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Batteries are not transistors. Their input costs are skyrocketing, and sure enough the end costs of batteries are now starting to rise, too [1]. It's dishonest
by Manuel_D 4y ago
Batteries are not transistors. Their input costs are skyrocketing, and sure enough the end costs of batteries are now starting to rise, too [1]. It's dishonest to pretend that continued exponential growth is guaranteed.
The cost of an automobile shrank from a million dollars inflation adjusted to a hundred thousand over the course of the 1900s. Assembly line manufacturing continued to shrink this down to $10,000 by 1920. Would it be safe to assume that a car would cost $1 by the end of the century given the past rate of a 10x drop in price every two decades?
The reality is that most products are not transistors. They don't get better when you make them smaller. A car will always contain a certain mass of metal, and will not cheaper than the cost of that input. Manufacturing already accounts for under a quarter of a battery's cost. The rest is dominated by cathode and anode material [2]. Battery manufacturing had already become a resource extraction problem.
1. https://about.bnef.com/blog/lithium-ion-battery-pack-prices-rise-for-first-time-to-an-average-of-151-kwh/#:~:text=After%20more%20than%20a%20decade,last%20year%20in%20real%20terms https://about.bnef.com/blog/lithium-ion-battery-pack-prices-...
2. https://www.visualcapitalist.com/breaking-down-the-cost-of-an-ev-battery-cell/ https://www.visualcapitalist.com/breaking-down-the-cost-of-a...
- coder543 4y agoYou could not be more wrong about batteries. You made a huge error about the cost percentage that lithium makes up. It’s possible — just possible — that other people have researched batteries too, and maybe they have a better sense of where the industry is going. It makes no sense to assume that we’ve reached “peak battery”, at all. Continuing this argument is pointless, and really does seem like you’re choosing to ignore reality. I’m done with this conversation.
- Manuel_D 4y ago> You made a huge error about the cost percentage that lithium makes up. Care to explain? I'm always intrigued by commenters asserting that an error has been made, yet neglect to explain the error.
- coder543 4y agoI already responded to you elsewhere. Perhaps you ignored it? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34460846 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34460846 Cathodes are not a giant chunk of elemental lithium, as you believe.
- Manuel_D 4y agoBut lithium still dominates the cost of the cathode. Iron is not the main driver of battery expenses.
- coder543 4y ago13% is not 50%. It makes a huge difference in the cost scaling under discussion. In fact, nickel dominates the cost of the cathode, in case you missed what I had posted. But there are nickel-free chemistries out there.
- Manuel_D 4y agoAnd for those nickel-free battery chemistries, what inputs are the main cost drivers? And as per my response, nickel is also experiencing shortages and cost spikes. My core assertion remains true regardless of the fact that different chemistries require different inputs: battery production has become a resource extraction problem, rather than a manufacturing problem. Unless we find a way to somehow make mining exponentially more efficient, we're not going to be seeing exponential growth in battery production.
- moloch-hai 4y agoYour core assertion remains false because (1) lithium is not the only battery chemistry, and (2) batteries are not the only, or even cheapest, storage technology. CAT-L, the biggest battery maker in the world, is today ramping up sodium battery production capacity. Will you now insist on a sodium supply bottleneck?