Those modest yearly increases in battery capacity and drops in production costs add up. After a while, a use case that needed the batteries with all the downsid

Those modest yearly increases in battery capacity and drops in production costs add up. After a while, a use case that needed the batteries with all the downsides can get by with a safer, more affordable battery that wouldn't have enough juice 20 years before. It's a much slower version of the phenomenon we see in computing power. Eventually, even a slow CPU can do what only a top end desktop CPU could do 20 years ago. The phrase "range anxiety" has been with us for almost 25 years, so it's about time.