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4x 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 batte

by mtgx 10y ago

4x 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 ago
Batteries are the secret to most of the cool "sci-fi" tech we all want but currently can't have.
- macintux 10y ago
  Hmm. I think fusion is more important, but I'll take what I can get.
  - daxorid 10y ago
    We have fusion, 1 AU away. Utility PV gives us an EROEI or around 11. That's good enough, such that a focus on storing the output trumps the development of more abundant local production.
    - macintux 10y ago
      The sci-fi I'm most interested is a lot more distant than 1 AU.
- walrus01 10y ago
  Not 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 ago
That is indeed very good progress. Elon Musk mentioned recently that he expects a yearly capacity increase of 5% for the foreseeable future.
- mtgx 10y ago
  I 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.