[HN Gopher] Plunge in lithium-ion battery costs
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Plunge in lithium-ion battery costs
Author : giuliomagnifico
Score : 138 points
Date : 2021-11-22 10:33 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (news.mit.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (news.mit.edu)
| throwaway81523 wrote:
| FYI: This is from March 2021 (old news) and is about the large
| multi-decade decline that anyone following the topic is already
| well aware of. There are no recent (i.e. this year) developments
| reported in the article.
| shoto_io wrote:
| Side note: this is from March 2021.
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| One of the interesting things about battery production cost is
| that it is very much tied to the price of energy and the cost of
| the raw materials.
|
| Both battery production and sourcing of the raw materials are
| energy intensive processes. E.g. refining lithium from either ore
| or brine, basically involves a long process of evaporating water,
| concentrating usable quantities, pumping stuff around, etc. So,
| you could simplify the statement above to the whole process being
| essentially about energy cost. It also uses water in large
| quantities and producing and cleaning that boils down to yet more
| energy intensive processes.
|
| So, as energy gets cheaper, the whole production process gets
| cheaper. A lot of automotive companies are announcing plans to
| move their production processes to be carbon neutral. That
| includes using clean energy for battery production. For many
| manufacturers that means sourcing their own energy and turning
| that into a fixed cost rather than a variable cost. As it is such
| a big component of their overall cost, you can bet they'll work
| hard to lower that. And as they do, everything energy intensive
| they do, benefits.
|
| Of course another way batteries can get cheaper is by improving
| the production process to e.g. require less rare earth materials
| (e.g. Kobalt), using less water, etc. That too is going to
| happen. But bringing energy cost down is already big deal. Long
| term alternative battery chemistry, improved production
| processes, cheaper energy, all work together to bring cost down
| further. The question is not if but when. The key metrics here
| are simply $/kwh. That used to be quite high; it's now around
| 100$. What happens when it hits 50$ or 25$? How long will it take
| to get there? These are interesting questions considering that
| the battery is by far the most expensive component in an
| electrical car. Also interesting for ICE car manufacturers still
| hoping to keep on producing ICE cars for another decade or so.
| Having a lot of cheap EVs to compete with is not going to be good
| for them.
| deeviant wrote:
| The price of lithium doesn't dictate the price of batteries,
| though.
|
| Look at the price of lithium carbonate over the past decade:
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/606350/battery-grade-lit...
| vs https://www.statista.com/statistics/883118/global-lithium-
| io.... It's very hard to see any correlation that would support
| your thesis. It looks to me that your simplified view seems to
| miss the truth of the matter.
| shiftpgdn wrote:
| A correction for you: The element is cobalt, Kobalt is a brand
| of tools they sell at Lowes home improvement stores. Also I
| believe most modern lithium battery chemistries omit cobalt due
| to cost and supply chain issues.
| leecb wrote:
| > The element is cobalt, Kobalt is a brand of tools
|
| Kobalt is the name of the element in German; @jillesvangurp's
| profile says he is based in Berlin, perhaps he also speaks
| German. (German also capitalizes nouns.)
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| Actually my Dutch and English are better than my German.
| But you are right ;-). I've been spending a bit of time in
| Berlin.
| jokoon wrote:
| Sorry but anything related to energy that has a climate impact
| should not be measured in dollars, but in co2 equivalent. Good
| luck doing a CO2 summary of lithium batteries from start to
| finish when you look at the whole chain and lifetime.
|
| Not to mention lithium mines are those weird big artificial blue
| lakes which I really don't understand how they really work.
| Pretty weird there are no documentary on them.
|
| Even mining Uranium does have a CO2 cost you can hardly avoid.
| rossdavidh wrote:
| "anything related to energy that has a climate impact should
| not be measured in dollars, but in co2 equivalent..."
|
| It depends on what you're trying to do with the data. If you're
| trying to estimate the economic competitiveness, then $ is
| absolutely the metric more likely to in fact be a predictor of
| that. For example, will renewables continue to get market
| share, or is that in danger of being held back by battery cost?
| If battery cost is falling exponentially, we're in good shape.
| If battery cost is _not_ falling exponentially, then it could
| be that we need to explore alternative ways to store the
| energy. Whether or not $ _should_ be the driving factor, the
| reality is that it _is_ the better predictor of market uptake.
| belval wrote:
| It's not directly covered in the article but LiFePO4 which are
| the new popular cells for most things don't require manganese
| or cobalt so they are much cleaner than older lithium cells.
|
| So I can't directly answer your question, but there is no doubt
| that CO2 production for lithium cell manufacturing is much
| lower now than it was in 1990 and it should keep dropping as
| car manufacturer flip to LiFePO4.
| newyankee wrote:
| I am personally a firm believer that a sub 100$/kwh retail price
| LFP battery with 10k cycle life will be a reality in < 10 years
| and change our relationship with energy. I wish there could be
| modular energy blocks that we can move around portably and
| charge/ discharge for different loads (not just EV)
| beembeem wrote:
| Interesting metric. I recently came across this team [1] in
| Seattle that is building what you mention. Disclaimer: after
| coming across the team I decided to invest in their equity
| crowdfunding effort.
|
| [1] https://joulecase.com/
| boringg wrote:
| Fascinating company. Not sure I see value proposition though
| for festival rentals replacing generating power as they
| aren't completely interchangeable products. Wish them luck
| though greening up the festival space.
| KaiserPro wrote:
| I can see the charm, but they are more expensive per kwh than
| a powerwall.
|
| However the form factor is a definite winner, along with the
| stacking. I;m not sure about the integration into solar. But
| for what it is, a portable power block, its very nice.
|
| On a side note, I would love to see some weather proof
| alternative to a tesla powerwall. I dislike Tesla as a
| company, and it pains me to see that they only decent product
| out there being owned by them
| topspin wrote:
| > LFP
|
| I'm so thankful to see that acronym supplanting LifePO4.
| turtlebits wrote:
| Price is already there. I bought ~89$/kwh LFP batteries last
| year (shipping brought them over ~$100/kwh though). Some LFP
| batteries already have a 5000+ cycle count, I'd expect way less
| than a 10 year outlook.
| jacquesm wrote:
| I think so too but I also think that the groundbreaking
| research that will underpin that change is not going to be
| trumpeted in the press ahead of time but instead will quietly
| show up as incremental improvements to the current processes
| and materials. The venue for announcement will likely be the
| WIPO.
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| I think this is less about ground breaking research and more
| about simply ramping up volume production to the point where
| the market isn't supply constrained anymore. With the EV
| industry basically growing as fast as batteries can be
| produced, that might take a while. But as that happens, cost
| will continue to improve for manufacturers and that should
| start reflecting out in unit prices. The important thing to
| realize is that production cost and product price are two
| things.
|
| In a supply constrained industry full of EV manufacturers
| desperate to buy any batteries at all, the profit margins are
| going to be insane for battery manufacturers for quite some
| time to come. So, we might not see lower prices until
| production volumes start meeting demand. That demand is for
| existing batteries at their existing prices. A better battery
| at a higher price would likely do equally well. However, new
| and improved batteries should drive the prices of the older
| ones down. So, we might end up with some commodity good
| enough batteries produced in very high volumes that will
| actually become affordable at some point.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| "I think this is less about ground breaking research and
| more about simply ramping up volume production to the point
| where the market isn't supply constrained anymore."
|
| These happen hand in hand. It's analogous to semiconductor
| improvements that take 1-10 thousand minor improvements
| (R&D) over the global supply chain during a given year to
| result in real gains.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Let's hope that there will be a major effort to make
| batteries not only cheaper but cheaper to recycle. Right
| now we are treating ground up batteries as high grade ore
| rather than to be able to retrieve their component parts in
| relatively pure state from the battery itself. There are
| probably very good reasons for this but it strikes me that
| we may be going from one environmental problem into
| another. A few hundred kilos of chemical waste per vehicle
| is not a great prospect to look forward to.
| adrianN wrote:
| How much waste is left after the "high grade ore" is
| processed? I thought we were pretty good at extracting
| metals from stuff.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Anywhere from 5 to 75% depending on who you believe.
|
| https://cen.acs.org/materials/energy-storage/time-
| serious-re...
|
| Note that this is in flux, more recent articles may give
| different (hopefully higher) numbers.
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| There is plenty of investment going into recycling.
| Basically recycling lithium from spent batteries is
| vastly easier compared to refining it from naturally
| occurring deposit that only have tiny trace amounts of it
| when measured in parts per million. That's why lithium is
| so expensive. There's no shortage of it but refining it
| from naturally occurring deposits is a very energy
| intensive process due to the low concentrations of it
| even in some of the richer deposits. Recovering it from a
| batteries that actually contain many kilos of it is going
| to be not a hard cost equation for a wannabe recycler. In
| the unlikely case that somebody were to actually dump EV
| batteries in a landfill that would just create a nice
| business opportunity for other companies. Much better to
| sell batteries directly to such companies.
|
| But if you are genuinely worried about environmental
| impact, you should of course be very angry about anything
| ICE vehicle related where we convert fossil fuels into
| planet destroying quantities of CO2 without regard to how
| the oil is mined, how badly it destroys the environment
| or how many babies the exhaust fumes kill.
|
| Exaggerating a little here but just making the point here
| that there is a bit of double standards here. When it
| comes to ICE vehicles, nobody gives a shit where their
| oil comes, how many children were involved mining the
| Cobalt involved in removing the sulfur from their
| diesel/petrol (yes, that's a thing). But as soon as we
| talk EVs people suddenly get hyper critical about how
| resources are mined and used and where stuff comes from.
| It's more than a little hypocritical.
|
| Yes there are some challenges (and business
| opportunities) but it pales in comparison to the absolute
| dumpster fire that is the ICE vehicle industry and its
| apologists.
| jacquesm wrote:
| It is perfectly possible to see another ecological
| catastrophe coming and to try to avoid a repeat of past
| mistakes.
|
| If you want to really help the planet: don't use an ICE
| don't use a BEV, ride a bike.
| Animats wrote:
| _sub 100$ /kwh retail price LFP battery with 10k cycle life
| will be a reality in < 10 years_
|
| Look on Alibaba. You can buy that right now.
| SECProto wrote:
| I would note that they were specifically talking about
| "retail price". Alibaba, where (based on experience) you have
| little recourse with refunds and accountability if the
| product isn't as described, is not a retail outlet.
| belval wrote:
| You might already know this but anything labelled as grade A
| cells on Alibaba is a scam pure and simple (especially at
| 100$/kwh). You will get a grade B (used) cell with a somewhat
| diminished capacity that won't hold for 10k cycles.
|
| To be clear those are usually still great value, but it's
| worth nothing because people are generally unaware and don't
| understand that discrepancy between Alibaba prices and what
| you'd get from a supplier in the US.
| intrasight wrote:
| I too believe that modular energy blocks are key to price and
| technology competition. But tech vendors really don't like
| competition, so I doubt that this will be a reality unless
| forced by regulators.
|
| Regular batteries began to be standardized in 1928 by American
| Standards Association (predecessor to ANSI) - according to
| Wikipedia. We can buy standard batteries in a variety of sizes.
| I envision a "modular energy block" as something much bigger
| than these "C" and "D" batteries. But small enough to still be
| picked up. Perhaps 40 lbs.
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| Ten years is long. I'm pretty sure that Tesla is already buying
| them below that price right now for their China operation.
| Retail prices are of course a different matter. This market is
| supply constrained so unless you are negotiating hard for large
| volume orders, it's pretty hard to buy battery cells directly.
| That indeed might take ten years to get fixed.
|
| Anyway, you can buy some Tesla power wall for your home at
| quite steep prices right now. Considering the difference in
| price for that and their actual cost, margins on those might be
| very lucrative for Tesla right now. They charge as much as
| 8500$ for a 13.5 KW powerwall. If they source the batteries for
| 100$ per kwh, that's a nice markup.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| At this point the cool kids on the DIY forums have worked out
| exactly how to build your own powerwall equivalent using LFP
| cells bought directly from China. It's enough of a savings to
| make it a worthwhile project.
| paulhart wrote:
| do you have links for that?
| rootusrootus wrote:
| My personal favorite is DIY Solar Forum. I'm more into
| LFP batteries and solar for my RV than for my house, but
| here is a direct link to their DIY Powerwall subforum:
| https://diysolarforum.com/forums/diy-powerwalls.25/
| Baeocystin wrote:
| As cool as that sounds in a certain sense, I would be
| shocked (no pun intended) if doing so wouldn't void one's
| homeowner's insurance. There's no way in hell I would put
| so much concentrated energy in an amateur pack anywhere
| near a home.
| nicoburns wrote:
| I think a lot of people are putting them in metal sheds
| in their gardens, which somewhat mitigates that risk.
| hinkley wrote:
| It may be a while until the KWH/kg are high enough to make a
| removable auxiliary battery that is light enough for the
| average person to pick up. Right now it looks like Teslas are
| going about a 4.5 lbs per mile, which is quite heavy. A 30lb
| battery would barely be worth pulling off the highway to swap.
| A pair of them wouldn't get you 15 miles and add a bunch of
| complexity to your design. In ten years when density has
| doubled we might be in a very different place.
|
| As the batteries get lighter the cars go farther on the same
| charge, so maybe we will hit an inflection point sooner than
| that.
| spfzero wrote:
| For cars, you would want to automate the swap anyway, so
| you'd presumably have handling equipment to swap and move
| batteries between the remove-recharge-store-install steps. I
| don't think you'd want to use humans in that application.
| cduzz wrote:
| Until the value of the battery is a tiny fraction of the
| vehicle, battery swapping will always be a risky
| proposition.
|
| I as the battery swap station will try to keep the good
| batteries and swap into someone else's vehicle the terrible
| batteries. Even if most stations are good actors, it won't
| take many to destroy the ecosystem by pushing marginal (or
| worse) batteries into customer vehicles.
|
| Nobody's going to blindly trust a swapping system where the
| swapped commodity is anywhere between very valuable and
| toxic waste.
| hinkley wrote:
| I didn't spell it out in my top post but this is part of
| my concern as well. My primary battery is going to have
| to stay mine due to the market for lemons.
|
| A swappable spare battery feels like something I don't
| need to own. And my hunch is it should be more tactile
| versus automated, for that reason and because humans are
| good at manipulating non-standard objects, machines are
| not. Probably require less weather proofing too.
|
| But now you're limited by how much an average human can
| carry for fifteen, thirty feet. Propane tanks are 37 lbs
| new, and those are hard for many people to wrangle until
| they've burned off a few pounds of propane. 30 lbs, or
| maybe 15kg feels like a more workable number. But that's
| < 9 miles per 'cylinder'. I don't know what the threshold
| is for 'compelling' but I'm pretty damned sure it's a lot
| more than 8 miles. 25 miles for a pair might get
| someone's attention, but that's a few years out.
|
| Or an automated replacement process, which still has
| other issues we haven't addressed in this thread.
| richardw wrote:
| You rent the batteries as a service.
|
| https://insideevs.com/news/537644/nio-4-million-battery-
| swap...
| shiftpgdn wrote:
| Allegedly Tesla is already at $130/kwh which part of the reason
| their margin is so high.
| mmazing wrote:
| I remember a few years ago reading an article about a
| breakthrough in Lithium Metal batteries, as opposed to Lithium
| Ion. Supposedly have 2x the power density at half the size, and
| don't burst into flames when punctured.
|
| Anyone else remember that? I want those batteries.
|
| Apparently the main issue is that they don't last as long as Li-
| Ion.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| The big competitors to lithium ion right now are LFP (lithium
| iron phosphate) and LTO (lithium titanate oxide). Neither have
| quite the power density of current lithium ion cells, but
| they're not that far off. LFP is quite popular right now for
| home storage and RVs. It is not nearly as prone to fire as
| lithium ion. LTO is even safer yet, it usually doesn't even pop
| the case if you abuse it to the point of destruction. LFP is
| improving density so it may be viable soon for EVs (in the US;
| in China they already use LFP), which manufacturers would love.
| Making the news for fires is really undesirable.
| mmazing wrote:
| I might be wrong but it looks like neither of those are
| classified as a Lithium Metal Battery and are still a form of
| Lithium Ion.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium_metal_battery
|
| vs
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium-titanate_battery
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium_iron_phosphate_battery
|
| and here's an article about using pure lithium metal as the
| anode
|
| https://arstechnica.com/cars/2021/11/lithium-metal-hybrid-
| ba...
|
| You seem to be well informed, is this just hype?
| Baeocystin wrote:
| LFP have been popular as drop-in replacements for 12V
| batteries in motorcycles for years now, too, FWIW. Their cell
| voltage and resistance to charging damage make them excellent
| replacements. Their only real deficit is in the cold.
| WhisperingShiba wrote:
| From what you know off the cuff, do LFP or LTO batteries have
| advantages in number of cycles or discharge depth? Both of
| those being even marginally higher would make them superior
| for home batteries, since the power density wouldn't matter
| nearly as much.
|
| E: Wikipedia says low cost, less rare earth metals and longer
| lifetime. Sounds like a big technology.
| mjh2539 wrote:
| How much of this reduction in cost is due to improvements in the
| underlying technology (as opposed to a reduction in cost due to
| increasing the scale of production)?
| SubiculumCode wrote:
| its a good question, although I wonder whether the original tfa
| covered it already. In any case I suspect that cost reductions
| due to scaled production may be easier to model than
| technological advancements, so its probably the latter which
| caused projections to be exceeded.
| 1cvmask wrote:
| Also let's not forget Wright's law:
|
| https://twitter.com/skorusARK/status/1309225390494420996
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24606382
| gataca wrote:
| link to the primary article:
| https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2021/ee/d1ee0...
| powera wrote:
| What would it take to start a factory in the United States making
| lithium-ion batteries to sell to consumers (for a PowerWall-like
| usage)?
| everybodyknows wrote:
| Profound work. Sad to see the MIT PR hacks polluting it with a
| chartjunk headline image -- spurious shadow of the data line, no
| tick marks on scales, Y-axis values begging for a log scale but
| not getting it, superimposed photo of a metal box labeled
| "Battery".
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chartjunk
| jacobolus wrote:
| Might be better to link directly to the paper (which this press
| release does not bother to do):
|
| https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlehtml/2021/ee/d0ee0268...
|
| Here is their better chart:
| https://pubs.rsc.org/image/article/2021/EE/d0ee02681f/d0ee02...
|
| Looks to me like price decreases are substantially slowing on a
| log scale.
| HPsquared wrote:
| Looks like about 0.5 decades (factors of 10) per decade.
| consumer451 wrote:
| > Looks to me like price decreases are substantially slowing
| on a log scale.
|
| Based on my rudimentary understanding of the industry, I
| wonder how large an impact the expiration of the patents on
| LiFePo (LFP) cells [1] will have on continuing the drop the
| in price.
|
| I believe that the fundamental resources involved in LFP
| production are much lower cost. Other characteristics make
| LFP seem to be superior for stationary storage which is
| projected to be larger than mobility.
|
| I hope that the superior economics of LFP, from the POV of
| production, will help the industry scale at the insane rate
| that is required.
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium_iron_phosphate_battery
| spfzero wrote:
| Thank you for this. Reading the OP article, I kept wondering
| when they would get to the numbers. Then it ended.
| kurthr wrote:
| Yes, their forecasts for $75 & $20/kWh (e.g. 2027) seem
| highly optimistic. The rate of decrease for small cells have
| declined precipitously. Based on the last 10 years of
| improvement, I'd expect something like $100/kWh in 2030.
|
| However, this doesn't include LiFePO where a lot of
| manufacturing focus has turned in the last few years. Car
| maker and fixed battery install are driving demand and lower
| costs. Looking at $100/kWh next year. and $50 in 2030.
|
| https://climatebiz.com/lifepo4-battery/
| tiahura wrote:
| Anyone who's followed the price of a 12v 100ah battery on Amazon
| has seen the plunge over the last year. $900 -> $400.
| MayeulC wrote:
| I wonder if some of this is due to covid-driven inflation,
| possibly in china or other countries?
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Prices would have dropped faster without covid. Shipping is
| really problematic on LFP cells direct from China right now.
| Combined with the surge in RV purchases, prices are not going
| to drop much further this year. But in a couple more years
| when things have smoothed back out, it's going to be _great_.
| missedthecue wrote:
| Covid driven inflation reduced the cost of a battery by $500?
| RandomWorker wrote:
| Real numbers are lacking in this article. It's way more
| interesting to talk about real dollar numbers. We are looking at
| $100/kWh. While most projections by NREL said it would be
| bottoming out around 200 in 2021. Having a 50% drop compared to
| projects is insane. At $100/kWh battery connected solar panel
| power plants become very lucrative.
| cwkoss wrote:
| Are lithium batteries becoming cheaper than lead batteries?
|
| I was under the impression that lead was the leader for fixed
| installations (like solar) because weight isn't much of an
| issue if it doesn't have to move.
|
| Is there a different reason why lithium is preferable to lead
| for these sorts of applications?
| magicalhippo wrote:
| > Is there a different reason why lithium is preferable to
| lead for these sorts of applications?
|
| AFAIK lead-acid batteries have a number of downsides compared
| to LiFePO4. They're heavy, they require a ventilated area due
| to hydrogen gas production, they don't last nearly as long
| (fewer charge/discharge cycles) and they have significantly
| lower effective capacity at higher discharge rates.
|
| At this point the main benefit seems to be upfront cost.
|
| https://www.victronenergy.com/blog/2015/03/30/batteries-
| lith...
|
| https://relionbattery.com/blog/agm-vs-lithium-batteries-
| whic...
| belval wrote:
| Lead for fixed installation was a general rule a few years
| back but it's not really advantageous anymore. There were
| several concerns with lithium (especially price, availability
| and safety) that are now addressed making it much more
| interesting.
|
| For example a powerwall built with LiFePO4 cells will be good
| for at least 10000 cycles (+15 years) and afterwards the
| degradation curve is much nicer than lead-acid so you can
| easily get 25 years if you can cope with some reduction in
| capacity. It also has no risk of thermal runoff (so it won't
| start a fire is a cell has a catastrophic failure) which is
| much better than traditional cobalt or manganese batteries.
| You can get grade A cells for about ~400$/kWh today when
| buying only one and obviously bulk discounts are widely
| available if you are getting something bigger.
|
| It still burns if your house catches fire though so that's
| still a concern.
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