[HN Gopher] A new chapter begins for EV batteries with the expir...
___________________________________________________________________
A new chapter begins for EV batteries with the expiry of key LFP
patents
Author : toomuchtodo
Score : 186 points
Date : 2025-11-16 23:58 UTC (23 hours ago)
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| cyberax wrote:
| What? Patents have been a non-issue for LFP batteries, and the
| original LFP patents are almost useless today. All the new
| advances that made LFPs competitive are still well-protected by
| patents, for at least another decade.
| mitthrowaway2 wrote:
| What makes you say they've been a non-issue?
|
| As far as I'm aware they've been an issue (outside of China)
| for the last 20 years.
| Tostino wrote:
| Sorry we handicapped ourselves and are now complaining about
| a competitor? Seems silly. The west made this tech unusable.
| I was building ebikes in 2006/7 and A123 was entirely
| unavailable unless you went and salvaged power tool packs.
|
| They never became available at a competitive price, and then
| China bought the rights....
|
| Now I can buy them in bulk as a consumer for 1/15th the
| price.
|
| Our system is not meant for innovation by small players or
| consumers. We want tech easily locked away behind a contract.
| cyberax wrote:
| The total lithium battery patent licensing market is
| estimated at less than 600 million USD a year. This is
| approximately nothing, given that the overall battery market
| is estimated at about $200B.
|
| The pace of innovation is furious, and companies are treating
| patents more as a way to ensure MAD (Mutual Assured
| Destruction) rather than as a tool to get income.
|
| I think we'll start seeing the first large lawsuits once the
| losers start realizing that they lost the innovation race.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > The total lithium battery patent licensing market is
| estimated at less than 600 million USD a year.
|
| This is often because someone holds an important patent but
| either isn't licensing it to others because they're
| actually manufacturing it (implying they're holding back
| everyone else in the market), or they're asking too much
| and then almost everyone uses the existing technology
| instead of licensing the patent, again holding things back.
| As soon as the patent expires everyone starts using it.
|
| > The pace of innovation is furious, and companies are
| treating patents more as a way to ensure MAD (Mutual
| Assured Destruction) rather than as a tool to get income.
|
| This is often even worse, because then you have a hundred
| companies with patents and as soon as one of them goes out
| of business the patents go to a troll who starts shaking
| everyone down because MAD doesn't apply to trolls who don't
| make anything. And then companies wary of being subjected
| to that will be avoiding doing anything under patent until
| the patents expire.
|
| Companies in industries like this should probably start
| using some kind of patent GPL where you have to permanently
| license all your patents to everyone else who does the
| same, the purpose of which is to thwart trolls because
| everyone has to put their patents in while they're still in
| business or they'll be sued, and then the patents are
| already in by the time a failing company gets liquidated.
| NewJazz wrote:
| In your last paragraph you are basically talking about a
| licensing authority like MPEGLA is.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| Except that they charge fees, which retains the perverse
| incentive to accumulate low-quality patents and for
| smaller companies to avoid the pool's patents instead of
| joining it. And then when one that didn't join goes out
| of business everybody's got troll problems again.
| modeless wrote:
| Doesn't that indicate that patents are being used to
| suppress competitors rather than as a direct revenue
| source? I don't see how that indicates patents aren't an
| issue.
| silon42 wrote:
| So, mass switch-over to electric cars is delayed for a decade
| or two.
| rule2025 wrote:
| Lithium iron phosphate batteries are very practical. Chinese BYD
| has developed blade batteries using this type of battery and has
| become the global sales leader in new energy vehicles. However,
| this battery faces range limitations and the issue of how to
| improve charging speed. Solid-state batteries should be the next
| big thing, but mass production may not be feasible yet. At least,
| it might take 3 more years for commercialization, and that's
| still an optimistic prediction.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| Solid state batteries and fusion power, always 3 years away.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| It's always 20 years away until it isn't. Self driving cars
| are...I guess they are here already. AGI? Well, we have to
| move the goal post on that constantly.
| s0rce wrote:
| Self driving cars have had many incremental improvements. I
| think fusion power is actually making progress, not clear
| about solid state batteries. Seems more companies closing
| than making solid progress.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Fusion is one of those things that will probably not be
| done in my lifetime (the hype cycle on that has been
| forever, remember cold fusion from U of Utah?). I'm much
| more optimistic about solid state batteries.
| butvacuum wrote:
| The obvious fraud from the 90s?
|
| But, the real issue seems to be that fusion has a large
| nuclear waste problem. Ironically, probably more so than
| fission reactors. It can be fixed, but probably not in
| first gen reactors. However there are companies pushing
| designs that solve it already
| stevage wrote:
| >Self driving cars are...I guess they are here already.
|
| They may be where you are, but they aren't generally
| _here_.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| If by here I meant planet Earth I think it is well
| qualified. Yes, they aren't using self driving car tech
| for ice trucking during winter down from Purdhoe Bay yet
| (another form of goal post moving), but the biggest
| challenges have already been solved and only capital and
| societal barriers remain.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| I think it depends on what you mean by big challenges.
| City driving is maybe the easiest 80% of driving. There's
| a long tail of odd challenges you run into in less
| controlled environments, and I'd call that the biggest
| challenge.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Wouldn't ice trucking be in that long tail? I mean, ya,
| there are lot of niche cases that companies like Waymo
| haven't worked on yet, but...the money is in the cities
| so that's where they start. Interstate trucking might
| come next, ice trucking might be one of the last use
| cases covered.
|
| Anyways we've gone from "this won't happen in our
| lifetime!" to "it doesn't handle X niche use case yet."
| sroussey wrote:
| There are self driving trucking companies.
| sroussey wrote:
| I think city driving is the worst -- people popping out
| from nowhere, roads that shouldn't be but are because
| they have always been. Suburban and highways seem
| easiest.
|
| In the hills of LA you have sharp blind corners where
| people have installed public fisheye mirrors to help you
| see around, then you have crazy people in Hollywood
| throwing furniture in front of your car, and non-stop
| traffic and people passing on the wrong side of the road
| between blocks even when there is a median, school kids
| and crossing guards, emergency vehicles trying to through
| and people doing otherwise illegal things to help get out
| of the way...
| bartvk wrote:
| I'm an avoid motorcyclist and have followed additional
| safety courses. These placed 90% of all accidents in
| cities. What do you mean by city driving being the
| easiest?
| danaris wrote:
| In a city, you'll never have to worry about the "road"
| you're supposed to follow being a dirt track that barely
| looks different than the muddy fields on either side.
|
| In a city (especially in SoCal and the American
| Southwest, which is, AIUI, where all the self-driving
| cars are today), you can be nearly certain that the
| various mapping companies have accurately plotted the
| roads and destinations, and if you're trying to get to a
| popular Finger Lakes winery, you won't be directed down a
| limited-use seasonal road that's entirely covered in ice.
|
| In a city, you can be pretty well guaranteed that there
| are speed limit signs anywhere the speed limit actually
| changes.
|
| Just off the top of my head, as someone who's lived 40
| years in the rural Northeast.
| Animats wrote:
| Solid state batteries seem to work, but the price of
| prototypes is very high. Samsung says they will soon be
| shipping earbuds and watches with solid state batteries, but
| the cost is too high even for phones. Xaomi showed an $800
| phone battery. Mercedes has one prototype car with solid
| state batteries. Honda has one motorcycle. EHang has one
| flying car. Nobody seems to be past one-off demos.
| kopirgan wrote:
| Does look as if ssb are close.. Esp Japanese ones.
| epistasis wrote:
| If your source on that is a Toyota press release, take it
| with a huge grain of (lithium) salt.
|
| Toyota has been saying similar things for a very long time.
| But they continue to make extremely poor bets, except for
| their hybrids. There's something really odd about their
| management culture that prevents them from finding the
| common and easy path of lithium ion batteries that
| everybody has already taken.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Toyota does have a conventional BEV, so they can do it if
| they want. They just don't seem to be enthusiastic about
| it.
| scheme271 wrote:
| Toyota's CEO and upper management seemed to be oddly
| fixated on hydrogen powered cars for a very long time. I
| think it was just in the last 2-3 years where they
| finally gave up and started looking at BEVs.
| kopirgan wrote:
| If it's not like those rare earth ( or watch movement
| saga with Swatch) that China will simply refuse to supply
| to other OEM, old car makers like Ford, Toyota with brand
| image and solid engg in rest of car making can just buy.
| Maybe that's their thinking?
|
| Bonus if there's leap frog tech that obsolete all the
| CATL investments..
| epistasis wrote:
| Those false supply chain concerns really only work within
| the right wing US political milieu. "Rare earth" with
| batteries really only works with the Republican set of
| propaganda.
|
| I'm sure Toyota management has their own set of false
| beliefs about supply concerns, or perhaps about
| competitive edges, or perhaps about biases towards fluid
| fuels.
| kopirgan wrote:
| Yes it was that plus iirc another by Nissan as well. One
| site reported Chinese are walking back on some of the
| more optimistic claims and now it's 2030+ not next 2
| years. By then I guess Na ones will be old news.
|
| I too felt Japs were taking EV quite casually pushing all
| others but I wouldn't underestimate their ability to move
| once they decide that's what it is. They have the same
| concept as China, move as one nation but much higher tech
| depth
|
| Btw anyone ever heard of those fuel cell ones? Toshiba
| hyped it like you slot in a fuel cartridge and have
| months of use etc.
| _fizz_buzz_ wrote:
| Solid state batteries and fusion might in the end suffer from
| a similar economical problem. That they turn out to simply be
| too expensive.
| AngryData wrote:
| I wouldn't equate solid state batteries with fusion power.
| Solid state batteries do exist and work well, they are just
| very expensive. Meanwhile fusion power is still entirely
| within the experimental stage and there are no fusion plant
| prototypes that can produce power at any price.
| ravedave5 wrote:
| Add Affordable at the start of that sentence and it's
| accurate.
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| > Lithium iron phosphate batteries are very practical
|
| Unless you want to charge in negative temperatures
|
| > However, this battery faces range limitations
|
| Yes they are less dense but plentiful for typical passenger car
| (and not so much for full sized trucks or even "mid-sized" US
| SUVs).
|
| > the issue of how to improve charging speed
|
| I think CATL demonstrated 1MW charging on these already.
| Definitely shipping 500kW charging (tho best measure is still
| average km/hr).
|
| > Solid-state batteries should be the next big thing
|
| Sodium will (great cold weather performance and even better
| charge rates), but it's less (vol) dense and prices won't reach
| LFPs for another 10-15 years (unless you believe hype, not
| actual analysts).
| _aavaa_ wrote:
| > Unless you want to charge in negative temperatures
|
| Doesn't the thermal management system of the battery packs
| handle this?
| butvacuum wrote:
| Yes, the largest issue is that they heating isn't enabled
| unless it's charging or 'knows' it will be soon.
|
| Ps: the heating is increasingly heat pump based instead of
| resistive.
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| It does, but it costs is complex, requires power and time.
|
| It's noticeable even in climates like NZ.
|
| There are coldgating stories about LFP. Some even reduce
| output and very low SOC and temperature, so you drive
| 60km/h in highway.
|
| Sodium is vastly superior here and CATL is not going to be
| giving it away for free.
| sokka_h2otribe wrote:
| If it's suitable for sedans it's actually more suitable for
| SUVs. SUVs require less power per cubic feet of space. So
| there is more space available for them, even if they take
| more energy overall
| thebruce87m wrote:
| There are variants of the Model Y with LFP batteries.
| pottertheotter wrote:
| What? How does an SUV require less power per cf than a
| sedan? I would think that aero alone would always be worse
| for an SUV, making sedans more efficient.
| AngryData wrote:
| I think he means less power per total overall volume of
| the vehicle. SUVs are certainly less efficient per mile,
| but their power requirements don't scale linearly with
| volume so you have a lot more "extra" room to place
| batteries, even if it is still entirely within the frame.
| So you can get away with less space efficient batteries.
| murderfs wrote:
| Drag scales by frontal area (and the coefficient of drag
| tends to actually be lower on longer objects), so as long
| as the SUV is longer than a sedan, it'll tend to have
| less aerodynamic drag proportionally (rolling resistance
| scales with weight, though, so you still have to pay that
| cost).
| Gibbon1 wrote:
| An observation is the amount of power needed is
| proportional to some log of size and weight.
| vincnetas wrote:
| such strange unit of measurement. cubic feet of space.
| especially for civilian transport when most of the time no
| one uses that space. i mean most of the time its one person
| per car without any baggage. what's important is weight of
| the car. and i bet suv is heavier than sedans.
| bluGill wrote:
| There are multiple variables, claiming weight is
| important is wrong.
|
| Volume is important because the more volume the more
| space there is for batteries.
|
| Aerodynamics is important because at common highway
| speeds this is the dominate energy cost. This is a factor
| that goes up by the square of speed, so at low speeds it
| doesn't matter but at high speeds it does.
|
| Weight is least important because it has a linear change
| and is a small factor in efficiency.
|
| There are real safety concerns with SUVs, but their
| larger size means there is more space for batteries and
| so they can overall go farther then a Sedan in normal
| driving despite the other costs.
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| I've tried to express SUV's as in American SUVs - full
| sized 7 seat monstrosity. Most EV SUVs right now are
| crossovers, i.e. Model Y. Cybertruck is closest
| approximation and it uses nearly 2x more power than Model
| Y. Even with ~most advanced batteries people still think
| Cybertruck's range is way too little whereas I'm pretty
| certain majority of Model Y's sold are LFPs.
| silon42 wrote:
| For me in Europe the Y is a huge monstrosity... I'd want
| something about 16 inches shorter to get to normal
| crossover size.
| adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
| I think it is fairly likely that sodium catches LFP in the ~5
| year timeframe since sodium has a lot more promise for grid
| scale storage since it has no expensive materials.
| sroussey wrote:
| When are the aluminum batteries coming?
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| It still does have expensive materials (cheaper form of
| graphite), but a little bit less of it, namely lithium and
| there's something else I can't remember.
| happosai wrote:
| > Unless you want to charge in negative temperatures
|
| LFP charging in cold has pretty much been solved by adding a
| heater to battery pack.
|
| > (Sodium-ion) prices won't reach LFPs for another 10-15
| years (unless you believe hype, not actual analysts).
|
| Given CATL is scaling sodium-ion production to to GWh scale
| next year, it sounds like they are betting for a much shorter
| timeframe.
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| > LFP charging in cold has pretty much been solved by
| adding a heater to battery pack.
|
| That's a hack, not a solution.
|
| > Given CATL is scaling sodium-ion production to to GWh
| scale next year, it sounds like they are betting for a much
| shorter timeframe.
|
| Wanna bet? LFP is ~1,000 GWh scale right now. GWh scale is
| 0.1%.
| thecopy wrote:
| >That's a hack, not a solution.
|
| Why do you say that? It sounds like a simple solution to
| me.
| throwaway81523 wrote:
| It takes hours to heat a cold large pack til it's warm
| enough to charge. That's a drawback.
| wood_spirit wrote:
| All the EV owners in Scandinavia don't have practical
| problems charging in winter at will.
| ponector wrote:
| Also Scandinavia is not that cold. Their winters are
| quite warm, actually.
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| Leave your car with 5% SOC overnight and then try to find
| energy in morning to preheat battery. People have painted
| into corner themselves before. It's perfectly adequate
| for my very mild climate and even then I get limited
| regen about 6 morning months per year.
| nullstyle wrote:
| This is the EV equivalent of riding your old motorcycle
| with the reserve valve open the entire time.
|
| You are driving a giant killing machine around... it
| isn't too much to ask that you have some foresight to
| avoid the situation you describe.
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| Yet life happens and weather isn't always exactly
| predictable. Why you against better batteries?
| nullstyle wrote:
| I'm not against better batteries. I'm against people who
| choose to operate with such a small safety factor for
| something as serious as operating a giant rolling 2 ton
| piece of metal and volatile chemistry. Just like I'm
| against people who don't know how to change a tire or
| properly drive with etiquette on the interstate; If you
| can't do it, you kind of deserve some teasing.
|
| In my friend group, if you run out of gas you get made
| fun of. You forget to flip your kill switch and can't
| crank your motorcycle, we all laugh and call you a
| dipshit.
|
| Getting stranded isn't always harmless, and proper adults
| don't get stranded. Proper adults manage their vehicle
| safely. That's my point. Yes, exceptions are allowed, but
| we need to make sure everyone knows they are exceptions.
| Don't leave 5% on your battery when in the freezing
| seasons, it's improper.
| ninkendo wrote:
| Because it doesn't solve the problem, it merely works
| around it. Solving the problem would mean coming up with
| a battery chemistry that doesn't suffer in the cold.
| Instead the answer is "just don't have it get cold".
|
| It's not to say a hack/workaround isn't _useful_ , and I
| would say that it's perfectly acceptable to simply use a
| battery heater in the winter. But calling it "solved"
| confuses solutions and workarounds, and that's an
| intellectually dishonest thing to do.
| apelapan wrote:
| I pulled into a Supercharger with my LFP-battery EV last
| winter. The temperature outside was -15C and I had not
| set the navigator so there was no pre-warming activated.
|
| By the time I had finished my coffe, SoC had gone from
| 30-ish to 90-ish percent.
|
| LFP tech anno 2023 is perfectly good enough for road
| tripping in large cars in severe winter conditions. For
| almost everyone.
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| So your battery was preheated. I once did the same with
| approx 0C battery temperature and whole ordeal took at
| least 2x longer. Yes there was farmers market in front of
| charge station so I had a good time with kiddo. That's
| not the point.
|
| Let's not pretend better batteries shouldn't exist.
| ViewTrick1002 wrote:
| Or just press the button to manually preheat the battery?
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| Heat pump barely works below -30C
| ViewTrick1002 wrote:
| Which doesn't matter if your about to charge either way
| and just want to optimize time spent?
|
| This can't be more than single digit days per year? This
| is the case where people in for example Sweden have 230V
| engine block and passenger compartment heaters for their
| car.
|
| It's like the definition of an edge case.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Isn't starting a fire under your engine to get it to
| start a hack too? I mean they could add a heater to the
| engine. Wait.
| bickfordb wrote:
| After market electric engine heaters and remote starters
| are typical for ICE vehicles in cold climates (e.g.
| Alaska). Not sure why you consider this to be a hack for
| EVs if its builtin to the battery pack design.
| homebrewer wrote:
| Does the heater handle real winters, like they have in
| Alaska, Mongolia, and parts of Russia north of it? Or just
| European and American "winters" where -20degC is considered
| hardcore? Gasoline powered engines handle this well, and
| you can warm them up with a gasoline torch if they stay
| outside for too long and refuse to start. The cold does not
| destroy them.
| IshKebab wrote:
| Those are quite niche environments. The success of LFP
| won't hinge on whether it works below -20C, obviously.
| maxerickson wrote:
| Most of the US Midwest sees -20 C for at least a brief
| period each winter. Having reduced functionality at those
| temps would be pretty inconvenient for the many car
| dependent people that live in the region.
| dlisboa wrote:
| Inconvenient for those people. About 8 billion other
| people don't live in that type of weather.
| maxerickson wrote:
| They also mostly can't afford $25,000 cars.
| ben_w wrote:
| About half of the world is within 3,300 km of a village
| in Burma, close to the Chinese border and not too far
| from Laos and Thailand.
|
| China and India both have EVs much cheaper than we get in
| the EU. Like, "<EUR10k new" cheap.
|
| What I do wonder about is how much of Africa can get EVs;
| I've only been once, to Nairobi over a decade ago, so
| take it with a pinch of anecdote-flavoured salt when I
| say that what I saw there was a lot of 20-30 year old
| vehicles.
| IshKebab wrote:
| Most of the people that can afford $25k cars do not live
| in places that go below -20C.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| -20C is feasible. Charging will take a bit longer because
| the heater will need to work a bit longer, but as long as
| the batteries can reach about freezing temperature,
| you're good.
|
| Charging being a couple minutes slower a few weeks a year
| is a minor convenience. If you have a house with a
| garage, like many people in the US Midwest, I doubt it
| even poses a problem even on the worst days. It's more in
| the winter-long -35C areas that (purpose-built)
| combustion engines have obvious benefits.
|
| Cold climates suffer more from cold batteries having
| reduced range, but with modern battery ranges the problem
| isn't even that extreme anymore.
| cogman10 wrote:
| It entirely depends on the original range of the car.
|
| Realistically you are looking at trimming 20->30% of the
| range. If you drive 20 miles a day but have a total range
| of 200 miles, then it's really not inconvenient. It only
| becomes inconvenient if you need to travel long
| distances.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| I don't see why a built-in heater is worse than aiming a
| torch at a car to get it to start. Seems like a major
| oversight for gasoline cars.
|
| Also, a tiny fraction of the population will ever need to
| start their cars in Alaska, Mongolia, and Northern
| Russia. The small city worth of people living in these
| insane environments can stick to their wood-fueled diesel
| cars while the rest of the world just uses normal
| vehicles.
| throw0101a wrote:
| > _Does the heater handle real winters, like they have in
| Alaska, Mongolia, and parts of Russia north of it? Or
| just European and American "winters" where -20degC is
| considered hardcore?_
|
| It handles "real winters" [1] where large portions of the
| human population live. [2][3][4]
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman
|
| [2] https://www.bbc.co.uk/staticarchive/e4ff248622e19fa30
| 3d72e25...
|
| [3] https://engaging-data.com/population-latitude-
| longitude/
|
| [4] https://luminocity3d.org/WorldPopDen/
| lazide wrote:
| You can discharge the battery to power the heaters, at
| significant cost in energy. The temperature becomes a
| serious problem when charging (will physically destroy
| the battery through dentrite formation!), and under very
| high power draws (battery can't keep up chemically).
|
| It can be solved, but at a cost, and makes the tech much
| more dangerous - you could end up in a situation where
| you freeze to death somewhere more easily in the climates
| it is a problem.
|
| It's similar reasons why diesel isn't a great idea in
| Alaska and the like too, and people tend towards gasoline
| even in situations where it is more costly and less
| efficient (like industrial trucks). It can be mitigated
| with chemical additives ('heat'), tank and block heaters,
| etc. but has similar risks.
| infecto wrote:
| Alaska, Mongolia and Russia are extreme edge cases that I
| don't believe hold much weight in an argument. It's like
| those arguments where folks try to attack solar or wind,
| "solar won't work on northern Alaskan winter". Ok great
| that's such a small slice of the population that it's ok.
| floatrock wrote:
| Are you a car ad where you're selling the most extreme
| off-road experience for the person who just wants to go
| to the grocery store?
|
| Come on man. If you're in an extreme environment, get the
| tool appropriate for that environment. People in mountain
| environments tend to have 4WD or AWD cars because it's
| appropriate. Doesn't mean a non-AWD car is useless.
|
| If you live in the extreme 5%, get something that works
| there. If you're in the rest of the 95%, other solutions
| work fine.
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| So largest battery manufacturer should drop their
| project, because "come on man"?
|
| Negative temperatures or low temperatures are everywhere.
| Sodium will displace LFP pretty much everywhere (20 yrs),
| not just in extreme cold. I get slight coldgating 6months
| a year in warmest parts of New Zealand. It's not even a
| minor issue, but if manufacturers can remove complexity -
| they will.
| cameldrv wrote:
| I think CATL is promoting a hybrid pack of LFP and Sodium
| that would give you the cheapness and density of LFP, but
| with maybe 30% Sodium that you could use for a quick partial
| charge, and could also be used when the car is cold-soaked.
| Once you drive for a while, the whole pack gets warmed up and
| you can use the LFP.
| juliusceasar wrote:
| Using lfp at low temp is not an issue. Charging is the
| problem.
| vardump wrote:
| > Charging is the problem.
|
| Which also occurs while driving, whenever you're
| decelerating.
| c2h5oh wrote:
| The small handful of sodium batteries that are currently
| available retail all seem to have rather bad roundtrip
| efficiency compared to LFP and voltage drop starting at a
| high state of charge.
|
| Also LFP prices dropped enough that shipping cost from China
| became a significant part of the price. This will be even
| more of a factor should the less energy dense sodium
| batteries ever reach the promised $30/kWh.
| PaulKeeble wrote:
| One thing I hadn't groked about Sodium Ion was the enormous
| Voltage range leads to a bit of an issue when it comes to
| current. You have a 4x voltage from top to bottom of the
| battery and this also means your current is 4x as well for
| the same power output. This becomes a bit of an issue and
| it is part of the efficiency equation, not just externally
| to the battery where wires have to be much larger than LFP
| or LI but internally due to internal resistance.
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| Sodium gravimetric density is same. Volumetric is worse.
| Shipping containers generally cost by volume, but given how
| dense batteries are I suspect this won't matter.
| c2h5oh wrote:
| I'd agree if you could stick them in the containers
| discharged, but you can't. This means that even safer
| chemistry like sodium battery is still hazardous cargo.
| vardump wrote:
| > Unless you want to charge in negative temperatures
|
| I do all of my charging way above 0K. :-P
| lazide wrote:
| The issue I've heard with sodium-ion is that the voltage
| curves make the power electronics much more expensive for a
| given efficiency/power level.
|
| [https://www.eevblog.com/forum/projects/sodium-ion-battery-
| ev...]
|
| Lithium's curve is nearly flat, which allows for a pretty
| easy consistent power production (albeit nearly impossible to
| tell state of charge!) since you only need to target a pretty
| narrow voltage band.
|
| Overall, that means sodium-ion has to be _even cheaper_ to be
| competitive, and it makes even less sense in areas where
| power density matters like electric cars, as you'll end up
| with far less power and /or needing much heavier motors and
| more expensive electronics to compensate when on the lower
| end of charge.
|
| I don't want to think of what it would cost to do a 100kw
| buck-boost power supply that can handle +- 25% (or more!)
| voltage differences. In reality, I don't think anyone would
| try.
| infecto wrote:
| I am not sure honestly about the negative temperature. Sure
| it can be a problem in extreme colds but most of the world
| does not live in those climates.
| amluto wrote:
| > EU regulations requiring lithium-ion batteries to contain at
| least 6% recycled lithium by 2031, rising to 12% by 2036.
|
| Seriously?
|
| The EU should aim for _massive_ growth in battery deployment in
| transportation and grid storage. If they hope for, say, 10x
| growth in deployed battery capacity within a time frame
| comparable to the lifespan of a battery, then even a 100%
| recycling rate would not produce enough lithium.
|
| I suppose people could recycle batteries just to produce new
| batteries and acquire recycling credits, but this is absurd.
| ehnto wrote:
| It will probably amount to recycling credit schemes I am sure.
| But that would definitely boost lithium recycling efforts.
|
| From memory over 1million disposable vapes are thrown away each
| day, from 500 of the bigger cell vapes a Youtuber was able
| build a home battery to power his house. I don't think 100%
| recycled makes sense but there sure is a lot of lithium getting
| thrown into the bin. Incentives to recapture that are good.
| DoctorOetker wrote:
| 500? thats just 5x10x10, even the bigger cell vapes would
| result in a tiny battery to power a house...
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| It was under 3kWh.
| ehnto wrote:
| It wasn't huge no, but we are talking about cells we
| throw away in the millions. Scale up the battery as
| needed, the cells are basically free.
| csomar wrote:
| That's 730k households in a year. Cool but since these
| batteries will probably die within a year, then you are only
| able to cover 1.5 million people or so. I am not against it,
| but 1.5m in 8b is a drop in the ocean.
| m463 wrote:
| > recycled lithium
|
| this would be a tragedy if it leads to recycling batteries that
| could be repurposed, say 100kwh car batteries with decreased
| range that could have become 60kwh residential batteries.
| lnsru wrote:
| I say as an electrician that car batteries have limited use.
| Chinese residential batteries can be installed by me alone.
| Even 40-60 kWh modular ones. Car battery needs forklift and
| every model has different interface. Economically sourcing
| used cells to build batteries also makes no sense. So either
| recycling or repair to continue using it as car battery.
| Ryan07 wrote:
| This could open the door to cheaper EV batteries and more players
| entering the market. Should make things move faster.
| kopirgan wrote:
| But this is 2022? By now the dust must have settled. Anyone that
| wanted to copy and use likely planned out before they expired and
| got moving once it did?
| thebeardisred wrote:
| Exactly, this is a 3 year old post. That's why you started
| seeing LFP battery banks showing up on Amazon a few years ago.
| btilly wrote:
| It is worth noting that this is an ad. It is a law firm that is
| advertising their expertise in this field. And the product that
| they want people to buy is revealed in this passage:
|
| _Freedom-to-operate (FTO) analysis therefore remains critical
| for market entrants. Whilst the primary patents have expired, a
| dense web of secondary patents, covering additives, coatings, and
| production methods, still poses infringement risks._
|
| Of course Shoosmiths would be happy to do a FTO analysis for your
| potential product...for a fee.
|
| That doesn't mean that it doesn't contain quality information.
| Law firms tend to make this kind of ad informative. But it does
| mean that there is an agenda.
| epistasis wrote:
| It may be an ad but it has every reason to be perfectly
| accurate. The law firm is not selling LFP batteries.
|
| Edit: for example, if somebody was selling their AWS course by
| providing detailed information on some aspect of AWS, that
| wouldn't be a reason to doubt the information itself. It serves
| as a sample.
| lmpdev wrote:
| I mean one would take the ad with a grain of salt
|
| If it gets people to pull the trigger on engaging with the
| firm - it's likely to embellish how massive the changes are
| of these patent lapses
| IshKebab wrote:
| It has plenty of reasons to be inaccurate. They may be
| exaggerating the promise of LFP or overplaying how many
| secondary parents there are.
| bluGill wrote:
| Anyone who needs their help already knows the promise of
| LFP in at least enough details that they would need the
| patent search anyway as part of their efforts to learn if
| it is right for them. All secondary patents are important,
| the only question is: do you license them, work around
| them, or not infringe in the first place. (I'm going to
| ignore the possibility of intentional infringing though
| that happens)
| themafia wrote:
| If you make technology that spies really want the government
| will claim eminent domain and take your patent from you, with
| "fair" compensation, of course.
|
| It's funny that never happens for things that actually matter.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| > That doesn't mean that it doesn't contain quality
| information. Law firms tend to make this kind of ad
| informative. But it does mean that there is an agenda.
|
| This is the best thing to do for SEO, write good and
| authoritative content. Which is ironic because the field of SEO
| started off as gaming the systems with things like hidden
| keywords.
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| I still find it borderline criminal that a few nations continue
| to be ruled by the hegemony of the automobile market. EVs have a
| place in the world. But there should be ten times fewer of them,
| because we should have cheap and plentiful public transit for
| most of our transportation needs. How long will we simply sit and
| wait for that future, complacent and docile? When will we do
| what's necessary to progress our society? (if we ever do)
| lmpdev wrote:
| Likely once sufficient numbers of boomers die off - and their
| property inheriting children don't take up their parent's views
| toast0 wrote:
| > How long will we simply sit and wait for that future,
| complacent and docile?
|
| The people who don't want to sit and wait have bought personal
| vehicles. Mass transit can be great, but when it isn't, there's
| no sense of agency. At least with a personal vehicle, if it's
| not working, I can try to fix it or get it to someone who is
| more likely to be able to fix it.
|
| When transit isn't running, I just have to wait. If it can't
| get me to where I want to go in a reasonable time, sucks to be
| me. If my stop is removed from service, I guess I better move.
| Gigachad wrote:
| In the last year, the number of times my car owning friends
| have not been able to make it to an event because their car
| is broken is surprisingly high. While I have never not been
| able to get somewhere because public transport is not
| working. If the train is down I can take the tram, if somehow
| both of them are down there will be replacement busses
| scheduled.
|
| And if somehow everything stops working I can book an uber
| which is still massively cheaper than owning a car.
| lkbm wrote:
| > While I have never not been able to get somewhere because
| public transport is not working.
|
| Oh man, when I first moved to Austin and used the bus as my
| only method of transport, getting to work was usually
| straightforward, but whenever I wanted to go somewhere on
| the weekend, I prepared for the fact that there'd be a
| detour around downtown, where I normally make my transfer.
| I'd have to get off the bus somewhere new and try to figure
| out where to catch the bus for the next leg.
|
| There were also a few occasions where there was over an
| hour between the "every 30 minutes" bus. Rare, but it
| happened. Buses naturally tend to clump together, so they
| need careful, intentional management to prevent this.
|
| Public transit is great, and we need more, but it's not as
| reliable as I'd like. Cars are far more reliable, at least
| for moderately wealthy people who can afford to buy new-ish
| and keep them well-maintained. Bikes, too, if you're able
| to bike in rain and snow. (I ended up switching to almost
| 100% bike travel after about three years, and just kept a
| change of clothes at work, and at least dry socks, shirt,
| and underwear in my bag. Spare pants added too much bulk to
| lug around.)
| Gigachad wrote:
| This is all highly dependant on the specific city. In
| Melbourne, Australia trains to the city during work hours
| are around every 5 minutes, dropping to around 15 minutes
| for off peak. Going to work by train is faster than
| driving.
|
| Buses that share roads with general traffic are always
| the worst solution and should really only be a temporary
| option to cover for downtime on rail.
| bluGill wrote:
| Modern cars tend to be very reliable in the early years. As
| they get older they get less reliable. I suspect your
| friends issue was budget, they were not willing (likely
| able) to spend the money needed to have a reliable car)
| Gigachad wrote:
| My coworkers car is still in its warranty period and just
| suffered an engine issue that is going to take ~5 weeks
| to resolve and would have cost $10,000 if it wasn't
| otherwise covered.
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| You know what would solve that sitting and waiting? More
| public transit. I know the American public isn't the sharpest
| tool in the shed, but we can introduce them to the concept of
| better, faster public transit, like other nations have. (And
| having enough money to buy a car + being impatient/unwilling
| to schedule your time shouldn't be a license to make society
| worse)
| wqaatwt wrote:
| A lot of people prefer living in less dense environments and
| personal vehicles will always be more efficient there than
| public transport
| Qwertious wrote:
| A lot of people prefer living in financially affordable
| environments, and in a functioning market, dense towns/cities
| will always be more affordable unless you literally work on a
| farm.
|
| Everyone _prefers_ to live in a giant sprawling mansion (with
| personal private forest) in the middle of the CBD. But
| preference is useless data unless it includes their pricetag
| preference too.
| criddell wrote:
| > dense towns/cities will always be more affordable
|
| In my experience, that isn't true. At the very least, it
| depends on what your preferences are. If I moved my home
| from outside Austin to inside the city, I couldn't afford
| it.
| lkbm wrote:
| Densifying a city will make it cheaper than if we don't
| densify, but we usually densify _because_ of high prices,
| so high density correlates with high prices despite being
| a counter-force against it.
|
| And, yeah, living in a dense city definitely tends to
| cost more than the suburbs, especially per-square-foot.
| There might be exceptions (high crime urban areas with
| wealthy suburbs), but you're usually getting a pretty
| nice house in that suburb.
| bluGill wrote:
| Density is more expensive. Not just because of demand for
| the area (though that doesn't help), but because density
| requires different building methods. Your single family
| house can be built so cheaply because it doesn't have to
| support the weight of many floors above; nor does it need
| to be fireproof because in the rare fire you can evacuate.
| (density means more people are displaced, fires are more
| likely, and longer distances to get away)
|
| Density is also more expensive because higher costs are
| worth it. A rural area cannot afford things like library in
| walking distance of every farmer (every farmer would have
| to pay for a personal librarian), but in a dense area it is
| only a couple bucks for each one - but that all adds up to
| hundreds of dollars in extra costs that less dense areas do
| without. (you decide if it is worth the cost)
| rcpt wrote:
| If it's just the free market then why do we need to regulate
| single family zoning across the United States? And why can't
| the suburbs pay for their own infrastructure?
| bluGill wrote:
| Suburbs do pay for their infrastructure. Strongtowns keeps
| spreading the myth that they can't, but the numbers they
| use don't add up. They choose not to pay for transit
| because they don't need it.
| nine_k wrote:
| Speaking as a big fan and avid user of public transit, I say:
| not gonna happen in many places.
|
| Public transit works in densely populated areas, like in NYC
| where I live. Digging and operating a tunnel costs a lot, and
| only pays for itself if you can run many trains with many
| passengers, who live close enough to their nearest station.
| Buses are less expensive (though still are expensive), and
| require a driver per 50-100 passengers, not per 2000.
|
| As long as many people prefer to live in suburbia (which may
| technically be considered a part of a city, like in Houston),
| they are going to use cars (or technically trucks), because
| it's the most economical way to get around. As long as the
| destination of their travel is not an utterly dense area that
| does not require a car (like commuting from NJ to lower
| Manhattan), people won't leave their cars mid-way and change
| for a train or a bus.
|
| It's not the car lobby. It's people wanting to live quite
| separately from their neighbors, in detached houses that they
| fully own. Or maybe cities that enforce low density for a
| number of reasons (mostly NIMBYs who want to keep the price of
| their house and land high).
| bluGill wrote:
| Suburbs are dense enough to support transit as proven in a
| small number of cities around the world (mostly not English
| speaking). However suburbs can only support great transit,
| since anything less and driving is enough better as to be
| worth it.
|
| NYC has a real cost problem. Digging a tunnel costs a lot -
| not anywhere near what it costs in NYC. You can also build
| bridges over the top for a lot less than digging a tunnel.
| Modern subways should be 100% automated saving the cost of a
| driver. (I keep hoping we see self driving buses since
| drivers are the large share of the costs)
| nine_k wrote:
| NYC tunnels have outsized cost, but even tunnels that cost
| 10% of that would not be cheap. Most of the NYC subway was
| built quickly and relatively cheaply by digging trenches
| and covering them later, not by boring tunnels. NYC used to
| use elevated trains a lot, and still has plenty of those
| outside Manhattan, but they have other downsides, such as
| noise.
|
| NYC subway has two drivers per train due to the trade union
| resistance. Very understandable, even though not really
| necessary.
|
| Self-driving buses could be also remotely driven in
| situations that require special handling, by a smaller
| number of drivers.
|
| As usual, it mostly takes a political will, the technology
| is not rocket science; one of the poster kids of that is
| Curitiba in Brazil.
| zmmmmm wrote:
| Public transport is only efficient at scale, requires up front
| investment, and carries lots of assumptions about population
| density and other aspects remaining static. Then it doesn't
| work for whole categories of people (families with small kids,
| etc) especially because it fundamentally just can't do the
| "last mile", pretty much ever.
|
| Don't get me wrong, I think it's great for mass transit, but I
| can't wait to see the future with autonomous vehicles arrive,
| especially if they can cooperate in centralised networks to
| optimise traffic flows. I'd love to step off the train into a
| capsule that then whisks me home.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| > Then it doesn't work for whole categories of people
| (families with small kids, etc) especially because it
| fundamentally just can't do the "last mile", pretty much
| ever.
|
| That's bullshit. My whole childhood I went everywhere by
| train and bus. You can walk the last mile if the bus stop
| isn't close enough to where you need to go.
|
| I know some (embarrassingly rich) countries are incapable of
| designing a halfway decent public transit system, but the
| problem isn't with public transit itself.
| vel0city wrote:
| I take my small kids on public transit often. Why can't kids
| ride a bus or a train? Don't we even have special forms of
| mass transit for little kids (school busses?)
|
| How are cars _better_ with little kids? If I 'm in the car
| with my kids and one kid suddenly _really wants a snack_ ,
| there's nothing I can do. They're strapped in the back, I'm
| in the front driving. On the train, I just grab a snack from
| my bag and give them a bite. Or if they're bored I can play
| with them, etc.
|
| > it fundamentally just can't do the "last mile", pretty much
| ever.
|
| I live in a suburb in North Texas. I walk out my door with
| the stroller and my kids. There's a bus stop super close by
| that can easily load a stroller (all busses are wheelchair
| accessible). I take that to the train station or the bus goes
| to the library or several other parks and rec centers. The
| train stops a very short walk to several museums, the
| convention center, the airport, the zoo has its own train
| station, the hockey/basketball arena has its own stop, etc.
| And this is all in an area where the mass transit isn't even
| that great.
|
| The transit doesn't go everywhere we want to go. I agree
| that's the biggest pain point. But I truly don't understand
| the logic that it's bad for kids. My kids ride often, and
| they love it. What kid hates trains?
| andrewaylett wrote:
| The Scottish Government provides free at the point of use bus
| service for under-22s. I _wish_ we could have had that 25
| years ago when I first moved here. As it is, it 's an ideal
| way for the teens to get around and makes it the sensible
| option when taking children into the city during the daytime.
|
| Driving is prohibitively expensive for young people, and in
| the UK you can't drive cars on public roads until you're 17.
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| It's actually more efficient at scale, because it increases
| the economy at a lower cost. Poor or rural communities can be
| connected to more places with jobs, schools, etc. Those
| people can then grow more capital by not having to pay for
| expensive personal transportation. Meaning more people
| working, making money, contributing that money back to the
| economy, less cost to things like ERs, crime, etc. It lifts
| up the whole society, so it costs much less in real terms.
|
| The last mile has more options than ever. E-bikes, sit-on
| scooters, golf carts, or that crazy trend of "walking" that I
| hear is good for your health. There's even the option for
| smaller, local mini-buses to serve the elderly and disabled.
| Those same vehicles could be combined with other services,
| like postal mail, food delivery (for
| elderly/disabled/infirm).
|
| Where I live in a tiny town in the middle of nowhere, we have
| the mini-bus to serve vulnerable people. The mail is
| delivered by local people with Subarus and Jeeps. But there's
| no other public transit. The closest thing to it is a charter
| bus, which only runs through a town 45 minutes from here,
| once a week. There's thousands of people out here,
| disconnected from the rest of society. And they're poor, so
| the few vehicles they have are always falling apart, and
| mechanics shops are always full. There is a taxi service in a
| nearby town (45mins away), and it has a 1.5 out of 5 star
| rating, because no alternatives means you have no choice but
| to deal with how terrible they are.
|
| Autonomous vehicles are a good idea, but it's unlikely they
| will pan out in the long term, unless via "corporate welfare"
| or similar funding. The cost to develop, maintain, insure,
| etc them is just way more expensive than a dude in a driver's
| seat. They are being floated by SV money in rich cities; they
| won't scale.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| America used to have fairly everpresent public transport.
| Every city, including tiny ones, had public transport because
| the very concept of industrialization requires cities with
| lots of people in a small area that can easily get to work.
|
| This absurd notion that it "doesn't make sense" for america
| is propaganda. Not only does it make plenty of sense in
| America, it was essential to the development of America!
|
| We had robust, reliable, used by everyone public transport
| _before we had trains_! Our local agricultural fair shows off
| horse drawn busses that used to run in a microscopic but 300
| year old agricultural community every single year! They even
| had instructions about how to behave to not upset the poor
| woman sitting next to your dirty worker self!
|
| Public transport was essential to the north being
| industrialized enough to defeat the south in the civil war.
| Every former mill town in new england had robust public
| transport to keep the mills full of labor.
|
| It was only with significant lobbying and marketing from GM
| and Ford that America suddenly decided that all this public
| transport infrastructure that we had for generations "doesn't
| make sense here" and they even helped rip it all up!
|
| Read a history book.
|
| It's frankly laughable. If public transport "didn't work" in
| the US, we would never have been able to industrialize before
| the car. But we did. We did it _before the train_
| vel0city wrote:
| Its laughable to think the cities of America in 2025 still
| look the same and function the same as the cities of
| America in 1925. "Cities" weren't nearly as sparsely
| populated and highly zoned as many suburbs are these days.
| You didn't have neighborhoods with seemingly fractal
| patterns of roads ending in cul-de-sacs the size of several
| city blocks with only a couple entrances and exits like
| what seems to be common these days. The average American
| urban household in 1920 didn't live on a quarter acre lot
| multiple miles away from the nearest food source. So yeah,
| there were streetcar suburbs as well as the denser city
| apartments and rowhouses, they were largely grid patterns
| with a major boulevard. They didn't sprawl anywhere near as
| far. They weren't nearly as insulated.
|
| > Every city, including tiny ones, had public transport
|
| I can point to dozens of cities around me that never had
| actual public transportation throughout their entire
| history, and that's just a small part that I happen to know
| off-hand. Few places actually had any kind of real public
| transit.
|
| Rural communities often still had an expectation of some
| amount of private transportation accessible. What, are you
| really tiling the soil by hand? No, you've got horses.
|
| Look, I'm not saying public transportation can't happen in
| the US today. Obviously it can. There are lots of places
| where it does today. There are even more places that could
| have it tomorrow if the voters decided to do so. There are
| also lots of places that require quite a bit of urban
| redesign to actually make transit make sense for those
| communities.
|
| I'll give you an example. I used to know someone who worked
| in Dallas, around I-635 and US-75[0]. They lived someplace
| like this. [1] How does public transit serve this person
| effectively? How would you have a bus service with both
| decent ridership and good service times in a town like
| Forney here, while not just having the bus snake through
| the mazes of neighborhoods? How do you convince someone to
| ride the bus to work when its probably going to have poor
| service intervals, require multiple changes, and ultimately
| likely to take considerably more time than the average day
| in the car?
|
| Then copy and paste that same issue hundreds of times over.
| How does transit make sense in Seis Lagos or the rest of
| Lucas for that matter? [2] These people likely work in West
| Plano or Dallas. How do you convince them to take the bus?
|
| [0] https://maps.app.goo.gl/ETD6a9XgTFoZCYR78
|
| [1] https://maps.app.goo.gl/WwLYVAuquAs4ecpD8
|
| [2] https://maps.app.goo.gl/TdxZAgjdbiUbYHEE8
| martinpw wrote:
| Who owned these key LFP patents? It was not clearly laid out in
| the article which countries owned them, let alone which
| companies.
|
| If they were owned by Chinese companies, then is there some faint
| hope that Western companies can finally start making EVs that are
| no longer embarrassingly inferior to their Chinese counterparts?
| k1musab1 wrote:
| A foundational research team in a Canadian university in
| Quebec, if I recall correctly. They licenced these patents to
| the Chinese companies royalty free when used the Chinese
| domestic market. The Chinese spent the time developing LFP to
| where it's now a bleeding edge of batteries, while practically
| no-one else was interested.
|
| In a retaliatory fight over the EVs, in October 2025, the CCP
| issued a ban on transfer of advanced technology for LFP
| batteries, and battery manufacturing equipment.
| dust42 wrote:
| BloombergNEF has over the years proven to have pretty solid
| forecasts. The current one about NEVs [1] has a few interesting
| points. Adoption of EVs is slowing down in the US due to policy
| changes but going to explode in countries like Vietnam because
| they are cheeper to buy an run. It is not BMWs and Mercs but
| Chinese brands.
|
| In Europe and the US the Chinese EVs are kept outside with the
| help of tariffs but that is just closing the eyes to avoid facing
| the inevitability. Battery technology, production and raw
| materials is all China.
|
| Last not least Europe is driving up KWh costs by an ideologically
| driven push for renewables which also doesn't help.
|
| [1] https://about.bnef.com/insights/clean-transport/electric-
| veh...
| hgomersall wrote:
| Electricity costs in the UK (which I believe is still in
| Europe) are cheaper now than they've ever been if you have the
| right tariff and that's all due to renewables. Granted, that's
| primarily at night, but for EVs that's perfect.
|
| One can get a tariff at <7p/kWh for 6 hours in the night.
| That's cheaper than gas (actual gas, not gasoline).
| marcosscriven wrote:
| If that's Octopus Intelligent Go, then it will also give you
| the 7p rate outside the normal nighttime slot if the car is
| charging and their algo calculates they can do it.
| IshKebab wrote:
| Renewables definitely help and I think the UK is doing quite
| well there but it's a little disingenuous to not even mention
| the price cap that the government has imposed!
| hgomersall wrote:
| What's the price cap got to do with it? You can get tariffs
| that are very cheap and outside of the price cap:
| https://www.goodenergy.co.uk/wp-
| content/uploads/2025/11/Good...
| IshKebab wrote:
| The price applies to default tariff so it is a price that
| is always available to customers. This means other non-
| default tariffs like the one you linked have to compete
| with the flat rate of 26p/kWh.
|
| The tariff you linked is much more expensive than the
| price cap for most people because most people don't have
| huge batteries for energy storage. Battery energy storage
| is _worth money_ so essentially you are getting cheaper
| energy by selling that storage value to Good Energy.
| Overall the total value you get from Good Energy (taking
| into account the value of having storage) is going to be
| about the same as the value with the price cap and no
| storage.
|
| Because the tariffs are competing, if all energy
| retailers were able to raise their prices to their true
| cost, then it would be _all_ tariffs that increase in
| price; not just the ones that the cap applies to.
|
| This is similar to why electricity prices went up when
| there was a gas shortage due to the Ukraine war. Everyone
| was like "but it's a gas shortage not an electricity
| shortage!". But of course electricity and gas are in
| competition in many cases (e.g. for heating), so their
| prices are linked by shared demand.
|
| If you still aren't convinced, imagine the energy price
| cap was 1p/kWh. What do you think would happen to the
| price of EV tariffs then? (For a few weeks until the
| entire energy retail sector collapsed anyway!)
| gmac wrote:
| > an ideologically driven push for renewables
|
| Renewables (especially wind) are now just about the cheapest
| way to generate electricity, and new battery technologies do
| much to help with their intermittency, so where's the problem?
|
| (Plus, the 'ideology' in question would seem to be: it's bad to
| fry the planet, and also bad to run even a small risk of
| radioactively contaminating one's landmass, and IMHO neither of
| these positions deserves to be called an ideology).
| earthnail wrote:
| Also, to add to the "ideology": it is bad to rely on other
| countries for fossil or uranium fuels.
| modo_mario wrote:
| Frying the planet is bad. That said i don't see the
| reliance argument for uranium. There's a variety of
| existing sources on the planet and some we stopped mining.
| It's proportionally a super small financial element of the
| energy production process unlike with fossil fuels. So in
| the case of let's say Putin's Russia you can avoid using
| their or let's say Kazakhstan's fuel and if you don't but
| don't take it's gas directly or via intermediaries like
| armenia then Russia still ends up in the financial shitter
| because their income from Rosatom/uranium one/... doesn't
| even compare.
|
| It's almost inviting anti renewables arguments based on
| things like aluminium mostly being produced in china and
| russia or based on where the vast majority of panels are
| produced, etc.
| diatone wrote:
| Chiming in as Australian with no context on European
| situation. AFAICT the key drivers of cost inflation are to do
| with reconfiguring the electric grid to transfer power
| efficiently and reliably from plants that produce renewable
| energy. However, the grid is set up to do so from non-
| renewable sources. And you want to do it while smoothly
| operating the network. This is extremely hard. Doing so
| quickly therefore elevates prices. That's the rationale I
| could imagine being the case in EU markets.
| phicoh wrote:
| It's not that simple. For example, in the The Netherlands,
| the use of electricity was stable for a long time. Mostly
| because all kinds of equipment (light bulbs, etc) got more
| efficient.
|
| Grid operators predicted that with the energy transition,
| demand would rise, but politics wanted to keep prices low
| and limited investments.
|
| So now, there is a big problem in the entire country
| connecting companies or new residential areas to the grid
| independent of how electricity is generated.
|
| At the same time, the government is extremely forward
| looking and builds massive interconnection points on the
| North-Sea. Not a bad idea in the long run, but in the short
| run it does make electricity from wind on sea more
| expensive.
|
| That said, the biggest hit to EU countries is that cheap
| natural gas disappeared. Coal is not cheap and extremely
| polluting. Natural gas was cheap for a while. Until it
| wasn't.
| tpm wrote:
| The European situation is a bit more complicated. It was
| very well known for a long time that Russia is a ticking
| time bomb in our backyard yet we made ourselves nearly
| dependent on their energy supplies and now combined with
| the push for renewables (which in my opinion is the right
| thing to do) we have a crisis. Now there are also lot of
| countries in the EU with different priorities, so while in
| theory we could build long-range HVDC connections across
| borders, it is very hard to do.
| dust42 wrote:
| >> an ideologically driven push for renewables
|
| > Renewables (especially wind) are now just about the
| cheapest way to generate electricity, and new battery
| technologies do much to help with their intermittency, so
| where's the problem?
|
| The basics of economics are: - market price
| is a function of supply and demand - storage costs
| money - distribution costs money. - perishable
| goods a finicky in highly volatile markets - CAPEX
| costs money - businesses will try to maximise the
| difference between price and costs
|
| Yet you know all this as you are a professor of economics in
| the UK. So how comes that the UK has the highest industry KWh
| prices in Europe? There must be an absolutely fantastic
| opportunity to make money and investors should be like
| vultures grabbing new projects for renewables.
|
| Just the other day I read news that in Germany perfectly well
| functioning wind turbines are being turned down because they
| have reached the end of the phase of guaranteed KWh prices.
| So are the owners crazy and throwing money away? No, they
| simply do the business calculations and if the math doesn't
| play out, they simply remove them and build new ones with new
| subsidies.
|
| The latest auction from the German gov for a new field in the
| baltic sea didn't even find one bidder.
|
| China is doing lots of renewables but they calculate it down
| to the penny.
|
| So yes, as you say "Renewables (especially wind) are now just
| about the cheapest way to generate electricity". To generate
| yes. But you need lots of CAPEX to store it and to distribute
| it. And you can not work with a 95%ile. You need 100% in any
| developed economy.
|
| Despite marginal cost pricing it not interesting for
| investors without subsidies.
| oezi wrote:
| Old wind turbines might be perfectly fine but they are also
| no longer competitive with modern replacements. Usually it
| does make sense to replace them with more modern
| alternatives. Subsidies have gotten very low because carbon
| credits are now a much more important way for renewables to
| boost their income (most negative prices reflect that).
|
| Offshore wind is facing the challenge that it is more
| expensive than onshore wind and also that solar is having a
| day with ever decreasing prices. Governments are trying
| hard to minimize the cost of the energy transition,
| offshore is primarily hurting because of this.
| dust42 wrote:
| > Old wind turbines might be perfectly fine but they are
| also no longer competitive with modern replacements.
| Usually it does make sense to replace them with more
| modern alternatives.
|
| I would just for once love to see a calculation for this.
| There have been no advancements in generator technology
| nor in blade technology. Generators in power stations
| have a life time of many decades. A third of the 31000
| German wind turbines will be put down because of the end
| of subsidies.
|
| Also subsidising solar power in the north of Germany
| makes no sense - for months there is no solar in winter
| but in summer solar adds to the already massive surplus
| of energy from offshore wind. It is a waste of money. If
| you believe that global warming is a problem (which I
| agree with) then the money should be put to efficient
| use.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| There's a thriving second hand market for wind turbines.
|
| Similar to EV discussions a lot of motivated reasoning
| seems to assume that these items are disposed of in a
| black hole or set on fire in a school playground after a
| few years to try to equalize the damage done by
| combustion alternatives.
|
| In reality people are spending tens or hundreds of
| thousands to buy these used turbines because they have
| value.
|
| I've not seen full calculations for wind but I assume
| they exist. I've read ones for solar which calculate
| replacing panels in a farm after 17 years and landfilling
| the old ones is still ecologically positive because the
| extra generation of the new panels would pay off.
|
| Obviously this only gets better if you resell or recycle
| the old panels instead.
| rcxdude wrote:
| >There must be an absolutely fantastic opportunity to make
| money and investors should be like vultures grabbing new
| projects for renewables.
|
| They are. While the marginal price is being set (most of
| the time) by expensive gas renewables projects are making
| money hand over fist.
| RobotToaster wrote:
| >Renewables (especially wind) are now just about the cheapest
| way to generate electricity
|
| Only if you don't include the huge cost of storage for when
| it isn't windy.
| fch42 wrote:
| Include it and it's still cheaper than, say, nuclear.
|
| Also ... even when storage is included, you still gain
| freedom from opex spending for fuel (that is, lining oily
| pockets). Once there, renewables are "pure payoff".
| cowl wrote:
| more like "it's bad to fry the planet so we will destroy our
| economy for 0.001% impact while the real impacters continue
| to advance and leave us in the dust"
| andy_ppp wrote:
| Would we price out cheap Vietnamese EVs (say) in the same way?
| rcpt wrote:
| The US would just ban them with some regulation like we do
| with most foreign competitors
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| It's not just Vietnam. It's almost any country anywhere in the
| world that is seeing healthy growth in EVs. Especially the ones
| that barely have a road network or a petrol distribution
| network.
|
| This is an effect that is still underappreciated in western
| markets but developing markets embracing renewables and EVs
| means they are enabling some serious economic growth. They are
| eliminating chunks of fossil fuel imports from their balance
| sheet while enabling economic activity in areas that have poor
| grid coverage and limited access to fuel.
|
| Pakistan is a good example. They have a very under developed
| grid. Solar and battery storage are enabling the locals to work
| around that and they have installed a lot of that in recent
| years. This is enabling local businesses that previously had
| very poor access to reliably power to now have reliable power
| and grow. The Pakistan government is also putting in place
| incentives to stimulate EV imports.
|
| Ethiopia is going a lot further and has actually banned ICE car
| imports last year. They want to reduce the amount of fossil
| fuel imports on their balance sheets.
| csomar wrote:
| > Ethiopia is going a lot further and has actually banned ICE
| car imports last year. They want to reduce the amount of
| fossil fuel imports on their balance sheets.
|
| My understanding is that they are more concerned about oil
| shipping as they are landlocked and the situation in the gulf
| of aden is less than ideal.
| usrusr wrote:
| So you buy a battery for your tiny grid island and pay a
| little more so that you can also use for a drive? Or perhaps
| not even more, because the standalone battery is less mass
| market item.
|
| Truly an interesting change, considering how much of the ICE
| market used to be hand-me-downs from more industrialized
| countries. I guess proximity to those is now a hindrance to
| the renewable revolution, because places with less access to
| hand-me-downs have a market (and mindset!) for low-priced new
| cars that never existed in places flooded with second hand
| cars? Will the upmarket-first kind of BEV ever work in that
| way?
| ploxiln wrote:
| For many years (20+?) Vietnam has had _huge_ import tariffs on
| US /German/etc cars. It varies by origin country and engine
| displacement, but it's around 75% to 175%. Some trade
| agreements with other Asian countries result in much more
| reasonable tariffs for Asian brands, but some rich Vietnamese
| people have bought BMW or Merc with 150%+ tariff/tax. (I found
| it a bit mind-blowing.) So, it's pretty obvious why Asian made
| EVs are expected to "explode" in popularity over there. (I'm
| pretty sure the trend is already well underway, I know a
| retired guy there who replaced a Merc with a hybrid Mitsubishi
| (?) last year.)
| oezi wrote:
| > an ideologically driven push for renewables
|
| It is not an ideological push, but one driven by the necessity
| to fight climate change.
|
| Maybe it is ideology to emphasize renewables over nuclear. But
| all over the world the energy transition seems to involve
| primarily renewables and only maybe a dash of nuclear.
| tromp wrote:
| The European tarriffs on Chinese EVs typically amount to 20%,
| which doesn't keep them out but does somewhat slow their
| adoption.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| Your reliable BloombergNEF says that onshore wind became the
| cheapest source of unsubsidized new electricity in Germany and
| UK in 2015, a decade ago.
|
| Coincidentally that's roughly when the UK government banned the
| building of onshore wind across England, which was only
| recently revrsed.
|
| Now that sounds like an Ideologically driven attempt to raise
| electricity prices.
| dabinat wrote:
| I really wish we could get Chinese EVs in the US. They're very
| aesthetically appealing, have great performance and specs, and
| cost only $20-30k. I think there should be a modest tariff on
| them that doesn't kill US manufacturers but makes it so they have
| to actually compete.
| purpleidea wrote:
| They have the same problem the U.S. EV's have: sketchy spyware
| software. Make everyone honest and open up the code / let
| people write their own code, and then let the true market rule.
|
| U.S. don't want the Chinese cars collecting data, but they're
| content with U.S. ones doing it.
| fedeb95 wrote:
| Imagine a world without patents and tariffs. Imagine a world
| where companies can freely compete (no patents) and, most
| importantly, *have* to (no tariffs).
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| There was some kind of patent shenanigans about a decade ago
| around LFP.
|
| I'm not sure if China invalidated dodgy patents or threatened to
| and got a good deal (or some combination) but I think LFP in
| China escaped a lot of patent fees as long as they were sold in
| China. This probably partly explains the regional nature of LFP
| success so further expiries might help the rest of the world
| catch up on LFP prices and adoption.
| jacquesm wrote:
| LFP is a nice chemistry but I think
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium-titanate_battery is the
| future. There is still the power density issue but that's
| improving steadily. The thing that really sells me on this is the
| speed with which you can charge the cells.
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