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Comment by spenrose | Hacker News Reader

The article states:

1. The price of Lithium will drop by half in the next five years: "prices, which averaged $1,160 per kilowatt hour in 2010, reached $176 per kWh last year and could drop below $100 in 2024".

2. Tweaks to the formulation "could boost the energy storage of a lithium-ion battery by 20 percent or more".

3. Supply is going to increase: "Capacity now stands at 302.2 gigawatt-hours, and plants with another 603.8 GWh are planned to open within the next five years."

So there is something better coming: in a few years we will have vastly more batteries, which worker better, and cost much less. It's just that they'll be an evolution of lithium-ion rather than a brand new technology.

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Tesla is already at $100-150/kwh.

Source?

That ultimately reflects better on Tesla’s bottom line than current or near term electric car production across the industry. They’re not selling their batteries at cost to other manufacturers. Until the rest of the industry is at their level the full effects of those lower prices won’t be realized in the market.

Tesla info: https://cleantechnica.com/2018/06/09/100-kwh-tesla-battery-c...

I’m confused by the differentiation of 100$/kwh at the cell level vs pack level? Does that mean they’ll still have more than that cost due to the non-lithium parts of the battery for the short term but not the long term? Ie their 74kwh battery might someday cost 7400$ but with the cheaper cost per cell its more like 7400k+X where X is the cost future tech may reduce?

There is nonneglible cost in the pack. Tesla's have heating and cooling and individual battery wiring. Not sure of the cost difference, maybe 10%more wag

From the linked article [1]:

> Transforming cells, via modules, into the whole battery pack typically adds 30% cost per kWh on top of the cost of the cells alone.

And to get a bit more info on what a module is [2]:

> A battery module is more than just a mechanical frame that holds the cells - it also includes bus bars to connect the cells electrically, a cooling interface and a sensing harness, which sends information about the state of each cell to the battery management system.

[1]: https://cleantechnica.com/2018/06/09/100-kwh-tesla-battery-c...

[2]: https://evannex.com/blogs/news/learn-more-about-tesla-batter...

Packs need a radiator system like any engine. Tesla cooling systems are leading the industry. Nissan and many plugin battery companies use air cooling which doesn't work and which cuts the battery life in half. Many uncooled Nissan leaf packs failed before a hundred thousand miles.

I wonder how the I-PACE cooling (and general battery conditioning/preservation technology) compares?

I’ve thought about this. Why don’t they integrate better cooling? Maybe something that hooks into the charging cable as well. While the battery is charged the pack is cooled by the facility.

(One crazier idea of mine involves cooling by boiling off sea water. Have piping built to pump large amounts of sea water inland to charging locations. Perhaps each charging location also sits next to a pumping location for the sea water.)

This is exactly what they are attempting to do with solid-state batteries. Again, the whole point of the article is that Lithium Ion batteries will continue to improve and with the vast economy of scale, will continue to be a cost effective option

Nissan accidentally leaked their battery cost for the Leaf, $140/kwh. But they don't do cooling so their batteries die twice as fast as they have to ... Panasonic was livid about this ...

Our 2015 model year Leaf has not had any observable loss of range, FWIW.

Apparently they had a reformulated chemistry, that might help.

However, I think the climate you live in has a profound effect:

http://www.electricvehiclewiki.com/wiki/battery-capacity-los...

scroll down to the battery aging table depending on location.

If you live in Juneau, Alaska you're probably good for a while.

Maybe taking steps like not charging to 100% and not discharging below 20% will help.

Googling this brought me back to this comment. Do you have a source for this please?

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