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I want your points to be true, but there is NOTHING in history to indicate batteries will see an increase in capacity/decrease in cost similar to other technolo

I want your points to be true, but there is NOTHING in history to indicate batteries will see an increase in capacity/decrease in cost similar to other technology products. It's tempting to believe that all problems are soluble, but it's totally possible for there to be a problem, like "cheap, dense, durable energy storage" that ends up being more than humans are capable of solving.

revelation 10y ago
Then you missed Lithium batteries, which were more than a 2x improvement on state of the art. But in any case, batteries are good enough today.
philipkglass 10y ago
AFAICT the batteries used in today's EVs are already durable enough and energy-dense enough for mass adoption. The #1 obstacle to EVs becoming truly mainstream is battery cost. Most of EV battery cost is still in manufacturing rather than raw materials. Most manufactured products become significantly cheaper to manufacture as production scale increases. EV battery production scale is increasing significantly in the next few years. I am therefore cautiously optimistic that battery production costs can decline significantly even without fundamental changes in battery chemistry.
tim333 10y ago
Batteries are falling in price rapidly and will probably continue to do so. Some data here https://cleantechnica.com/2015/03/26/ev-battery-costs-already-probably-cheaper-than-2020-projections/ https://cleantechnica.com/2015/03/26/ev-battery-costs-alread... I don't know if you need a huge increase in capacity/kg - present Telsas work ok but are expensive. I'd be surprised if costs don't fall considerably. As to falls vs similar tech products I'm not sure which tech products you'd compare them to. They'll probably fall in price slower than memory chips and faster than railway lines for example.
tedsanders 10y ago
Sorry you're being downvoted. On the capacity front, I think your caution is very well founded. Since their commercial release 25 years ago, lithium ion batteries have only increased in energy density by like 2.5x. The vast improvement in battery life of electronics has come from the electronics, not from the batteries. And lithium ion is already near (within an order of magnitude) of its ultimate theoretical potential. Future progress here is going to get harder and harder. No battery expert I know expects future progress to be as fast as past progress. However, on the cost front, I think there's less reason to be pessimistic. Here the limit is more economics, and less physics. As the scale of production has risen, costs have fallen substantially over the past couple decades. And over the next few years, world lithium ion production is set to triple again with the Gigafactory and others coming online. How much cost savings this brings is uncertain, but there's no theoretical reason that greater automation and scale won't continue to push costs down. tl;dr: Non-chemists are too optimistic about technical progress in batteries. Future progress will almost certainly be slower. But there are no physical limits preventing prices from continuing to drop with experience and scale.

revelation 10y ago

Then you missed Lithium batteries, which were more than a 2x improvement on state of the art. But in any case, batteries are good enough today.

philipkglass 10y ago

AFAICT the batteries used in today's EVs are already durable enough and energy-dense enough for mass adoption. The #1 obstacle to EVs becoming truly mainstream is battery cost. Most of EV battery cost is still in manufacturing rather than raw materials. Most manufactured products become significantly cheaper to manufacture as production scale increases. EV battery production scale is increasing significantly in the next few years. I am therefore cautiously optimistic that battery production costs can decline significantly even without fundamental changes in battery chemistry.

tim333 10y ago

Batteries are falling in price rapidly and will probably continue to do so. Some data here https://cleantechnica.com/2015/03/26/ev-battery-costs-already-probably-cheaper-than-2020-projections/ https://cleantechnica.com/2015/03/26/ev-battery-costs-alread... I don't know if you need a huge increase in capacity/kg - present Telsas work ok but are expensive. I'd be surprised if costs don't fall considerably. As to falls vs similar tech products I'm not sure which tech products you'd compare them to. They'll probably fall in price slower than memory chips and faster than railway lines for example.

tedsanders 10y ago

Sorry you're being downvoted. On the capacity front, I think your caution is very well founded. Since their commercial release 25 years ago, lithium ion batteries have only increased in energy density by like 2.5x. The vast improvement in battery life of electronics has come from the electronics, not from the batteries. And lithium ion is already near (within an order of magnitude) of its ultimate theoretical potential. Future progress here is going to get harder and harder. No battery expert I know expects future progress to be as fast as past progress. However, on the cost front, I think there's less reason to be pessimistic. Here the limit is more economics, and less physics. As the scale of production has risen, costs have fallen substantially over the past couple decades. And over the next few years, world lithium ion production is set to triple again with the Gigafactory and others coming online. How much cost savings this brings is uncertain, but there's no theoretical reason that greater automation and scale won't continue to push costs down. tl;dr: Non-chemists are too optimistic about technical progress in batteries. Future progress will almost certainly be slower. But there are no physical limits preventing prices from continuing to drop with experience and scale.