Probably the biggest gains going forward will be around
| improving the ratio of power output to weight, and reducing
| manufacturing costs (of both the motor and the controller).
| Maybe also increasing maximum RPM and improving durability,
| for whatever application where current motors aren't good
| enough.
|
| It might also be nice to have more standardization and
| modularity. In the EV conversion world, there's kind of a
| defacto standard of motors made specifically for conversion
| mostly using a B-face with a 1 1/8th inch shaft with a
| quarter inch key slot. That helps a lot, as you can buy a
| motor from one company and a transmission adapter plate and
| coupler from another company and have pretty good odds it'll
| work. There are apparently ways to get almost any motor to
| work with almost any transmission, but that usually requires
| custom fabrication. (Obviously you can also ditch the
| transmission and just connect the motor directly to the drive
| shaft or transaxle or whatever. I don't know much about that
| route.)
| 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.
| pappn wrote:
| Note that the impressing 9x% efficiency rates that we hear
| about are peak efficiency rates. There is something to gain
| in widening the operating ranges of this efficiency also.
| See for instance
| https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Efficiency-maps-of-
| sever...
| 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.
| elihu wrote:
| Yeah, some motors have rare-earth permanent magnets which
| are expensive. Induction motors don't, they just have a
| weird squirrel-cage structure made of (I guess) copper.
| Probably the manufacturing inputs for an induction motor
| are cheap, but the motors are a bit inefficient.
|
| I'm currently doing a conversion that uses a Netgain
| Hyper9 [1]. They cost about four and a half thousand
| dollars (including controller) and they're pretty bulky
| and heavy. They're really efficient though. An OEM
| manufacturer I'm sure could have a motor made much more
| cheaply and design it to run at a much higher voltage and
| produce correspondingly more power. I think the Hyper9
| just uses magnetized iron or something like that for the
| permanent magnets. No rare-earths, so it might be pretty
| cheap to make something like that in volume. They serve
| the conversion market though, so it's kind of niche
| product. I have no idea what Nissan spends to make
| something like a Leaf motor.
|
| [1] https://www.go-ev.com/motors-warp.html#HyPer_9HV
| 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).
| cbmuser 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.
|
| Solar power and electric cars aren't impractical because of the
| price tag of the technology but because of their fundamental
| properties.
|
| Solar power cannot produce electricity on demand which is why
| solar (and wind parks) can never compete in a free electricity
| market where prices are formed based on supply and demand.
|
| A product such as electricity is worthless if it's all produced
| during peak hours even if demand is low to moderate at the time
| or extremely expensive when it's hardly produced while demand
| is high. Even if solar and wind parks would cost nothing to
| build, this problem wouldn't go away simply because prices are
| formed by supply and demand which have to be in balance for
| prices no to fall or jump extremely.
|
| This is the reason why Germany's electricity costs twice as
| much to the end user as compared to France and still causes up
| to ten times as much of greenhouse gas emissions per kWh as
| compared to France.
|
| As for electric cars: The fundamental problem is refueling time
| and its geographical flexibility. A car with a combustion
| engine can be refueled within minutes anywhere on the planet.
| An electric car has to be refueled for at least an hour and
| needs to be recharged at a station while an ICE car can be
| refueled on the right-most lane of a highway if you run out of
| fuel and someone with a jerry can comes to your rescue.
|
| The fundamental problem with battery electric cars is that
| energy is changing its form during refueling (electricity =>
| chemical form) which is why there is an upper limit to how fast
| such a car can be refueled.
|
| For ICE cars, the energy is put into your tank without changing
| its form which is why ICE cars can be refueled within seconds
| if necessary (see Formula 1 cars).
|
| This limitation is the main problem with battery electric cars
| and the reason why you won't see any large numbers of police or
| emergency vehicles which are battery powered in the foreseeable
| future.
|
| There is a reason why solar/wind and electric cars remain
| highly subsidized in many countries despite of the fact that
| the technology is becoming cheaper. Both products wouldn't be
| able to compete in a free market due to their fundamental
| shortcomings.
| HeadsUpHigh wrote:
| A bad implementation of something doesn't mean the
| fundamental idea doesn't work. Germany phased out nuclear not
| coal for political reasons. There are plenty of examples of
| grid tier battery projects that have worked wonders with
| reducing peak demands.
| mtmmtm wrote:
| Solar and wind-power can compete very efficiently in a free
| market. They actually outperform all other forms of energy-
| production (it is the cheapest way to produce energy). Also
| every year they get much cheaper. I would recommend this
| video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PM2RxWtF4Ds
| 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.
| JeffL wrote:
| Yes it's a misconception. Their profit margin on cars is
| consistently over 20%. They have large overhead costs
| that are more or less fixed like R&D that get amortized
| more and more as sales go up. They have massive net free
| cash flow every quarter even while building out new
| factories that will increase production capacity by 50%
| every year for the next several years, further increasing
| economies of scale and operating margins.
| benzor wrote:
| You and GP are arguing two different things and are both
| right.
|
| GP's claim is that Tesla would not be profitable without
| regulatory credit sales: this is true. Tesla's profit for
| 2020 is $721M and its credit sales for 2020 are $1.58B,
| just over double. It's fair to say that, were those
| credit sales to fall to zero, Tesla risks losing its
| profitable status. Here we're effectively discussing net
| profit margin for the company as a whole.
|
| Your claim is that Tesla's automotive gross margin on car
| sales is 20%. This is also true, but only includes COGS
| (Cost of Goods Sold), so car parts and assembly costs. It
| does not include other expenditures such as CapEx or R&D.
| 20% sounds great (and it is), but when we look at the net
| profit margin, $721M of profit on $31.54B of revenue
| gives only a 2.2% net profit margin which is not as
| impressive.
|
| It's therefore rather unfair to say that GP's claim is a
| misconception, it's actually perfectly true.
| JeffL wrote:
| He said the more cars they sell, the more money they
| would lose without credits, which is a misconception.
| 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"
| MomoXenosaga wrote:
| You can't predict a breakthrough but they tend to change
| everything.
| m463 wrote:
| What's fascinating is that moores law was successful far
| longer than people imagined.
| 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.
| iagovar wrote:
| I used Km0 for giving the electric a chance.
| 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.
| yellowapple wrote:
| It seems like there should be a removable gasoline or
| diesel generator purely for range extension. For day-to-
| day commutes and errands near home, leave the generator
| at home and save on weight. For long-distance trips,
| bring the generator with you.
| elihu wrote:
| The other way that EVs enter the market is that someone
| takes a gas-powered car and converts it to electric. It's
| not a particularly common thing to do, for multiple
| reasons. It's time consuming, expensive, and requires tools
| and space, and a certain amount of expertise or willingness
| to learn.
|
| The may be a lot of people who have the time, inclination,
| space, and access to tools to do a conversion but are
| blocked by the cost barrier. That probably includes at
| least some poor people. Mostly I'm thinking of young
| college-age people who might not necessarily be
| experiencing poverty but also don't have any significant
| wealth either. Maybe they live with their parents and are
| having trouble finding work.
|
| I'd like to see EV conversions have the same level of
| subsidy as OEM cars; that could make it a worthwhile and
| cost-effective endeavor for a lot of people. It could also
| provide jobs for local mechanics, for customers who don't
| want to do the work of converting the vehicle themselves.
| There are a lot of gas-powered cars on the road. They
| aren't all worth converting, but some of them are. It seems
| a waste to replace them all rather than convert the ones
| worth converting.
| yellowapple wrote:
| There's also a bit of an annoyance w/ EV conversions, at
| least here in the US: automatic transmissions being
| pretty much ubiquitous. They're basically dead weight for
| an EV (which doesn't need to switch gears), and they
| further tend to have a lot of mechanical and electrical
| complexity.
|
| I suspect that if I ever convert my Highlander to an EV
| (which is something I'd like to investigate should its
| current drivetrain eventually give up the ghost), it'll
| likely entail needing to remove the transmission entirely
| (and maybe replace it with a fixed gearbox of some
| sort?). And given that it's AWD, that complicates things
| further, since there are very few AWD/4WD EV conversions.
|
| That said, if there are solutions to this problem, and
| said solutions prove viable, then this makes EV
| conversion a lucrative business, and opens it up to most
| cars on American roads.
| 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.
| Qwertious wrote:
| We already have million-KM batteries, and we're headed
| toward million-mile batteries.
|
| Even if the battery _does_ die, I wouldn 't be surprised
| to see a lot of secondhand batteries with half a million
| Ks of mileage put up relatively cheap. You don't need to
| go straight to brand-new.
| 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.
| reitzensteinm wrote:
| The Mach-E starts at $43k.
| 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.
| terafo wrote:
| > _The real, more recent data is much, much worse._
|
| Where can I read anything on this?
| Qwertious wrote:
| There's a video on YouTube, Gwynne Dyer -- Geopolitics in a
| Hotter World (2010) (
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mc_4Z1oiXhY ), which very
| briefly touches on it IIRC. I'm talking about the bit that
| starts at 8m30s on the video, but I highly recommend
| watching the whole thing (or at leas the 1-hour talk part -
| the Q&A is practically inaudible for me).
|
| Basically, the IPCC doesn't publish studies - they study
| _compilations_ of studies, every 4-5 years. And when they
| start compiling, they have a cut-off date at the very start
| and only use studies that have been both completed and have
| passed peer review from before that date.
|
| Meanwhile, the studies themselves have the same problem -
| they obviously can't start the study with incomplete data
| and update the data as they go. The studies need to start
| with data that _finished_ before they started the study.
|
| And on top of that, they're necessarily a reserved body
| (Icd say "conservative" but that's ambiguous in politics) -
| IPCC is run by a bunch of governments trying to figure out
| the bare minimum of emissions reduction they need to commit
| to, to not be negligent - they don't _want_ to hear bad
| news unless it 's certain.
|
| The end result is that the data in the report is 10+ years
| out of date.
| 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.
| pfdietz wrote:
| No, they find "firming power" is needed. That could be
| hydrogen burned in turbines. Firming is not non-intermittent,
| it's dispatchable
| aktan_00zerp wrote:
| ;lsdkf;lsdk;flskdgjfng
| iamgopal wrote:
| In the world where data is new oil, no body is going to give it
| for free or even for money as they themselves could use it for
| much higher profits. I assume all news assumptions or data to
| be wrong and look for after effect evidence that prove that it
| could be true.
| pyuser583 wrote:
| Wow!
| 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
| kumarvvr wrote:
| A tesla 2 powerwall, weighs about 120 kg and holds about 14 kWh
| of power.
|
| In India, the average household has a 2.5 kW Peak Power meter
| and usually, about 10 kWh per day is consumed.
|
| So, not exactly a back-pack, but yeah.
|
| The average individual house in India, is constructed in a plot
| of about 200 Square Yards. Usually available roof space is
| about 1000 sft.
|
| Assuming no shadows or high rises in the vicinity (80% of homes
| have good sunshine even in dense cities), this area is
| sufficient for about 5 kW of installed capacity.
|
| Most of the deccan plateau gets about 6 hours of good sunshine
| year-round. So that translates to about 30 kWh of power
| generation capability.
|
| So, a 3 kW installed capacity, with 1 powerwall will be
| sufficient to power an average household for most of the year.
|
| Of course, this does not take into account usage of ACs (a fast
| increasing power consumption category in India)
|
| However, it costs about Rs. 100,000 for 1 kW of installed
| capacity (including inverter and grid connected meter, no
| batteries) For 5 kW, that is 500,000 Rs. (about 7000 USD) of
| investment.
|
| Average annual salary of an Indian household in an urban area
| is about 15000 USD. About half of that in rural areas.
|
| If there are good financing options and grid connected reverse
| selling meters (they are being encouraged by many local and
| state governments), there could be a revolution in installed
| solar capacity and utilization.
| 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...
| brucehoult wrote:
| Far north New Zealand, 4 bedroom house, no insulation, no
| double glazing, electric hot water and cooking. 9-10
| kWh/day October-May, ~18 kWh/day June-September
| (dehumidifier). Wood burner (about US$150/winter) when the
| heat from the dehumidifier isn't enough to maintain 20 C.
| sjwright wrote:
| Remarkable. I'm in Sydney, my house sounds similar by
| description but I have gas hot water and stovetop. My
| house uses over 5 kWh/day for ambient/idle power alone.
| sgt wrote:
| That's impressive. What's your usage pattern like? I
| mean, in our house there's regular use of washing
| machine, tumble dryer, dishwasher, TV's, swimming pool
| pump. Heck even the swimming pool takes a couple of kWh a
| day! Would be curious on how to live so frugally.
| sjwright wrote:
| Sorry if I was unclear. 5 kWh/day of idle. That's how
| much it uses when we're literally not home and all I've
| left on is the networking gear, appliances on standby,
| etc.
|
| My average actual occupied usage is closer to 20-25
| kWh/day, varying mainly by AC load.
| brucehoult wrote:
| I'm typing this on a 32 core ThreadRipper with 32" 4K
| screen, which runs 24 hours a day! I also have a Zen 2
| laptop and a headless M1 Mac Mini running all the time.
| And assorted Raspberry Pi, HiFive Unleashed etc. But no
| TV (or at least it's off).
| 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.
| tyingq wrote:
| _" I think you will be very surprised if at some point
| you travel outside the US"_
|
| I'm not quite sure what prompted you to drag this down to
| that level. FWIW, I spent several years living in Europe
| and the Middle East. In homes that weren't air
| conditioned even. And a fair amount of travel to many
| other places.
|
| _" The rest of the world does not consist of Elbonian
| mud farmers as you seem to think"_
|
| Wow. You have no reason to go there. Fuck off. Saying
| that lacking $2k of discretionary money to spend on
| lithium batteries is "Elbonian mud farmers". Wtf. I've
| certainly had times I my adult life where I didn't have
| $2k of discretionary money.
| kragen wrote:
| Haha! I didn't realize you were imagining a battery bank
| as some kind of toy. I was thinking more like an
| alternative to a gasoline generator, which is not really
| "discretionary spending".
| tyingq wrote:
| Discretionary spending doesn't imply toy. What's with the
| taunting?
| kragen wrote:
| The taunting was uncalled for. I'm sorry. I shouldn't
| have accused you of ignorance. Your response was
| definitely not what I expected.
| 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 :)
| azeirah wrote:
| Whaha, the Dutch word for insulation is "isolatie". The
| word "isolatie" also translates directly to the English
| word "isolation" as in being away from everyone.
|
| I think the poster might be Dutch or similar :p
| 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
| mr_toad wrote:
| Heat pumps are an efficient way of heating in the winter,
| and double as AC in the summer.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| People are also fatter and less tolerant of warm weather.
| urthor wrote:
| Office buildings use them because the heating/cooling
| part is secondary.
|
| They need it for ventilation because 6th floor office
| windows don't open for obvious reasons.
| 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
| cwhiz wrote:
| Same reason most Americans are poor. Inability to
| prioritize long term goals over immediate gains. Save $50
| today, but spend $500 more over the next decade.
| 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.
| CyberDildonics wrote:
| This does not make it more likely that someone is
| stealing their electricity than they have a refrigerator
| and/or freezer making up the rest of their unspoken for
| electrical bill.
| 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.
| TheCoelacanth wrote:
| "AC in reverse" I'm assuming means a heat pump, which is
| very common in the US except for the parts that get
| really cold like the Northeast and Midwest. They are very
| efficient down to a bit below freezing, but will result
| in higher electricity usage since you are using
| electricity instead of a different fuel.
| 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.
| natch wrote:
| Nighttime is another situation in which the supplier does
| not deliver power, at least for solar.
|
| Yes you need cords, appliances, and other equipment,
| including extra equipment if you are not connected to the
| grid, that is a given.
| 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]
| Black101 wrote:
| Were lithium batteries really that popular in 1990? I would think
| think that they were just starting to get popular so that would
| make a lot of sense.... but in the last 10 years the price
| probably didn't change that much.
| basicplus2 wrote:
| Retail in Australia current retail prices are roughly 10 times
| what this article is stating.
| 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).
| HeadsUpHigh wrote:
| And phone batteries are even more expensive. This is about
| grid tier batteries or cars where the volume constraints are
| less tight.
| amelius wrote:
| Your sibling commenter jeffbee says they have replaced the
| cells in an existing battery, so I'm not convinced volume
| constraints are the problem here.
| 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.
| manmal wrote:
| Last time I looked, lawn mowers were not glaring examples of
| battery driven tech, just like vacuum cleaners. They provided
| 2-3x less energy output than their wired counterparts, and
| required charging after just 20 minutes.
| justatdotin wrote:
| I use a range of mowers, and I love the battery one because
| it is so maneuverable. One battery is enough for my house
| block. I have a second battery and I sometimes use it for
| larger areas, simply because it is so light and fast. After
| 40 mins I'm happy to stop for a beve while the first finishes
| recharging.
| 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.
| paiute wrote:
| A 2021 publication with data only to 2018... Why is that? Why do
| they use a strange metric? Did prices stabilize?
| https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/lithium
| 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.
| Thorentis wrote:
| How is this possible given that we will apparently have a lithium
| shortage by 2025?
| 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?
| kristopolous wrote:
| The biggest win versus something like petroleum is the
| versatility and commutability.
|
| Let's pretend all of those things have awful trajectories, they
| don't, but let's pretend they do.
|
| There's different battery tech such as organosilicon
| electrolytes, zinc magnesium, nanowire gels, sodium ion,
| there's lots of different ways of battery-ing and as long as
| you're getting the same electric profile, the devices honestly
| don't care in the slightest.
|
| It's fundamentally a better approach
| newyankee wrote:
| Also important to note that in theory a lot of the materials
| used can be recycled to a large extent. Although it also
| depends on how that recycling tech evolves, i am assuming it
| is better than recycling ICE cars ?
| 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.
| armini wrote:
| thanks for sharing your wealth of knowledge on EV & power
| storage, comments like this are why I love reading hackernews
| :) Now I need to spend a few hours absorbing this
| information.
| 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.
| Obi_Juan_Kenobi wrote:
| > Mining, and refining is pretty efficient at this point
|
| Hardly. Nickel goes through a rube-goldberg process of
| extraction, smelting into pure nickel, made into a sulfate,
| transported around the world, remade into a nickel carbonate,
| and finally input into cathode manufacture.
|
| The supply chain simply isn't set up for batteries yet.
| Nickel metal powder is the best form to transport, and likely
| the best input for cathode manufacture as well. But the
| industry formed around the sulfate which was a mature market
| from other industrial use.
| 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!
| aktan_00zerp wrote:
| s
| 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?
| jpeter wrote:
| When we find atlantis
| rahimiali wrote:
| you're extolling energy density (energy per unit volume) but
| your example is about power delivery (energy per unit time).
| the former is the real progress. the latter just needs low
| internal resistance, which is a thing we've had.
| Naomarik wrote:
| Those batteries still cost ~$40 USD each from a high end brand.
| Hoping those can fall in price a bit too.
|
| Some goggle DVR, can check out the current amp draw on bottom
| left. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b4V9DMUtTPY
| urthor wrote:
| To be fair, people were doing a LOT with model airplanes ~60
| years ago with kerosene engines.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| I don't think modern quads would be possible with combustion
| engines. They aren't precise and responsive enough. Modern
| brushless motors paired with some pretty kickass electronic
| speed controllers and flight controllers create a pretty
| amazing thing.
|
| I mean modern quads can fly in "3D" mode and almost instantly
| reverse the direction of all the motors so the quad can fly
| in all orientations, right side up and upside down.
| gpm wrote:
| Have the combustion engine drive a generator not the props,
| it's still more energy dense (but only scales so small).
| crubier wrote:
| Keep in mind that there are exactly a grand total of 4
| moving parts in a quadrotor drone. This is the core
| reason for their success, robustness, ease of use and
| all.
|
| If all quadrotors needed oil, gas, vibrated like crazy
| (bad for IMUs), had 100+ moving parts (engine, servo
| gears, etc...), weighted at least 1-2kg, ran super hot
| and noisy... we would not have had the "drone
| revolution".
| StavrosK wrote:
| Neither would my 300 gram plane that can fly for an hour and 60
| kilometers. Technology is great.
| Black101 wrote:
| Do you get live video over cellphone networks at that weight?
| StavrosK wrote:
| No, it has an analog transmitter on it that has a range of
| roughly 5 km. Video over cell isn't very widespread, though
| it should be.
| Naracion wrote:
| Web Archive version (no wall):
| https://web.archive.org/web/20210404040950if_/https://www.ec...
| 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-...
| aeyes wrote:
| I live in Chile so I know a thing or two about mining. 20%
| of fiscal income stems from copper exports and the majority
| of that from the state owned mining company Codelco.
|
| There are many mining operations of foreign companies which
| don't generate nearly as much fiscal income so putting
| mining under state control is completely understandable.
| This is exactly how we and oil countries got rich. We
| destroy the environment so at least we should be
| compensated instead of exporting profits as well.
|
| A US-backed coup against Bolivia makes no sense, Chile is a
| muppet and does whatever the US needs done. There is no
| need to intervene in Bolivia if you can just ask Chile to
| expand lithium mining and we will happily do it.
|
| I have seen the lithium mining sites in Chile, compared to
| copper it is clean. The mining operations are still small
| in comparison to copper and investment is slow.
| 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.
| justatdotin wrote:
| ridiculously energy intensive to extract
| [deleted]
| oort-cloud9 wrote:
| Hmm.. The price I pay for my laptops never goes down. It was 2000
| ten years ago, it's still 2000. Of course if I buy a laptop with
| approximately the same specs, I'll pay less. But then I'd be
| severely behind in my computing power. Same with the batteries as
| they get better. Also take into account the economic situation we
| are in now. What we have is not a free market economy. The
| government messing with the economy creates huge distortions.
| Under these circumstances you can't guarantee that the prices
| will keep falling. The prices of the Commodities are going up.
| One of these days, the inflation or even hyperinflation is going
| to hit us. Then what? Also, have you ever heard of the Great
| Reset? The plan is to slow the economies down inthe nameof
| Climate Change fight. As Klaus Schwab said you will own nothing
| and be happy.
| tim333 wrote:
| The battery isn't a big percentage of laptop cost.
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