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Electric vehicle battery costs rapidly declining, Tesla cited as leading
- agumonkey 10y agoWhat about recycling btw ?
- outworlder 10y agoWhat about it? Batteries recycle pretty well.
- scarlac 10y agoThe batteries are highly recyclable. The internal structure changes over time/use but the chemicals are intact. Tesla have mentioned on several occasions that they will eventually take old batteries and recycle them at the Gigafactory.
- mtgx 10y ago4x drop in battery prices, (or) 5x increase in density in only 8 years. Pretty damn good for batteries that "aren't following Moore's Law", something most battery-related articles are quick to remind us. Hopefully, this continues for at least another decade, which should make EVs more than competitive with ICE cars.
- dimino 10y agoBatteries are the secret to most of the cool "sci-fi" tech we all want but currently can't have.
- macintux 10y agoHmm. I think fusion is more important, but I'll take what I can get.
- walrus01 10y agoNot so much batteries, but "energy storage" in general. Batteries being one very important type of energy storage. If photovoltaics and/or wind become extremely cheap, to the point where the cost is 1 cent/kilowatt-hour, it would even be economical to crack hydrogen from seawater via electrolysis (a process that consumes vast amounts of electricity) and use hydrogen as storage.
- g4k 10y agoThat is indeed very good progress. Elon Musk mentioned recently that he expects a yearly capacity increase of 5% for the foreseeable future.
- mtgx 10y agoI think that's extremely conservative, even if you don't consider the gigafactory. He said years ago that the rate of improvement in density would be 6-8% per year, but clearly it's been much better than that - more like a 20% increase in density or a 15% drop in price per year, for the past 8 years.
- Aelinsaar 10y agoBetween this and the projected increase in PV solar efficiency, drop in cost and toxicity of manufacture... I don't think I've felt this kind of cautious optimism for a renewable energy infrastructure before.
- toomuchtodo 10y agoIts almost like we're going to fix the climate change issue, slowly (ramping up quickly)....by sheer luck of technological advancement.
- rjdevereux 10y agoCan't tell if this comment is sarcastic or not
- toomuchtodo 10y agoZero sarcasm. We've (worldwide government policy) worked against renewables and storage through limited subsidies compared to legacy fuels. That's not to denigrate the efforts of Tesla and solar/wind developers/technology companies; they just haven't received the support they should've compared to the impetus of climate change. EDIT: Innovation is saving us from ourselves! Yay?
- stevenmays 10y agoOR just don't subsidize fossil fuels and let them compete.
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- honkhonkpants 10y agoIt's not just about subsidy. You also have to price in the carbon pollution.
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- narrator 10y agoI find it amusing to see so many people questioning why Tesla didn't release a cheap Tesla sooner. The answer is: They don't have the batteries to do that. That's why they are building the GigaFactory. People don't get that, on a large industrial scale, you actually have to think about supply. They think you just spend money and supply shows up because they are used to thinking on a household scale where supply is generally infinite for anything they could possibly consume. I think one pervasive economic fallacy is that any amount of money can fix anything. We just need to find someone to write a big enough check, either the government or wall street and all those batteries will materialize instantly out of some technology horn of plenty. This has driven the focus on "stimulus" and "aggregate demand" in various forms of economic dialogue. We could use more supply side thinking about very large problems that the economy faces, especially in the public sector. Health Care, for example, is one of those things where, if you're not thinking about supply, spending more money just makes everything more expensive.
- honkhonkpants 10y agoTesla consumes a small fraction of global lithium-ion battery production. When the overall market is much larger than the marginal consumption, the assumption that offering more money increases local supply holds perfectly well. Even if you assume that Tesla is demanding 5% of the battery market which would be an outside estimate that's still well within the region where paying more will get you more.
- mikeash 10y agoWorldwide production of lithium-ion batteries in 2013 was around 35GWh. The current rate is somewhat higher, I can't quite find how much. Tesla is currently producing around 100,000 cars/year. Each car has about 80kWh of battery on average (the options right now are 75 or 90), so that's about 8GWh. If they meet their goal of 400,000 Model 3s produced in 2018, assuming 55kWh of battery for those cars, that's 22GWh, not counting what goes into continuing Model S and Model X production. I'm not sure it's as small a fraction of global production as you say. One of the statistics they like to quote about their Gigafactory is that its final production will equal the total global production by the industry when construction started in 2013.
- sremani 10y agocaution. 1. a tesla accessory site. 2. the report is full of projections and hard to understand what is wishful and what is not. 3. GM: $145/kw Oct 2015 - Tesla $100/kw in 2020, how is Tesla killing it?
- ethbro 10y agoAgree it's a puff piece, but the full quote you took that from is "General Motors announced that battery costs for its 2016 Chevrolet Bolt had fallen to USD 145/kWh by October 2015, and that it hopes to reduce costs below the USD 100/kWh mark by 2022 (GM, 2015, EV Obsession, 2015). The electric car manufacturer Tesla aims to break the USD 100/kWh mark by 2020 (HybridCARS, 2015)." Also, in reading some of the background on the numbers, journalists seem to be failing (surprise!) to distinguish between $/kWh per battery cell vs battery pack.
- petra 10y agoMusk isn't that great at predicting when will the future happen(he's better at predicting general trends), probably partially because stock pumping PR is critical to his biz.
- ethbro 10y agoTo some extent stock pumping PR funds Tesla, which in turn provides them easier capital for funding the GigaFactory, which rationalizes the PR. It's only Theranos if you don't deliver.
- Animats 10y agoFrom the article: "Since 2008, estimates of battery costs were cut by a factor four and battery energy density had a fivefold increase." We're not seeing that kind of improvement in mobile devices.
- bluehawk 10y agoYeah we are. But phones are more powerful, with bigger screens and power hungry electronics. Plus consumers want smaller, lighter phones, so with the higher density they make the batteries smaller. It's a balance.
- hbhakhra 10y agoThats exactly why I was disappointed that all the top of the line phones went with 1440p or 4k displays. I have a 27" monitor that is 1440p, I don't need that kind of resolution on my Note 5. I wish it was still 1080p display and better battery life.
- warfangle 10y agoIn 2008: The iPhone had an 1150mAh battery and, according to anandtech [0], 284 minutes of talk time (3G) and 400 minutes of web browsing time (WiFi). It weighed 133 grams. In 2016: The iPhone SE has a 1,624mAh battery and gets 556.2[1] minutes of web browsing time on WiFi. It weighs 113 grams. Of course, I have no idea what percentage of weight made up the battery for either of these phones. I also have no idea what percentage of the cost to manufacture the battery made up for either of these phones. But I do know the iPhone SE @ 16GB is $100 cheaper than the iPhone 3G @ 16GB was, not accounting for inflation. We're seeing some improvement, most definitely. But unless someone has data to compare the two batteries directly, we can't say by how much. The smartphone world has been much more keen on improving power consumption of the hardware in question rather than power storage. At the scale of power that an automobile uses, the opposite is true. 0. http://www.anandtech.com/show/2571/18 http://www.anandtech.com/show/2571/18 1. http://www.anandtech.com/show/10285/the-iphone-se-review/3 http://www.anandtech.com/show/10285/the-iphone-se-review/3
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- olivermarks 10y agoLook to China for mass production of cost effective batteries, not Tesla... firms like EV West help me demystify the true state of maturity of this market http://evwest.com/catalog/ http://evwest.com/catalog/
- mtgx 10y agoThat's what I'm afraid of. That China will push a "race to the bottom" not on just prices per se, but on lower prices with poorer quality batteries that hold much fewer charges and degrade faster, making you want to dump your EV battery after 3 years. But everyone will be too focused on their promotion of "cheap long range EVs" to notice.
- venomsnake 10y agoRevolutionary idea ... make batteries replaceable. We had it back in the days. You could just remove the old batteries and put the new ones.
- imron 10y agoTesla cars can do this in less than 2 minutes - faster than it takes to fill up a tank of gas. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5V0vL3nnHY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5V0vL3nnHY
- Shivetya 10y agoSo were are only talking about numbers they are hoping for, not currently in production? GMs numbers are current, what are Tesla's current battery costs? Just because they want 100 by 2020 doesn't mean they are leading the charge, simply leading the wish list. Still waiting on density improvements because frankly 400kg for 200 odd miles of range is not good. Of course with higher density means better charging and hopefully standards are ready for it
- justina1 10y agoTesla keeps their cost per kWh close to the vest. Only public statement was in response to an analyst assuming Tesla was at $260. Their investor relations team confirmed they're below $190 (back in April). http://electrek.co/2016/04/26/tesla-model-3-battery-pack-cost-kwh/ http://electrek.co/2016/04/26/tesla-model-3-battery-pack-cos...
- disposeofnick9 10y agoCan't wait to buy the plastic battery holder grids for Tesla-sized cells. My first 18650 pack is made from 4 laptop batteries and is capable of about 63 A at 0.2C.
- notJim 10y agoJust out of curiosity… whaaat does this comment mean? Are you building some kind of railgun or something?
- goldenkey 10y agoJust curious, how much damage could a domestic terrorist do with a railgun made from consumer parts?
- pjc50 10y agoRailguns are terrible and conventional firearms are much more widely available. If you want a futuristic terror weapon powered by batteries, build a multiple-watt laser. Take down planes by blinding the pilots! Fire it at a glass sculpture in a shopping mall to give thousands of people life-ruining sight loss!
- goldenkey 10y agoI thought railguns could shoot projectiles with speeds faster than almost anything. And since they are all about stored electricity inducing magnetism can't a terrorist just charge up a huge capacitor like battery for a year and then release a shit ton of energy in the form of a uranium or heavy lead slug??
- pjc50 10y agoYes, although for terrorism purposes why is this tactially useful given the high cost and complexity? It's not particularly easy to build a 3km/s railgun in your garage, and the power storage ends up being hugely bulky. Conventional terrorist attacks involving homemade explosives, firearms, mortars, and even rockets have been quite cost-effective enough. I'm more worried about someone combining quadcopters and explosives.
- jpm_sd 10y ago"since 2008 [...] battery energy density had a fivefold increase" Citation needed! In that time period, the highest energy density 18650 cells on the market have gone from ~200 Wh/kg to ~250 Wh/kg.
- pedrocr 10y agoThe article presents the increase in one of the charts. They're measuring volumetric density though (Wh/L).
- tn13 10y agoI don't see how cars will have any impact on battery life. How many cars do we sell each year? Even if we assume 10% of cars are electric it is nothing but a drop in an ocean in terms of number of batteries being sold. I am unable to see how Tesla car could have any impact on battery industry in terms of economy of scale. Any battery based solution for homes etc. could possibly bring economy of scale into picture.
- macspoofing 10y agoYour comment would be more interesting if you put some numbers around your conclusions. I personally don't know the current and projected relative demand for Lithium batteries in electric cars and non-electric cars.
- tn13 10y agoThe numbers are one search away. In fact even without the numbers intuition should be sufficient to see that it makes sense. Auto industry accounts for 20% of total Li batteries. Where as consumer electronics (which is probably growing way faster than electric Auto) accounts for around 37%. Most of the reports I have seen tend to estimate that Auto's share would increase upto 30% by 2020 while renewable energy storage would grow to 60%. It is not really hard to see that real breakthroughs in mass production and lowered prices for Li batteries will come not from auto applications but from power generation sector. I do not know of any sustainably profitable power company that is operating in that area. It also probably explains why Musk is thinking of things like Solarcity and Powerwall. hint: Search "Global Demand for Li batteries" in Google images to see various charts.
- macspoofing 10y agoCan Lithium battery supply even meet the demand if a significant portion of the auto market switches to electric?
- Brakenshire 10y agoWe'll find out! The lesson from oil and gas is that people find ways once the price goes up and the demand is there. Lithium is very abundant. Do we know what percentage of the cost of the battery comes from material costs?
- Gibbon1 10y agoWell 'the internet' says a Tesla Model S battery contains about 11.7 kg or 14.2 kg of lithium. Currently lithium carbonate is $6500/ton. Molar mass is ~74 which is 14/74 = 19% percent lithium. So I'd assume it costs $30/kg $35/kg X 12kg -> $420 On the other hand the Nissan Leaf contains 4kg or $140 worth. I'm pretty sure a sustainable increase demand will bring more lithium onto the market.
- Brakenshire 10y agoVery interesting, thanks for doing that calculation. Lithium should scale directly with storage capacity, so despite technological improvements in kWh per unit weight or volume, that should stay relatively constant. So there is a relatively hard limit here for price reductions.
- tajen 10y agoIt will have to: Car makers will have to compete with the same amounts of production. Owning a petrol car at the time of global warming doesn't make you the boss anymore.
- OliverJones 10y agoUS$145 / kWh -- GM's late 2015 price for Volt / Bolt power -- is OK. But the differential in price, in New England where I live, between peak and offpeak electricity, is US$0.027 (2.7 cents) per kWh. I worked it out: my investment in a battery setup at those rates would take about 17 years to pay off: far too long. If we want this to work, we need a smart grid: a grid that can announce pricing based on current costs. Then we need baseload electricity costs (hydro, nuclear, gas, coal) to be significantly lower than peakload (fuel oil, Storm-King style pumped gravity storage) costs. The smarts for a household energy storage system wouldn't be hard to work out IF the grid were smart enough to advertise present costs, and meters were smart enough to bill for present costs. My Power Wall could charge with cheap power and run my lights during a nasty summer brownout. I understand they're experimenting in Europe with announcing prices using the FM radio sub channels now used to display song names. That's interesting.
- snowwindwaves 10y agoThe real time electricity price for several states is published.[1] Sounds like you need a smart device not a smart grid. Lots of utilities have adopted smart meters, Ontario and British Columbia certainly have. I don't know as much about the states. 1: http://www.nyiso.com/public/markets_operations/market_data/pricing_data/index.jsp http://www.nyiso.com/public/markets_operations/market_data/p...
- Zigurd 10y agoHear, hear! Be very skeptical when an industry wants to go from dumb to "smart." They want you to remain captive. They want to resist margin pressure as they get ridiculously past merely "mature." They want to resist becoming the transitional backup system for a "smart edge." Newly built grids, and peak capacity will be lighter, cheaper, and local. These trends will be spotted in developing nations first, where the grid providers are unable to keep up with new demand, but they will hit mature grids, too, because they will cost less.
- pmarreck 10y agoTesla is going to be a gigantic company one day. Disclaimer: I own one (Model S P85+, about 2 years old). And everyone I let drive it (yes, I am crazy enough to do that... As a fan who pushes the bleeding edge, it's important to share the experience in order to change minds... Anyway, my insurance covers me even when I'm a passenger!) cannot stop talking about it afterwards. I actually think Tesla's market is limited right now not only by the people who can't afford one, but by the people who haven't even had the opportunity to drive one yet and have thus not yet had their eyes opened... Driving is believing. If you have any opportunity at all to experience driving one... Do not hesitate. It makes everything else feel like a noisy clunker. The older guys I let drive it, like the real car guys of old... they have the best reactions. The look of shock and disbelief on their faces... The stories they start telling about their first muscle cars... The whooping and "OH MY GOD"'s and whatnot... It's totally awesome
- dreamcompiler 10y agoI test drove one. Just driving it normally (as I would any high-performance sports car), I scared the hell out of the sales lady. It's the best-engineered car I've ever driven. The Germans are going to have to up their game because of Tesla.
- Joeri 10y agoMy favorite demo of the Tesla's impressive engineering is the race of a Tesla X against an Alfa Romeo, with the Tesla pulling a trailer with another Alfa Romeo. http://electrek.co/2016/03/21/tesla-drag-race-alfa-romeo-vs-alfa-romeo-towed-by-model-x/ http://electrek.co/2016/03/21/tesla-drag-race-alfa-romeo-vs-...
- tajen 10y agoHow do you deal with the 8-year limited lifetime? I evaluate a Tesla at 4x the cost of a normal car: I can get a new car for €15k lasting 15 years with a lively second market, Teslas are ~€30k, with free supercharger network, and 8 years warranty but no road license after that, and no second-hand market for spare pieces. Have you calculated the total cost of ownership (including insurance and free petrol) and how did it compete with other cars?
- bunkydoo 10y agoThe big problem lies still in the fact that most electricity is generated from coal and nuclear. Every Tesla on the road today is effectively a coal powered car with the potential to be converted to green energy. Solar panels likely being the equilibrium. But the decline in battery cost is good, means it won't be long before they stop losing 1k on every car sold
- dmix 10y agoDepending where you live and draw energy from it could very well be 90%+ renewable energy (such as a few European countries and most of Ontario/Quebec from hydro). The IEA/OCED world energy production sources for 2015 [1]J: 41.3% Coal 21.7% Natural gas 16.3% Hydro 10.6% Nuclear 5.7% Other 4.4% Oil And given the improvements in batteries and solar these numbers will continue to shift away from coal. Additionally, you could also invest in a solar setup at your own house and Tesla is working on converting Supercharger stations to solar [2]. [1] http://www.iea.org/publications/freepublications/publication/key-world-energy-statistics-2015.html http://www.iea.org/publications/freepublications/publication... [2] http://www.greencarreports.com/news/1096926_teslas-first-solar-powered-supercharger-store-service-center-is-almost-ready http://www.greencarreports.com/news/1096926_teslas-first-sol...
- will_hughes 10y agoYou seem to be repeating the same falsehoods commonly quoted around Tesla stories. > Every Tesla on the road today is effectively a coal powered car Assuming that your energy is entirely produced by brown coal power plants, then even powering your electric car is still more efficient (and thus cleaner) than running a petrol car. Power generation sources varies wildly depending on region - Nuclear, Gas and Hydro are big contributors in many areas. Wind and Solar in others. > losing 1k on every car sold you're conflating the profit on selling cars vs company profit. They make a profit on the sale of each Model S/X, they're investing a lot of money into expanding production.
- hetman 10y agoPower plants are a lot more efficient at extracting energy out of fossil fuels than your internal combustion engine. Even factoring in the efficiency of power generation, power distribution and your EV's electric motor... you're still polluting the environment less with an EV than pouring petrol directly into your traditional car.
- ChuckMcM 10y agoI would love to see $100 kWh batteries. Worst case, my house uses 30kWh a day in electricity so 90kWh would be a 3 day+ UPS for the house. Update the solar on my roof and be off grid for an addition $9K in batteries? That would be totally doable for me. I think it would be hilarious if houses went back to just having a gas hookup like it was prior to the spread of electricity.
- dovdov 10y agoIf people pay $35k for a compact car, why would you sell it cheaper? Now Tesla introduced the Model 3, I'd bet we'll see a $25k Leaf next year with better range. It's business, don't blame it on the sub-par 25 year old technology batteries.
- teslaberry 10y agoif you want electric cars to scale, you must RAISE GASOLINE TAXES AND ELIMINATE ELECTRICITY ( CARBON TAXES ). EXXON has decided to support the global warming narrative and lobby for carbon taxes because it ensures that gasoline is NOT TAXED 'DOWNSTREAM'. gasoline is being treated equal to other sources of 'carbon' on an upstream basis, such that natural gas is taxed like petroleum and coal is taxed even more. coal being the CHEAPEST SOURCE OF ELECTRICITY. so you are seeing gasoline companies ensure decades of stagnant technological uptake to the market by ensuring electricity prices go up, electricity supply becomes more scarce (through tax and regulation) and gasoline stays shit ass cheap and low taxed and in good supply. if only all you environmentalists understood this.