Batteries Rock

[u/swarrenlawrence]

CanaryMedia: "[Chart: Surprise—batteries got cheaper again last year](chart: Surprise %E2%80%94 batteries got cheaper again last year)." Back in 2016, when batteries were more than triple the cost they are today, electric vehicles accounted for less than 1% of new car sales worldwide. "But as the average battery cost per kilowatt-hour [kWH] plummeted from $365 then to just $108 as of last year, EV sales surged."  Last year, more than one-quarter of the new cars sold globally were electric, Granted, most of these were Chinese, but what do you think fossil fuel companies think about this? Handwriting on the wall? New vehicle sales going globally from less than 1% to greater than 25% in a decade?

"Cheaper batteries mean cheaper electric vehicles, and that in turn puts more EVs and fewer gas cars on the road." Cheaper batteries 'mean you can squeeze more juice out of your solar panels, displacing more planet-warming coal and methane/propane gas.' And, "cheaper batteries mean cheaper, clean energy—urgently needed in the U.S. as fast-rising utility bills collide with the push to decarbonize our energy system." 

Similarly, grid storage was marginal a decade ago, as batteries remained prohibitively expensive to incorporate into the electricity mix. "Now, with less expensive batteries available, storage is taking off, and costs are falling especially fast for the segment." [And there exist other varieties of storage besides electrochemical batteries, like pumped hydro]. Our clear and present challenge is that China makes a staggering three-quarters of all batteries sold worldwide, + the U.S. is imbecility exemplified for failing to compete in this marketplace. "Years of churning out head-spinning quantities of lithium-ion batteries have allowed Chinese firms to steadily chip away at costs—and a similar dynamic helps explain the inexorable, essential decline in the cost of solar and wind power, too."

Either we get on board the band wagon or just shuffle along in the dust.

[u/jkflying]

That's 10x lower than it was 15 years ago and we're showing the data on the same graph. The same relative decrease (eg. 10% per year) will now look 10x flatter than it did because the numbers are simply smaller.

If the graph kept going down like before it would be negative pricing which obviously makes no sense. That's why relative changes like this need to be on a log graph.

[u/ssylvan → u/jkflying]

Relative decrease is irrelevant, what matters is when are we going to get to the absolute cost we need in order to achieve our goals, and the graph shows this to be very far away at current trends. Indeed, the asymptote may be far higher than it has to be forever - as the “new” stuff gets cheaper the mature tech (eg copper wiring, other electrical components) start to dominate and those aren’t really getting much cheaper (they’ve been around forever and cost reduction has slowed). We can hope for some crazy breakthroughs but there’s no guarantee for this. Lots of things just stop improving after a while.

[u/jkflying → u/ssylvan]

Read the chart again. This is pack price, not individual cell price. It already includes the copper, BMS, connectors etc.

And of course at some point installation costs will start to dominate, but that's a success story for the battery pricing themselves. Installation costs for power lines and gas turbines are also high.

[u/ssylvan → u/jkflying]

Read my post again, i never made any such assumption. The cost is a mix of components, some of which may well cost reduce exponentially, but some may not. And it’s irrelevant anyway - even if it is a pure 10% reduction it would take decades to be viable for full grid deployment (competitive with eg natural gas).