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> But when batteries cost less than $100 per kWh You were already able to get LFP batteries outside of China for a bit cheaper than that for 2 years at car mak

> But when batteries cost less than $100 per kWh You were already able to get LFP batteries outside of China for a bit cheaper than that for 2 years at car maker wholesale quantities. Battery cells plummeted as a part of vehicle cost. The cheapest cost I ever heard quoted in China was $64 per kw/h. I don't preclude that battery makers with own car factories like BYD have real costs around $30-$40. Taking cost at $40, BYD Dolphin had $1200 in it, comparable to costs economy class IC cars have in their whole powertrain. But EV vehicles are on overall easier to engineer. Part counts of EVs are much smaller than IC cars. More importantly, you can deliver satisfying driving experience with much smaller car if you use electric traction, while <999cc engines will have small powerbands no matter what amount of smarts is added to their ECUs. I always tell that 1-to-1 IC, and EV comparisons make little sense. EVs are a whole different class of vehicles.

coryrc 5y ago
I have bought shipments of 15kwh of LFP (Thundersky, SkyEnergy) for $0.5/kwh, delivered to USA, ten years ago. (EV conversions)
- pbasista 5y ago
  > $0.5/kwh This seems to be wrong by an order of magnitude. $500/kWh is more plausible at that time. Otherwise you are claiming that you paid $7.5 for a 15 kWh worth of cells, including the shipping, in ~2010.
  - coryrc 5y ago
    Oh, yes, wrong units. $0.5/Wh => $500/kWh Hmm, so $100/kWh is really good!
geokon 5y ago
Any idea what the depreciation on batteries is? If you "used up" battery that's due to be sent to the recycler, How much of that 1200 could you hope to recoup? (I assume a power train can only be sold for scrap for a tiny fraction)
- baybal2 5y ago
  Bus batteries age very gracefully, but regular car often go to scrapper along with the vehicle. I don't know why. I often see second hand cells from electric busses on 1688.
  - algo_trader 5y ago
    > second hand cells from electric busses on 1688 Can u give more details? Where is a good place to buy some 2nd hand LFPs for trial projects, ~50-500kwh quantities
    - baybal2 5y ago
      1688.com
- elihu 5y ago
  If it's an LFP battery, I think those are pretty easy to recycle but the materials weren't worth much to begin with. It's mostly just lithium, plastic, aluminum, fertilizer, iron, probably graphite, and copper.
  - geokon 5y ago
    Is it not the lithium that makes up the bulk of the 1200 price tag?
    - elihu 5y ago
      I don't think so, but I don't have specifics. There's some sources that a typical Tesla battery pack might have about 10-12 or so kg of lithium. LFP is a different chemistry, so it might have a different proportion of lithium but it's probably not hugely different. Lithium isn't particularly expensive (though it might become expensive in the future if demand goes up and production does not).
    - Tuna-Fish 5y ago
      Absolutely not, and I have no idea why people think it does. It's like there's lithium in the name, so people instantly assume that it makes up a substantial portion of the cost. It does not. Lithium is cheap, currently lithium hydroxide is at ~30$/kg. Of the total cost of a typical LFP battery, the lithium is ~2%. The rest of the materials round up to ~10%, the bulk of the cost is capital and labor.
elihu 5y ago
I think patent licensing is a bit of a concern. As I understand it, a lot of the big battery manufacturers in China have an agreement that the don't need to pay licensing fees for batteries used domestically, but if a major car manufacturer wanted to import LFP cells to, say, the U.S. they might have to pay the licensing fees or risk getting sued. (That might not be 100% correct, I'm kind of piecing things together from random Internet sources.) That may be moot soon as the relevant patents expire, which could change the battery landscape hugely (I hope). Another thing is that not all LFPs are necessarily ideal for automotive use. For instance, batteries that can only safely discharge at 1C might be a bad idea to use unless the vehicle has a large enough battery pack that the load is spread out over a lot of cells. So, price isn't everything. Obviously, high energy density is also much desired for use in cars. That said, I think LFPs are probably the ideal technology right now for replacing most of the world's combustion-engine ground transportation infrastructure with battery-electric vehicles. We just need to manufacture them at the necessary scale, and right now it's only China that's doing it. (It's like if Saudi Arabia discovered oil and the rest of the world said, "Well, I guess Saudi Arabia just owns the whole oil market. No reason to invest in it ourselves, because we can just get it from KSA." In the 20th century that would have obviously been a strategic blunder, but that's what the world is basically doing now with batteries. Whoever can make batteries cheaper than everyone else can use that to dominate the energy industry going forward. Fortunately there are fewer moats; anyone can make batteries if they can get the ingredients, and LFP ingredients are mostly not that rare except maybe lithium and copper.)
- gibolt 5y ago
  IIRC, global LFP patents are due to expire in the next year or two, allowing production everywhere. LFP is great for cheaper vehicles and awesome for grid storage (which is not weight sensitive). The vast majority of batteries in the near-term transition will be LFP due to their common materials and super cheap cost.
  - guerby 5y ago
    Looks like the important ones have expired already: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_GtSA4Ig9s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_GtSA4Ig9s "A Brief History of LFP, Patents, Licencing Costs, Pricing // and Tesla" by The Limiting Factor
tda 5y ago
Meanwhile a 1kW/h battery for an e-bike can still retail for $2000 (thinking of the Stromer BQ983). Surprises me how long it takes for these prices to tickle down into normal consumer goods. But they will, the true revolution of electric assisted urban transport has only just begun. Really exciting to see all the wacky new transport modes that are created left and right, I wonder which ones will stick
- NavinF 5y ago
  Consumer goods have all sorts of regulatory barriers to get through and you’re paying for it. If you get a spot welder and buy cylindrical cells wholesale, you can build dirt cheap li-ion packs. LFP really doesn’t buy you any safety for such a tiny (1kWh) pack.
- baybal2 5y ago
  Tiny branded cellphone batteries used to retail for $100+ 20 years ago.
- patrickk 5y ago
  Almost all e-bike batteries sold to consumers are ridiculously overpriced[1] relative to their components. Especially those from reputable brands like Bosch and Shimano which supplies most of the better e-bike brands on the street. It’s a combination of having relatively well-off consumers, who lack the time/knowledge to start messing with their expensive machines and lack of generic spare parts due to the likes of Bosch locking down their components, and creating specialised computers (similar to how modern cars work) so that only authorised repair shops can work on them. [1] https://ampedcycling.com/e-bike-battery-prices-what-can-i-expect-to-pay/ https://ampedcycling.com/e-bike-battery-prices-what-can-i-ex...
  - tda 5y ago
    But for anyone that can break the protection and manufacture a somewhat descent generic replacement battery the potential profit is enormous. I am sure some Chinese are well aware and hard at work on circumventing the DRM
semi-extrinsic 5y ago
The size of the car is in no way constrained by the engine size. People swap V8s into Miatas all the time. You can do a K24 swap into a Honda Fit without changing any bodywork. Vehicle size is entirely determined by market segment, design, and collision safety. As for small engines, Fiat's 0.9 TwinAir is enjoyable once you get rid of the factory tune that is super-optimized for low emissions in the official tests at the expense of driveability. It even has extra-low rev limiters in the first three gears. Starting from the 105 bhp version you can get 120 bhp and 200 Nm of torque with only ECU tuning and removing baffles from the airbox, makes it a fun little thing.
- baybal2 5y ago
  > The size of the car is in no way constrained by the engine size. It is. Nobody will buy a full-sized sedan with 800cc engine, unless you are in China. There are a minimal size powertrains a car body need to be able to house for its size to be sellable. The matter is you can put much smaller, and cheaper EV powertrains relative to the body size/weight for a much better driving experience. You can use freed space to pile in extra niceties, which would've required bigger body size for an IC powered car, thus necessitating bigger, more expensive powertrain. The attraction of hybrids was exactly that you can get a crap engine to provide driving quality of a much more expensive setup, like a good V6, or entry level V8 at lower cost, in a smaller car. But "just better" is the worst enemy of good enough. You can throw away the whole IC altogether, and provide a 3L+ I6 experience in a micro car.
  - semi-extrinsic 5y ago
    But why would you put an 800cc engine in a full-sized sedan? You have plenty of room to fit a decent turbocharged two-liter four-cylinder. And there is no way EVs need less space for battery + motors in total. Have you seen the size of a Model X battery pack? Only difference is they typically use space below the floor of the car, rather than in front. They are typically a bit wider than ICE cars to compensate and give sufficient interior space.
    - baybal2 5y ago
wcoenen 5y ago
> $64 per kw/h Putting a slash in the unit there makes this read as "kilowatt per hour", which really doesn't make sense. Think of it as the power the battery can continuously provide (in kilowatt) multiplied (not divided!) by the time it can sustain that power (in hours). Hence "kWh", "kilowatt hour".
- underdeserver 5y ago
  In other words theoretically a 100 kWh battery could supply 100 kW for an hour, or 200 kW for half an hour, or 2 kW for 50 hours.
- vbezhenar 5y ago
  It's kW⋅h.

coryrc 5y ago

I have bought shipments of 15kwh of LFP (Thundersky, SkyEnergy) for $0.5/kwh, delivered to USA, ten years ago. (EV conversions)

pbasista 5y ago
> $0.5/kwh This seems to be wrong by an order of magnitude. $500/kWh is more plausible at that time. Otherwise you are claiming that you paid $7.5 for a 15 kWh worth of cells, including the shipping, in ~2010.
- coryrc 5y ago
  Oh, yes, wrong units. $0.5/Wh => $500/kWh Hmm, so $100/kWh is really good!

geokon 5y ago

Any idea what the depreciation on batteries is? If you "used up" battery that's due to be sent to the recycler, How much of that 1200 could you hope to recoup? (I assume a power train can only be sold for scrap for a tiny fraction)

baybal2 5y ago
Bus batteries age very gracefully, but regular car often go to scrapper along with the vehicle. I don't know why. I often see second hand cells from electric busses on 1688.
- algo_trader 5y ago
  > second hand cells from electric busses on 1688 Can u give more details? Where is a good place to buy some 2nd hand LFPs for trial projects, ~50-500kwh quantities
  - baybal2 5y ago
    1688.com
elihu 5y ago
If it's an LFP battery, I think those are pretty easy to recycle but the materials weren't worth much to begin with. It's mostly just lithium, plastic, aluminum, fertilizer, iron, probably graphite, and copper.
- geokon 5y ago
  Is it not the lithium that makes up the bulk of the 1200 price tag?
  - elihu 5y ago
    I don't think so, but I don't have specifics. There's some sources that a typical Tesla battery pack might have about 10-12 or so kg of lithium. LFP is a different chemistry, so it might have a different proportion of lithium but it's probably not hugely different. Lithium isn't particularly expensive (though it might become expensive in the future if demand goes up and production does not).
  - Tuna-Fish 5y ago
    Absolutely not, and I have no idea why people think it does. It's like there's lithium in the name, so people instantly assume that it makes up a substantial portion of the cost. It does not. Lithium is cheap, currently lithium hydroxide is at ~30$/kg. Of the total cost of a typical LFP battery, the lithium is ~2%. The rest of the materials round up to ~10%, the bulk of the cost is capital and labor.

elihu 5y ago

I think patent licensing is a bit of a concern. As I understand it, a lot of the big battery manufacturers in China have an agreement that the don't need to pay licensing fees for batteries used domestically, but if a major car manufacturer wanted to import LFP cells to, say, the U.S. they might have to pay the licensing fees or risk getting sued. (That might not be 100% correct, I'm kind of piecing things together from random Internet sources.) That may be moot soon as the relevant patents expire, which could change the battery landscape hugely (I hope). Another thing is that not all LFPs are necessarily ideal for automotive use. For instance, batteries that can only safely discharge at 1C might be a bad idea to use unless the vehicle has a large enough battery pack that the load is spread out over a lot of cells. So, price isn't everything. Obviously, high energy density is also much desired for use in cars. That said, I think LFPs are probably the ideal technology right now for replacing most of the world's combustion-engine ground transportation infrastructure with battery-electric vehicles. We just need to manufacture them at the necessary scale, and right now it's only China that's doing it. (It's like if Saudi Arabia discovered oil and the rest of the world said, "Well, I guess Saudi Arabia just owns the whole oil market. No reason to invest in it ourselves, because we can just get it from KSA." In the 20th century that would have obviously been a strategic blunder, but that's what the world is basically doing now with batteries. Whoever can make batteries cheaper than everyone else can use that to dominate the energy industry going forward. Fortunately there are fewer moats; anyone can make batteries if they can get the ingredients, and LFP ingredients are mostly not that rare except maybe lithium and copper.)

gibolt 5y ago
IIRC, global LFP patents are due to expire in the next year or two, allowing production everywhere. LFP is great for cheaper vehicles and awesome for grid storage (which is not weight sensitive). The vast majority of batteries in the near-term transition will be LFP due to their common materials and super cheap cost.
- guerby 5y ago
  Looks like the important ones have expired already: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_GtSA4Ig9s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_GtSA4Ig9s "A Brief History of LFP, Patents, Licencing Costs, Pricing // and Tesla" by The Limiting Factor

tda 5y ago

Meanwhile a 1kW/h battery for an e-bike can still retail for $2000 (thinking of the Stromer BQ983). Surprises me how long it takes for these prices to tickle down into normal consumer goods. But they will, the true revolution of electric assisted urban transport has only just begun. Really exciting to see all the wacky new transport modes that are created left and right, I wonder which ones will stick

NavinF 5y ago
Consumer goods have all sorts of regulatory barriers to get through and you’re paying for it. If you get a spot welder and buy cylindrical cells wholesale, you can build dirt cheap li-ion packs. LFP really doesn’t buy you any safety for such a tiny (1kWh) pack.
baybal2 5y ago
Tiny branded cellphone batteries used to retail for $100+ 20 years ago.
patrickk 5y ago
Almost all e-bike batteries sold to consumers are ridiculously overpriced[1] relative to their components. Especially those from reputable brands like Bosch and Shimano which supplies most of the better e-bike brands on the street. It’s a combination of having relatively well-off consumers, who lack the time/knowledge to start messing with their expensive machines and lack of generic spare parts due to the likes of Bosch locking down their components, and creating specialised computers (similar to how modern cars work) so that only authorised repair shops can work on them. [1] https://ampedcycling.com/e-bike-battery-prices-what-can-i-expect-to-pay/ https://ampedcycling.com/e-bike-battery-prices-what-can-i-ex...
- tda 5y ago
  But for anyone that can break the protection and manufacture a somewhat descent generic replacement battery the potential profit is enormous. I am sure some Chinese are well aware and hard at work on circumventing the DRM

semi-extrinsic 5y ago

The size of the car is in no way constrained by the engine size. People swap V8s into Miatas all the time. You can do a K24 swap into a Honda Fit without changing any bodywork. Vehicle size is entirely determined by market segment, design, and collision safety. As for small engines, Fiat's 0.9 TwinAir is enjoyable once you get rid of the factory tune that is super-optimized for low emissions in the official tests at the expense of driveability. It even has extra-low rev limiters in the first three gears. Starting from the 105 bhp version you can get 120 bhp and 200 Nm of torque with only ECU tuning and removing baffles from the airbox, makes it a fun little thing.

baybal2 5y ago
> The size of the car is in no way constrained by the engine size. It is. Nobody will buy a full-sized sedan with 800cc engine, unless you are in China. There are a minimal size powertrains a car body need to be able to house for its size to be sellable. The matter is you can put much smaller, and cheaper EV powertrains relative to the body size/weight for a much better driving experience. You can use freed space to pile in extra niceties, which would've required bigger body size for an IC powered car, thus necessitating bigger, more expensive powertrain. The attraction of hybrids was exactly that you can get a crap engine to provide driving quality of a much more expensive setup, like a good V6, or entry level V8 at lower cost, in a smaller car. But "just better" is the worst enemy of good enough. You can throw away the whole IC altogether, and provide a 3L+ I6 experience in a micro car.
- semi-extrinsic 5y ago
  But why would you put an 800cc engine in a full-sized sedan? You have plenty of room to fit a decent turbocharged two-liter four-cylinder. And there is no way EVs need less space for battery + motors in total. Have you seen the size of a Model X battery pack? Only difference is they typically use space below the floor of the car, rather than in front. They are typically a bit wider than ICE cars to compensate and give sufficient interior space.
  - baybal2 5y ago

wcoenen 5y ago

> $64 per kw/h Putting a slash in the unit there makes this read as "kilowatt per hour", which really doesn't make sense. Think of it as the power the battery can continuously provide (in kilowatt) multiplied (not divided!) by the time it can sustain that power (in hours). Hence "kWh", "kilowatt hour".

underdeserver 5y ago
In other words theoretically a 100 kWh battery could supply 100 kW for an hour, or 200 kW for half an hour, or 2 kW for 50 hours.
vbezhenar 5y ago
It's kW⋅h.