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Comment by jepler | Hacker News Reader

.. in part due to assuming that the price of the internal combustion engine is "going to go up as a result of more stringent regulations especially regarding to particulate regulations", but also assuming that the battery (A) accounts for 50% of the sticker price today and (B) will drop by 77% by 2025. I wouldn't bet on these being the case (particularly on there being effective regulation in the US)

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California can set the regulations independent of the Feds. That alone will be enough to change the market. This is why we have catalytic converters for example.

All the evidence points to batteries dropping a huge amount in the coming decade. What are you willing to bet?

Edit: somewhat minor, but you seem to be misquoting, they actually say:

>their prices will fall by about 77% between 2016 and 2030, the London-based researcher said.

Wich is a 14 year time span, instead of the 8 year time span from now until 2025

Even with mass production, the chemistry does not change. Limited Co supplies and a decreasing, but still present need for rare earths will only prop up prices.

Add to that new and exotic electrolytes and improved anode coatings, and it'll be a wonder if prices come down at all.

we got a >50% reduction in price in last decade, while the chemistry stayed the same. Cost of materials accounts for a small fraction of the cost, and there's a lot more fat to cut in processing.

The existing battery packs have (vaguely) reasonable performance characteristics, I wouldn't think that manufacturers would adopt things that increase costs more than they increase performance.

(In fact I would expect them to mostly adopt things that cut costs without sacrificing performance)

thanks for the correction, I scanned too quickly..

> but also assuming that the battery (A) accounts for 50% of the sticker price today and (B) will drop by 77% by 2025.

With the number of battery factories being built around the world I wouldn't discount it. Tesla, Daimler, and Panasonic, I wouldn't be surprised if there were other too.

Where are they getting that the battery costs 50% of the vehicle? I'm seeing batteries cost about $220/kwh, which is about $6000 for a Nissan Leaf.

Don't forget the sticker price includes a profit and both R&D + advertising costs etc. The leaf also has a rather anemic range. Run the numbers for a more reasonable 220+ mile range and battery's are going to near 1/2 the construction costs.

However, projections are notoriously non-predictive. If you had extrapolated the gasoline prices from 10 years ago, you'd expect that we'd be paying $10 a gallon, rather than almost half of what prices were then - even in raw dollars, ignoring inflation.

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