3 ms·

So what's the tech that was making this decade of the battery possible? I remember 10 years ago reading lots of articles that battery is and will be the bottlen

by mcmoor 2y ago

So what's the tech that was making this decade of the battery possible? I remember 10 years ago reading lots of articles that battery is and will be the bottleneck for the next 20-30 years, but now in only 10 years looks like it's solved already (?). Is there a revolutionary tech that was missed by people 10 years ago? It feels like if suddenly fusion is here.

tjoff 2y ago
Economics of scale and an absurd amount of investments I guess? There seems to be many synergies around using energy storage in batteries for transportation.
louwrentius 2y ago
I don't think it's about technology here. It's about economics. Electric cars (credits to Tesla), especially the first generation basically used a ton of the same cells found in (some) laptops. The demand for electric cars, thus batteries fuelled a huge increase in manufacturing capacity, which dropped prices. And maybe I'm wrong but the cheaper batteries made drones more affordable, so that industry got a boost with investment. A lot of things aren't limited by technology, but by capital and market incentives. Which to me actually shows the limitations of this system as we could have had electric cars decades ago. We could have had this revolution decades ago. What a different world we would have had.
- coderenegade 2y ago
  The boom in drones predates the EV. The main driver there was the development of better IMUs for smart phones.
sanderjd 2y ago
I think the other commenters are mostly right but also downplaying the technology advances a bit. The basics of the battery chemistries that are making this work existed two or three decades ago, but there have also been meaningful breakthroughs in the specific components during that time, that (I think) eventually pushed the viability over a tipping point. In 2004, I think it would have been reasonable to think that EVs would always be a niche for small short range "commuting cars". I remember thinking this, and being excited about even that possibility! But now I frequently see these big Rivian trucks and SUVs driving around, and I know their range is similar to a tank of gas. That seems pretty crazy to me! And it wasn't just the economics of scale that has made that work. In the case of stationary batteries, I think just the economics driving the price down has indeed been the most important factor, but something else I haven't seen anybody mention yet is that it also has a lot to do with solar barreling down its cost curve, kicking off massive deployment, to the point that it is a fairly common occurrence now for some locations on some grids at some times of some days to have negative power prices due to solar over-production. Batteries are excellent at sopping up extra power that would have otherwise gone nowhere (or to crypto mining perhaps, but maybe I'm repeating myself).

by mcmoor 2y ago

tjoff 2y ago

Economics of scale and an absurd amount of investments I guess? There seems to be many synergies around using energy storage in batteries for transportation.

louwrentius 2y ago

I don't think it's about technology here. It's about economics. Electric cars (credits to Tesla), especially the first generation basically used a ton of the same cells found in (some) laptops. The demand for electric cars, thus batteries fuelled a huge increase in manufacturing capacity, which dropped prices. And maybe I'm wrong but the cheaper batteries made drones more affordable, so that industry got a boost with investment. A lot of things aren't limited by technology, but by capital and market incentives. Which to me actually shows the limitations of this system as we could have had electric cars decades ago. We could have had this revolution decades ago. What a different world we would have had.

coderenegade 2y ago
The boom in drones predates the EV. The main driver there was the development of better IMUs for smart phones.

sanderjd 2y ago

I think the other commenters are mostly right but also downplaying the technology advances a bit. The basics of the battery chemistries that are making this work existed two or three decades ago, but there have also been meaningful breakthroughs in the specific components during that time, that (I think) eventually pushed the viability over a tipping point. In 2004, I think it would have been reasonable to think that EVs would always be a niche for small short range "commuting cars". I remember thinking this, and being excited about even that possibility! But now I frequently see these big Rivian trucks and SUVs driving around, and I know their range is similar to a tank of gas. That seems pretty crazy to me! And it wasn't just the economics of scale that has made that work. In the case of stationary batteries, I think just the economics driving the price down has indeed been the most important factor, but something else I haven't seen anybody mention yet is that it also has a lot to do with solar barreling down its cost curve, kicking off massive deployment, to the point that it is a fairly common occurrence now for some locations on some grids at some times of some days to have negative power prices due to solar over-production. Batteries are excellent at sopping up extra power that would have otherwise gone nowhere (or to crypto mining perhaps, but maybe I'm repeating myself).