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“Tax companies unless they break the laws of physics”

• adrr 7y ago
  Batteries retaining 80% capacity after 4 years of use is defying the law of physics? I am pretty sure battery longevity isn't constrained by physics. Lithium batteries in the Tesla last more cycles than the ones in your phone. Why because, Tesla warranties the battery for 8 years. Cell phone manufacturers just need the battery to last 1 year so they don't care. And for people who downvote me, the reason we removed mercury/cadmium from batteries was during 90s government threatened to heavily tax batteries. Car industry in EU is also heavily influenced by penalties around gas mileage.
  • kitsunesoba 7y ago
    The difference is that Teslas are much much larger than a phone which gives ample room for advanced cooling systems which prevent the heat buildup that kills lithium ion batteries. The only way to get a similar number of cycles with a phone battery would be to put a large heat sink and possibly a fan on the phone’s SoC and battery or to permanently throttle the SoC so that it never gets hot, even when all cores are maxed out. Essentially, the choice would be a brick-like phone or a phone that runs like it‘s a decade old. Neither seems like the sort of compromise consumers outside of a small niche would buy. Of course in the future we may see battery chemistries that aren’t so sensitive to heat, but no such battery is on the market currently.
• perl4ever 7y ago
  Well, I imagine you can always improve that statistic by simply making the battery, say, twice as large and not using most of the capacity. I recall reading that Toyota did that to make the Prius reliable and long-lived. It would be a valid objection to ask if that is really advancing environmental goals, I suppose.