Electric vehicle battery prices are falling faster than expected
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goldmansachs.com
Remember how in the 90s the intel pc completely overwhelmed and completely destroyed several layers of computing competitors. Intel and their PC manufacturing bretheren did that by providing a decent quality product at the lowest price. Then they used the benefits of manufacturing scale to improve the price quality ratio to the point where the intel PCs were higher performance than even the fancy work stations that cost 10 times as much.
Well the chinese are about to do that with EVs. EVs are very similar to PCs in this respect, because they have a lot of potential for manufacturing efficiencies.
Western manufacturers (other than Tesla) should drop their prices and try to get to scale as soon as possible. Tesla is at scale but it has a bunch of other problems. Elon should stop his public stage embarrassments (latest having to do with antisemitism and neo nazis) and should concentrate on making cars people like.
No, instead demand is rapidly drying up, because suddenly people realize most EVs are vastly, vastly inferior to what they were supposed to replace. The only EVs that make sense are small ones, small battery, for urban transport without the emissions, so you can keep the city air clean.
From that point on, the bigger you get, the worse it gets. Notice that although Tesla has sold several million sedan/compacts and... uhmm "SUVs" (really: just slightly bigger Model 3s), they keep postponing the CyberTruck and Semi. They've only made 90 Semis and avoiding mass production. CyberTruck also won't be in mass production for at least a year more as they test the market (expect several thousand sold).
That's because no amount of hype can hide the facts for too long. These cars are expensive to buy, but way more expensive to own. Insurance is shooting up to the sky as they have to write off entire cars over minor damage because they dented the battery and this sh*t can't be fixed.
EVs will also be increasingly a liability when parked tightly below residential buildings, malls, ferries and so on. If it catches fire, the whole parking lot is done.
The EV bubble is popping before your eyes. The future is not electric. The future is hybrid and I mean this in multiple ways. Diesel trucks, gas pickup trucks, hybrid family cars, and small electric urban cars and electric scooters.
I'm hoping we'll see improvements to the designs here, e.g. modular replaceable batteries, so that if the battery is damaged in a collision there's a $1000 cost to replace one of 4 battery modules, rather than a $40000 cost to replace the entire vehicle.
Because batteries are HEAVY. A modular design means the batteries can't be structural, so you need more structure to support the car around the battery, and a solid structure holding the replaceable battery itself. Boxes in boxes in boxes in boxes. This makes the car heavier. Weight means less range. To increase the range you need more batteries. Which adds more weight. Which means less range.
Do you see what I mean? It's just physics. We can't fix this. Only some amazing battery breakthrough would fix this, but so far we have only sensationalist articles about something working in a lab supposedly and nothing out there in production.
Because Elon spouts a lot of bullshit that you shouldn't take seriously? Why do people still feign surprise.
That's not an indictment of EVs as a whole, and in fact none of your arguments are.
Cybertrucks being a failure? Well yeah, but not because it's an EV.
Expensive to buy? When M3s are going for $30K on sale after federal credits?
Expensive to own? I haven't needed a single maintenance other than windshield wipers after 50K miles.
We have them. Nissan is one of the ones I know that can replace individual battery modules if any of them have faulty cells. That's completely different than a battery swap for charging purposes.
Batteries are heavy but they aren't ridiculously so in the grand scheme of things. Normal, not oversized trucks, with decent range are possible without structural batteries, and that describes a lot of (non Tesla) EVs.
China has them; automated EV battery swap stations by NIO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kZgG58zz8U
California had a subsidy for cars that had swappable batteries. Tesla opened a single station that was open by invite-only in order to qualify for that subsidy. Once it ended, so did the project.
Some of this will come as mechanics decide they need to learn how to service EVs. However some of it depends on a good design for repair.
Tesla is best seller outside China, but they're hitting a ceiling of demand as well, and they can drop prices only so much before they're underwater.
And in China, guess what? Most EVs sold are small urban vehicles. Which I covered in my embarrassing huge argument on faulty grounds. Watch what happens next. Or if you catch up slowly, the final outcomes will be in 2024.
[0] https://twitter.com/JesseJenkins/status/1724395067224236182
It's true but not because of the boat, it's because interest rates are up and the auto sector is notoriously interest rate sensitive. Not to mention it has a subprime crisis courtesy of the supply chain woes of 2021-2022.
https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/taxes/ev-tax-credit-elect...
I'm not sure being an EV is the biggest hurdle for manufacturing that abomination. Tesla had troubles putting plastic panels together, so steel ones might be an issue. If they actually end up trying to manufacturing it at scale they'll end up having redesign it which will lead to significant delays.
You just revealed yourself as someone uninformed about what's actually happening with Cybertruck.
If they actually end up trying to manufacturing it at scale they'll end up having redesign it
You're about a year or so late with this "prediction."
Of course other much better informed people have said it before. Show what? What happens if they try manufacturing it at scale and every third car needs to be sent back due to defects?
Then again considering how tasteless a person needs to be to buy that thing might they won't mind a rough edge or two.
My prediction, over the next 2 years: There are going to be some rough patches to iron out, just like Model X. Then things are going to improve going forward. Eventually, production will be in excess of 100k/year. Every Cybertruck built will be sold.
We'll see who gets it right.
Is an actually relatively well designed and practical car.
I recently had cause to rent a people-mover, and did so from two separate, off-airport local companies (not chains).
The 3 rentals all went off either a hitch, service was smooth, no wait, returns was trivial, cost was very reasonable.
It definitely showed me that if i need a specific vehicle for an edge case this is a very viable approach.
I don't see how you can have middlemen like rental companies take on the burden of peak fleet capacity for the whole economy, anymore than everyone can afford to own their own long-range ICE alongside a more limited BEV. It makes sense for some people, sure, but it seems like across the whole fleet we really need BEV to catch up and be suitable to cover these demands.
Otherwise, we need to address how those demands can be replaced with something else, like airplanes or trains, with more limited BEV rental at destinations. It seems disingenuous to me to suggest everyone can rent an ICE to cover the gap.
are you saying your tesla's total cost of ownership is higher than gasoline cars you've had? Or that your car is somehow unusually cheap, given that you bought an expensive one and we are before 2025?
As far as the cybertruck ... this is just the stupidity elon musk has been affected by lately. The cybertruck body is supposed to be made by a fancy new method which Tesla has a lot of problems bringing to mass manufacturing. Rivian is making ev trucks and suvs that are quite popular.
But the price, coupled with the mass spying in every new vehicle... Looking like it will be used ICE cars for me pretty much indefinitely.
My family is sticking with our old Toyota pickup for the same reasons you mention. It would be nice to completely stop burning fuel, but in practice we've already electrified our everyday travel by switching to bikes and scooters.
haha well Luton Airport fire was not caused by an EV !! https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-67077...
The risks are going in the opposite direction with lifepo4 batteries this reduces by a large margin (( far better than petrol and diesel )), then the next step is semi-solid state batteries and then solid state.
Just no contest...
"can't be fixed" well insureance companies will need to be forced to make sure they are fixed !!! it's poor regulations that are causing this not the tech!! standard and modular replaceable batteries problem solved and this also reduces prices.
Yes, there’s a risk with EVs, but there is plenty of risk with ICE cars too!
The West can only hold back value Chinese EVs for so long.
Vastly inferior?
I have one of the cheapest EVs that you can buy in the US. The quick charging standard is obsolete. And yet I'd rather drive it than most gas cars. Instant torque (even with a wimpy motor that's the size of a baseball), silent operation, zero time spent at gas stations. Free charging at work means I don't pay for fuel to commute (and it's more than 50 miles each way). But even if I did pay, it would be far cheaper than gas.
> These cars are expensive to buy, but way more expensive to own.
It's the cheapest car I've ever owned. I leased, then purchased after the lease. It cost about the same as an entry level Honda Civic. 4th year, $0 maintenance, other than a cabin air filter.
No oil changes, no emissions testing.
> the bigger you get, the worse it gets.
That's true for all vehicles, although you do have a point with power density requirements. SUVs and 'trucks' are only viable because US gasoline is still cheap even in CA peak prices and parking is usually plentiful. Notice how they are rare worldwide.
> Insurance is shooting up to the sky as they have to write off entire cars over minor damage because they dented the battery and this sh*t can't be fixed.
Insurance is fine for me. Again, non Tesla. Not all cars have the same design or have batteries that are structural - or batteries that aren't too different from laptop ones.
> EVs will also be increasingly a liability when parked tightly below residential buildings, malls, ferries and so on.
Statistics are hard to come by, but you'll find some manufacturers that have a higher incidence of fires. In particular, LFP chemistries are very, very tame. Heck, Toyota still uses NIMH for their hybrids.
By the way, you contradict yourself when you say the future is hybrid, but then go on to talk about battery fires. Even small hybrid batteries store a lot of energy, enough for a pretty serious fire if they do catch on fire. So which is it?
Many of your criticisms seem to be about Tesla. Tesla does a lot of things that are questionable. Repairs tend to be very expensive, for one. The Cybertruck makes no sense and the Semi is probably not viable. That's not about "EVs" though, that's a Tesla specific thing.
I don't know how anyone with any knowledge of EVs whatsoever can make this argument in 2023. Maybe this was forgivable 10 years ago, but now? This feels like bad faith.
> The future is hybrid
The future of personal transport vehicles is battery-electric, full stop. Why? Because you no longer need any of the trappings of an internal combustion engine. People forget why cars were awesome in the first place -- because you didn't need a horse anymore. In the same way, the big gain in the BEV is NOT adding the battery and the electric motor, it's getting rid of the ICE.
Getting rid of the ICE is only an indirect benefit. It makes the car lighter and cheaper. If you don't need gas for anything, then getting rid of it is worth it. However if you need the gas for something (long trips?) then you need it.
People didn't care about getting rid of the horse at first, either.
My grandpa remembered the horses and didn't miss them at all. They had an ugly temper and you had to feed them daily even if you didn't leave the farm. They were purely a cost sink worse than a car or tractor.
I guess I'd get pissy too if I had to pull a plow all day long :-(
Seems likely that it won't be long until 90% of people won't need gas for anything. Just a single doubling of range from current levels, and a reasonably build out of charging infrastructure would do the trick. I'd be surprised if we don't see both of those in the next 20-30 years.
And of course for many people the tipping point will come earlier.
It may be true that when 30% of vehicles are EVs, oil change locations will be hard to find, but I doubt it. Even if dedicated oil change chains cease to exist, people will still need tires, alignment, etc, and those shops will presumably provide oil change services.
Regardless, it's going to be a while before 30% of vehicles on the road are EVs — isn't it like 1-2% of new cars sold? If vehicles stay on the road for 20 years, then EVs won't be 30% of the total fleet for a long time.
The EU has a lot of variance (Sweden 32%) and I assume the USA does too.
https://www.wri.org/insights/countries-adopting-electric-veh...
Average car age in the EU is 12 years.
My modern car recommends synthetic changes at 7,500 miles by the book. Sending off samples to the labs, it looked good at that point but started to get some bad degradation at about 11,000mi. It would be sludge a little after 15,000mi and would have probably destroyed the engine before 25,000mi
Oil analysis is about the cost of an oil change for most people and sometimes says change the oil so most people just change the oil. For some it makes sense to do oil analysis.
Otherwise you're talking about extremely rare one-off cases where someone's car happened to be in just the right environment and built just perfectly the whole time. I'm not talking about "that one time one guy in a forum five years ago said his car lasted 120,000mi without an oil change", I'm talking about normal advice for normal car drivers.
No OEM car manual says this is recommended.
> Normal Service – Up to 25,000 miles (40,200 km), 700 hours of operation or one year, whichever comes first, in personal vehicles not operating under severe service.
That said, this still goes against the person who I was originally commenting about. They suggested going 2+ years between oil changes, and while the mileage does fit here for the average car the timeframe doesn't.
You're also technically 1,000mi short from my ask but I'll grant if it actually is OK at 25,000mi it's probably still OK at 26,000mi.
It's not just that it's a bit less, it's like a few standard deviations less.
The average US car goes a hair over 13,000mi/yr.
Even just putting the car on the lift and jacking it up is already more work, requires more training, and has more risk than having someone in the pit at a fast oil change place.
No oil changes. No finding a gas station just to refuel. No worrying about whether the engine is warm enough for setting off in the morning. No smell before the cats light off. Instant heat. Instant torque. Dead silent. The list goes on and on.
After you get used to it, the idea of going back to ICE again is unfathomable. Why would I want to give up the convenience I have now? For road trips? Ha! I have both ICEV and EV at the moment and it is the EV that is the preferred road trip car, not the ICEV.
I've almost never spent longer than 15 minutes charging on long car trips, unless we're also going to a restaurant. And even then, we usually don't have to, and could have made it a 15 minute stop if we wanted to. Most of the time, the car is done charging enough faster than we could stop for coffee, and I have to extend the charge using my app.
That said, there was one occasion in a trip through Big Sur, when the Ventana supercharger went offline, when I did a 45 minute charge session, and I drove 30 minutes out of the way to catch a supercharger on another occasion. So 2 occasions like that in nearly 3 years.
The situation is pretty good now. In another few years, it will be even better!
This. The haters think that Level 3 charging takes 60+ minutes. There are times I wish it did. Instead, if I leave my car on the Supercharger next to Denny's and get seated right away, I will finish charging and have to move the car before my food comes. Every time.
Maybe someday we will actually have large numbers of free Level 2 chargers at shops and restaurants, so we can eat a leisurely lunch in peace while our cars charge.
This is one of the big issues. EVs are for the class of people who own houses with garages, in the suburbs of large metros.
EV sales are still at only around 20% of the market, which is a lot! But given that the majority of lithium batteries are already going into EVs now total battery production needs to go up by something like a factor of 5 by 2030 just to meet EV sales. That's a huge amount of growth for any industry, let alone high tech manufacturing.
I would not be surprised to see the relative growth of EV sales stall soon as manufacturers have trouble sourcing enough batteries, and in response we may see some Hybrids or EREVs coming onto the market to meet the shortfall. After all, a battery that gets you 50km is good for 90% of trips for a significant number of people, but you couldn't buy it without a range extender because of that last 10%.
If fossil hydrogen ever gets off the ground I still have hope for fuel-cell/battery hybrids. Since they generate water vapor as a side product they'd also be beneficial to a small extent for arid climates.
I'm not happy if the harvesting of fossil hydrogen harms the subterranean ecosystem, but then I'm not happy about the ecosystem harms of oil or mining either.
The battery is the single most fragile, heavy, dangerous, expensive, stressful ("range anxiety") and annoying component of an EV, and one which degrades at an alarming rate, just by using it normally.
Guess what, a fuel tank doesn't shrink every time you fill it.
And it doesn't shrink even FASTER when you fill it to the top.
Or let it go empty.
Or run in cold weather.
Or hot weather.
Or you drive fast.
Or too slow.
Or when you fill the tank too fast. Where "too fast" is dripping it in for 30 to 60 minutes a pop.
Or when you don't drive the car for too long.
On top of that, the starting range of the top BEV is half an ICE car. That's on a new car, before all the magical "shrinking" happens.
Batteries are WORSE than anything the automobile industry has from the past 50+ years. And people are slowly realizing that.
Second, when a gas car catches fire, it's almost always after a car incident. Firefighters arrive, and put the fire out easily.
Do you know what firefighters do when an EV catches fire? Nothing can stop this fire. Literally nothing. So firefighters have to evacuate everyone at least half a mile in radius. Then let it burn down. Which may take a full day. Or more. Read the protocols.
What an absolute joker.
https://www.consumerreports.org/cars/car-recalls-defects/hyu...
https://apnews.com/article/chevy-silverado-recall-truck-fire...
https://www.nhtsa.gov/press-releases/jeep-cherokee-recall-fi...
https://www.nhtsa.gov/press-releases/recall-chrysler-pacific...
https://www.consumerreports.org/cars/car-recalls-defects/vol...
https://www.upi.com/Archives/1987/11/25/GM-agrees-to-recall-...
I could go on and on and on and on and on and on and on...
I've owned multiple cars which have had multiple recalls for catching fire while parked. I've had multiple neighbors have house fires from parked ICE vehicles. You're massively wrong for thinking ICE vehicles don't catch fire while parked.
I've had multiple recalls in my ICE vehicles for catching fire while parked. Not my EV though.
What happpens is that there is a demand for cheap crap so that's what they design in China. If you were willing to pay Apple level prices for a Chinese brand they'd build you Apple level quality.
It's simple. It costs.
You and I must have absolutely zero overlap in our Amazon purchases.
Since they're making cars for international markets they have to meet safety standards for the entire world, which are stricter than those for any one country and so harder to meet. You can't compare them to the shitty airpod ripoffs you get for $60.
They'd have the scale to manufacture for individual markets, like any large auto manufacturer. Already I've seen videos/articles of people buying various (typically non-EV) cheap Asian vehicles that are not road-worthy in the US, but allowed for use on large parcels of land.
https://www.euroncap.com/en/press-media/press-releases/nio-s...
Heavy regulations are what produce the reputable finance and healthcare industries we enjoy today.
But these are sold with service contracts and so on, so it doesn't necessarily transfer to cars.
In response, European automakers are both innovating and pressuring governments for restrictive measures.
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/eu-launches-anti-subsid...
China help its manufacturers a lot, regulations are lax around worker and environment rights, wages are kept artificially low, subsidies, tax cuts, export, creating an unfair competitive advantage to European cars.
Europe might never be able to compete fairly, and it's looking at ways to penalize the import of these cheap cars to rebalance the market.
I think that beyond the purely short term economics, there is a real danger that you are jeopardizing your sovereignty if you relinquish such a huge chunk of your transportation capabilities and become hostage to the whims of a country that doesn't value your vision of the world.
It becomes more than just being able to buy cheap cars and letting the market sort it out. It's about geopolitics, relevance and survival or your way of life.
The loss of the ability to make large amounts of stuff at a certain point becomes a national security issue.
They already have - volvo makes nice evs but pretty pricey
Hopefully the safety, mechanics and embedded software are still Volvo-engineered, but I wouldn't bet on it
The EX90 is being built in South Carolina for the US market. Polestar 3 and 4 will also be built there.
XC40 and C40 Recharge are built in Ghent, Belgium. The EX30 will also be manufactured there starting in 2025.
Somewhat complete list here[0], but it's not including the US-built Polestar 3 and 4 which were announced in 2021. Maybe those plans have changed, not sure. Also if the US EV incentives were to go away, see planned US production to diminish across the board.
The battery production plant joint venture (with Northvolt) is being constructed outside of Gothenburg, Sweden.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Volvo_Car_production_p...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_PC_compatible#"IBM_PC_comp...
Teslas are claimed to be the safest cars ever made. In fact, Tesla uses instrumentation to track accelerations many times a second during actual crashes, and gather statistics on what gets hit, and what goes where during a crash.
This is data of a quality head and shoulders above the competitors, and it shows.
On top of that, they are using similar techniques to have the car avoid the crash altogether. These comprise active safety measures which are included with FSD, but which are also standalone and included generally in Tesla cars.
I recall they have changed the timing of triggered events that happen when the system has detected an imminent crash, and the timing of events that occur when a crash happens. I can't find the reference right now, however.
ChatGPT-4 uncovered this:
https://electrek.co/2021/10/12/tesla-unveils-new-crash-safet...
Advanced Airbag Deployment: The data enables Tesla to detect the type of crash within 10 milliseconds and deploy airbags optimally, considering the exact seat position and steering wheel position
Also, the crash data is used to create more accurate crash simulations, which goes directly into changes to the vehicle structure. Going off of what Sandy Munroe says about the rate of changes and improvments, this happens at the time scale of 1 or 2 months.
I just googled, "NHTSA sues Tesla" -- Nothing!
I have little trust many of the older car manufacturers as well; GM, Chrysler, Ford seem to be 30+ years behind on shipping reliable technologies like variable valve timing or independent rear suspension. Have you seen the Ford Bronco crash test? The Kia key debacle has only recently taken over the fact that Chrysler was 20 years behind Japanese makers adding chip on key/immobilizer tech. The american makers put off tech like coil on plug, and port injection 8+ years compared to Japanese and European.
I would grant that PC manufacturing is wildly different than manufacturing an internal combustion engine car, but is it wildly different making an EV car? A lot of complexity disappears once you don't have to orchestrate thousands of tiny explosions, then transmit the thrust from those explosions to multiple wheels in different areas of the car. My understanding of EVs (which is limited) is that they are much simpler.
Just the paint alone is hard to get right. Wrong alloy with wrong paint, it chips and flakes. Wrong application, it fades or scratches. Introduce new colors and they might react differently. So now you need to be a paint expert, and be a expert at applying paint, in multiple phases, for multiple parts, many times a day, and never make a mistake.
Now do that for 23 other systems in the car and try not to make a mistake. Suspension, steering, brakes, air con, heat, ECU, brake controller, headlight controller, trim fitting, interior fitting, seats, signal and tail lights, seat belts, front/side impact air bags, bumpers, crush zones, windows, speakers, stereo, main electrical / battery, alternator/inverter, wheels, tires, etc, etc. If you screw up the torque on a bolt, break a clip, forget a fitting or connection, etc, the car now has a defect and needs to be repaired or your brand suffers from consumer complaints (in the best case) or down right safety violations or injuries (worst case).
Compare that to a small metal box which has about six breadboarded electrical components, a screen and a keyboard. The car has that too, plus everything else!
For 2023, China's BYD has globally outsold Telsa by over 50% and 8 out of the top 10 brands for global electric car sales for Oct 2023 are from China.
The BYD qin plus, for instance, is about $20k, the Wuling Mini-ev is about ~$10k, Aion Y is $20k. They're eating everyone's lunch and expanding into Central America, Africa and Europe.
Cars like the Cherry QQ, which are $5,000 aren't meant to be compete with new cars but instead, to the vast majority of price-sensitive buyers who normally purchase used cars. Introduce a used-price new car, however ...
They're poised to do to the American auto market what Japan did 40 years ago and just like then, American auto seems to be asleep at the wheel.
This is a classic Clayton Christensen innovators dilemma formula.
Edit: Apparently factual statements are unpopular once again. The internet is so cool.
I'm an American. I've never been to China or seen one of these Chinese electric cars in person but everything suggests they're on their way to a formidable auto industry in the electric and city-car/light use space - the demographic that Honda and Toyota captured in the 70s and 80s.
Of course if you've done any traveling you'd find many countries have a national auto-manufacturer that's deeply popular in country without much penetration outside (take Vinfast or Saipa for instance) and the Chinese auto companies have yet to prove they can stake a foothold outside of their home country at the Kia or Mercedes level but they just started.
BYD just entered Japan under 2 months ago and XPeng entered Europe only about 6 months ago.
Time will tell, but we could be seeing the very early stage of Chinese auto brands becoming household names.
As it looks now (in Europe); the stigma associated with China is very strong and the brands that succeed likely will be western (at least in name) but made in China.
GM is involved with Wuling for instance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAIC-GM-Wuling but I think we call this Chinese, right? Transnational industrial capitalism is weird like that.
Not if they increase tariffs beyond the measly 10%. Which they should.
History will treat these sites as the he modern equivalent of the hitler youth. For instance the recent US invasion and occupation of parts of Syria seems to be completely missing from peoples memories. Were Americans simply not informed in the first place? We got millions of Syrian refugees into the EU.
Essentially the US pretends like it's the only country. It's softened in the past 20 years with the rise of the internet but the bubble used to be extremely strong when I was younger.
Plus some notable milestones:
2001 Patriot Act - very unpatriotic and anti-american
2008 mortgage crisis - huge bailouts for large corps, nothing for regular joes
2016 election of Trump - reality TV president, collapse of "norms"
2020+ covid response - unprepared and poorly handled, contradictions and backpedaling abound
Probably lots more I'm omitting but it's much harder to make the case we're #1 these days without adding caveats and qualifiers.
There's many metrics for measuring this. Frequency of international travel is up for Americans, even normalized for immigration.
The consumption of foreign media such as anime kpop and bollywood films is up.
Classic white Americans have also become more multilingual and their cuisine choices have diversified.
It's not great but it's up from a baseline of terrible where people would be asked to point to England on a map and then point to, say, Japan or shown some Hangul text and think it's Farsi. They're not quite that awful anymore.
I remember the US getting constantly humiliated on the study and stopped taking it. I also remember it being a big thing here in the EU. Pretty much all national TV channels were covering their respective scores.
That was some time ago and I do believe you might be right and that things have improved dramatically. However how does one track this now-a-days? I tried the PISA website, but it seems to have been mostly discontinued, as the last published survey seems to be from 2018. So I'm basically looking for a source that compares education objectively by country with recent data.
Could simple nationalism (or something else) not be the motivator?
Stuff is just cheaper in China.
I highly doubt BYD could sell a car in the US for $20k.
Yeah I see no way that happens. They have no dealer network to fall back on, so they have to either partner with someone already established, or they have to try and spin up a mobile service network like Tesla did. That costs money, and isn't going to happen while selling $20K cars.
Or Walmart. Hell, even Costco could play well here.
But yes; in practice the US have banned Chinese EVs by a combination of subsidy policies and import taxes.
The 2025 Volvo EX30: Priced to Tempt Americans
Just because a Chinese holding company owns something doesn't mean it's a "Chinese company".
Just like MG, which is now a brand owned by Shanghai Automotive Industrial Co. Or Jaguar Land Rover, owned by Tata Industries.
It's only a reductionist view in the very short term.
In fact, JLR and Volvo were more "brands" under Ford ownership, as compared to now where both are independent car makers.
So yes, it's a Chinese company, as much as the ownership of any large modern conglomerate can be attributed to a given nation. If that one guy wants all Volvo's to be shipped fluorescent pink it's going to happen.
Note that I was referring to Volvo Cars, the company that manufactures trucks etc. isn't owned by the same holding company, but they've got an agreement to share the "Volvo" brand.
Great Wall Motors (Haval, GWM brands) is trying to push hybrids here. China already has its own legacy manufacturers like Toyota or Volkswagen.
This is because the "safety" measures focus on cars and drivers, while everyone is switching to "truck" vehicles that are less safe for pedestrians.
even a golf with typical latam striped down specs (no center console, no glove box, manual windows, non adjustable side mirrors, etc) is OVER $20k
it seems to point down now, but who knows?
What does that even look like? I've driven plenty of old US cars, and power mirrors pretty much weren't a thing, but the side mirrors always were mounted on some sort of swively thing so you can adjust them. Big truck mirrors might only adjust horizontally and not vertically though, but I've never seen that on a car.
The often quoted sales figures, that you appear to be referencing, that have them way out in the lead include ICE and Hybrid cars, so if you're going to include those you're really comparing overall auto sales not BEV sales.
https://www.investors.com/news/tesla-vs-byd-2023-comparing-e...
Christensen formula is still in play.
(For people reading that's not to say it's a good stock buy, btw. Please don't try to divine financial advice from this comment)
(And yes, it is because of him, Blue Origin, Arianespace, and many others haven't been able to compete at the level of China, and neither have any electric car makers with BYD on a serious numbers level)
https://www.youtube.com/@Wheelsboy
I'm really blown away with some of their exterior designs. Less so with their touch interfaces (which range from atrocious to outright dangerous).
The car they bought looks really good too: https://youtu.be/kDRDNRuDnOA?si=DPzacq2fMcrJf-dj&t=250 (BYD Yuan PLUS, $21k, 480 km range).
I read an article that said this all started with Tesla production in China needing local manufacturing to support. The Tesla way allowed Chinese brands to see what was being done and catch up almost immediately on the processes and technology. That was step 1. Step 2 was applying the better understanding of what the Asian market wants to the Tesla business model. VW was the largest Chinese manufacturer, but VW EVs have flopped and are by all measures worse than what is offered by say BYD. There was a VW anecdote about BYD having in-car karaoke and this never occurring to Germans as something people would want.
"Sing mit die Hasselhoff zur die autobahn, jah!"
Why wouldn't they?
https://en.byd.com/news/byd-and-the-city-of-lancaster-announ...
But BYD seems more advanced in getting consumer automobiles into EU markets than US markets.
They also make electric busses: https://en.byd.com/news/byd-receives-largest-battery-electri...
There's definitely a market for super-cheap cars - Malcolm Bricklin knew this when he arranged to import the Yugo GV[0] (peak sales was 48,000). But BYD has much deeper pockets that Malcolm had, so they may be able to invest in safety, a dealer network, and the market research to produce an EV that Americans will buy.
The pace of new model introductions from BYD may actually work against them - the cars may be regarded as disposable, with environmental concerns over recycling the plastics and batteries. If the Han[1] is only on sale for a few years, to be replaced with an entirely different model, that also creates a brand identity problem. Compare that with Honda who has been selling the Accord since the late 1970's.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yugo#In_the_United_States_and_...
I would not make the link that BYD == "super-cheap cars"
BYD Han, EU price €69,990. High price.
BYD Seal, EU price €44,900 and up. Not cheap, lower-middle of the pack.
BYD Dolphin, E Price €29,990 and up - that's at the cheap end. But not "super" cheap.
BYD Sea Lion, coming soon, around €24K / USD $26K maybe?
BYD and other might (and hopefully will) go below €20K / USD $25K into the "super-cheap" category. But that's hardly the whole of or current reality of the brand.
Your video link has the title calling the Han a "luxury Sedan" so I don't know why you would talk about "super-cheap", or invent concerns about model name longevity.
YEs, BYD seems likely to be _in_ the super-cheap category. So will others.
The US automotive market plays a completely different game than the rest of the world, with a bunch of protections and quirks that have a great potential to stifle a disruptive innovator.
First: the products themselves are regionally unique. The #1 selling vehicle in the US is the F-150, a truck that is a completely insane purchase for most of the rest of the world’s population. Japan may have disrupted the US market, but many of their vehicles they sell in big volumes are designed in America built in America sold primarily to Americans. BYD can’t sell the Qin Plus in America, they need to sell something more like the Rivian R1T. That means BYD needs a US factory to avoid the chicken tax…
Second: The US already shows high willingness to “chicken tax” EVs. All the vehicles that qualify for the EV tax credit are Ford, GM, and Tesla vehicles with high domestic part counts. The government can play this game until the cows come home giving the big 3 ample time to catch up.
So we’ve established that if you’re selling big volumes in America, you are producing cars in US factories. In that regard, China has a weak record of success. If they want to sell trucks in America they’ll probably have to have a UAW factory. The documentary “American Factory” comes to mind for me.
At best, this means that China won’t get the typical labor cost advantage that their entire export economy thrives on. What is their competitive advantage at that point?
Third: the dealer network. Operating in the US means dealing with independent dealerships often enshrined by law. Tesla had to fight an improbable battle to get to the scale it is now without independent dealerships.
Fourth: the incumbents have good tech and are high volume producers in their own right. BYD is big. You know who is bigger? Volkswagen. Toyota. GM. Ford. Even Tesla is bigger by global revenue. 17 other global automotive companies pull in more revenue than BYD, and 9 pull in more revenue than SAIC.
By the way, the “$5,000 used car killer” has been a legend for decades and will never happen in developed markets with strong safety regulations and demanding living standards. Americans literally do not buy city cars, new or used. Get back to me when the Cherry QQ more closely resembles the Ford Maverick.
Now, I'm skeptical that, after all the US safety regulations are met, that it could still be made for $4,000, but the utter manufacturing advantage of paying Chinese workers in Chinese factories local wages is not to be underestimated.
$1000 in tariffs can pay an American factory worker’s total compensation for something like 15-20 hours. But you don’t even have to pay that wage when there’s Mexico.
Find me a top 20 vehicle that’s produced outside of NAFTA: https://www.kbb.com/best-cars/top-10-25-best-selling-cars-tr...
The Suzuki Samurai’s cult following only exists because it was a vehicle that was literally discontinued for slow sales. This example of a winning formula is from an entire brand that left the US market for being too far downmarket.
Cheap city cars struggle to survive and most have exited the US market. Recently discontinued models include the Chevy Spark/Aveo, Mazda2/Toyota iA, Mitsubishi Mirage, Honda Fit, and the list goes on.
The low cost of gas, low vehicle taxes, plentiful infrastructure for larger vehicles, the high profitability of financing, and high median wealth has pushed the US auto market upmarket. Brands who try to sell a utilitarian experience tend to get burned. Brands that sell financing reap the profits.
I would be highly surprised if the raw ingredients for any car would be more then 4k, but that's also not a very useful metric.. i guess a cpu Would be a few cents
Aside from US consumers, everyone stands to lose from cheap EVs flooding the market: oil companies, conventional domestic and import manufacturers, electric manufacturers like Tesla, dealerships, arguably even state and local governments who under current laws make less in tax revenue on electric cars.
I saw a BYD logo on a vehicle on the roads of London UK a few days ago. I knew they were coming, and now they are arriving.
Geely is more stealthy, Electric vehicles from Geely subsidiaries (Volvo, Polestar, LEVC) have been around for years. The last, LEVC ( https://levc.com/ ), is the current London "black cab" taxi.
https://www.wsj.com/business/autos/are-americans-falling-out... https://www.wsj.com/business/autos/ev-makers-turn-to-discoun...
I predict more of an S-curve growth in EV sales. Probably >65% of new car sales by 2030, far more than the 47% in the ‘hyper adoption’ scenario in the article.
This isn't necessarily true. A good case study is the Tata Nano which carried a lot of press around being the world's cheapest new car and ultimately flopped: https://www.autoweek.com/news/a1702021/tata-nano-failed-beca... . Arguably cars can be cost optimized to a point where people would rather buy a nicer used car.
The issue isn't necessarily how small it is, but if things get cost-engineered so much that people feel that the quality isn't there compared to a used vehicle.
This is not even the interesting thing about lower battery prices. It may happen, but the interesting thing is that it enables different kinds of electric vehicles.
If the cost of the battery in itself rivals the entire price of a subcompact economy car, you obviously can't put one in a subcompact economy car and offer a competitive price in that market. So right now the electric vehicles with significant range are premium products. With cheaper batteries you could have a traditional subcompact economy car with mechanical controls etc. and an electric powertrain.
Likewise, trucks need large batteries to have adequate range while hauling loads. So this gets you to an electric version of the Ford Maverick, for example.
It doesn't just lower the price of the existing models, it allows the low-end models to exist.
That would be quite the milestone
I’m curious at what point it will flip and EVs become cheaper than ICE
Can confirm; >5 years on a Model 3 and other than tires $0 in maintenance so far. >3 years on a Model Y and other than tires, $0 in maintenance so far. Absolute huge cost and time savings compared to my ICE vehicles, even when I perform my own maintenance on them.
(I am aware of YourMechanic and other similar services, but having the unified experience with a brand is nice and fancy, I can order it in the Tesla app and the maintenance records can easily transfer to the next VIN owner)
Im surprised this isnt mentioned more, but dealers make a ton of money pressuring people who come in for maintenance to get a bunch of other stuff.
According to NADA in 202 49% of dealership profits came from the service and parts department, 36% from new vehicle sales, and 14% from used sales.
Service and parts averages 60-70% profit on the transactions.
People talk about "oh I don't want to spend 15 minutes charging at a supercharger on road trips". Yeah, I'd rather do that once in a blue moon rather than the weekly drive out of my way to spend 5-10 minutes at a gas station with semi-sketchy people loitering the area. Or deal with the ever-changing gas prices that go up every time a dictator in the middle-east sneezes.
I suspect insurance companies see the forced 20 minute break every five hours as a feature not a bug.
And quite frankly my 10-gallon tank has like a 400 mile range, and newer electric cars have like a 300 mile range, so the gap is getting pretty narrow.
However ... if you drive a Tesla, there are very few places in the United States where you would have to "worry about finding a charger along the way." Enter your destination in the nav, and it will pick a convenient Supercharger for you.
You're probably not planning on converting to a BEV anytime soon, but check out Tesla's trip planner on your monthly 350+ mile drive. I think you'll be surprised.
You go to a gas station, kid is there, he wants a snack or magazine. Multiplied by the number of kids.
Charge at home and kid gets nothing.
There is a simple answer to that.
"I can just say no when the kid is unreasonable"
"My kid is not gonna have an iPad"
"My kid is gonna do his homework"
"My kid is gonna be polite"
What do you suppose parents have already tried?
Or did you mean don't have kids?
On the other hand if you continually indulge them then you can only expect one outcome.
If we play at being objective and get caught leaving bits out, people shut down and label you a liar.
I presume brakes and tires partially cancel out, depending on car model. Some vehicles do engine braking automatically (mine does).
Nonsense most EVs are very similar in weight to their ICE counterparts. My Model S weighs about 2 100 kg, a comparable sized ICE car such as an S-class Mercedes weighs slightly less to slightly more depending on which options you specify.
Tesla Model S has smaller interior than Camry.
Tesla Model S - 4,561 lb.
Toyota Camry - 3,340 lb.
https://www.edmunds.com/car-comparisons/?veh1=401921012&veh2...
Model S Long Range: 510lb heavier than a BMW 540i XDrive Model 3 Performance 379lb heavier than a BMW 330i XDrive Rivian R1S weighs over 7200lb. University of Leeds study (UK): electric cars are 312 kilograms (688 pounds) heavier on average than comparable vehicles powered by gasoline engines.
The figure may be taken from the Large Cars section of table 2 in this study (though the average weight difference given in the table is actually 433kg): https://www.researchgate.net/publication/353150136_Comparati...
We didn't hear about tire wear as much on the Nissan leaf.
We've taken 5% of cars that had 7+ second 0-60 times and replaced them with 3 second 0-60 cars. And we've removed the most direct cost of that acceleration (fuel).
Cost to go a mile varied between 1/5 and 1/10 of ICE, but had limited range (which worked for me).
Once the average person knows the maintenance cost is that low it will probably provide yet another inflection in EV curve adoption.
Makes me think a tiny city open source hardware EV, with a pedagogical ecosystem, would be cool
>$0, so far
Come now, amortize what the eventual service costs will be...
I've been driving one since 2018, 80K miles. I've had to change tires probably 30-40% faster than ICE cars of a similar caliber (FWIW I also have become more careful on tires too). I've had exactly a cost of $1200 on it so far (not counting tires).
I think that's actually pretty decent. I think people also switch cars every 5-6 years too?
Maybe, but the average car is much older than 5-6 years https://bcarparts.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/INFO-AVERAG...
I wouldn't mind buying a 15+ years old ice. Buying a 15+ years old electric car seems like a complete gamble so far
If Tesla can pull off some of the manufacturing efficiencies and improvements they talked about at their last investor day, it seems very likely their up coming "smaller" vehicle will be exactly that.
And this can keep going.
A big pending change: if the solid state battery with 10 minute charge time works, gas stations can become charging stations. Pull out the pumps and tanks, put in the chargers, keep the islands and the convenience store. Charging stations now look like gas stations, not parking lots. Transitioning to BEV does not require new real estate.
By 2030-2035, people with gas cars will be looking at maps to find open gas stations.
That's a wild statement. Not everyone replaces their vehicles every year. Some people drive a car for 10-20 (+) years before ditching it. There will assuredly still be plenty of open gas stations in 2035.
2035 is a long time away. iPhone was released 16 years ago and the world changed within the next decade.
When cheap cars and trucks really arrive the primary limit will be supply. ~nobody uses feature phones anymore. Electric vehicles could well be like that once we get real scale, and especially in countries that don’t currently have very high car ownership because they won’t be defending the old regime. Countries that embrace and accelerate this change will receive the most economic benefits.
But if the car is likely to plunge in value, I might choose to move faster to offload it. People will either do that or keep it until it dies. Enthusiastic countries will accelerate the process by increasing taxes on older vehicles.
Expecting a similar transition period is extremely naive.
With the number of cheap (mostly chinese) BEV’s available now and coming in the pipeline we’re already seeing some very cost competitive propositions.
I think that point is very close, maybe mid-next year if all goes well.
Places lake motorway service stations where people will supercharge will do just fine, but your local gas station will have to compete will home chargers, parking lot chargers, etc. Not a lot of people will choose to shop at an expensive gas station shop if they don’t have to.
Selling gas is hugely profitable, labor cost for dispensing gas is zero. It's why legacy c-store operators like 7-11 and Wawa now include gas at almost all new locations they build.
Gas stations make about 10 cents per gallon gross profit on the gas pumped. That's before capital equipment depreciation, equipment maintenance, facilities staff, cleaning, etc.
It's profitable, but it produces a minority of the business's profit. The bulk of the profit is from higher margin snacks, drinks, alcohol, cigarettes, lottery, etc.
A switch from gas to electric is not going to affect most convenience stores.
According to 7-11, 39.75 cents per gallon in first half of 2022. Also, while same-store merch sales grew 4.9% y-o-y, gas gallons sold grew 44%. (page 25 of the link)
https://issuu.com/avantimag/docs/avanti_sept_oct_2022_final
> 7-11 and Wawa have been serving gas since as long as I can remember.
You must be young, Wawa was not traditionally a gas station. It opened its first store in 1964 and had over 500 by 1992, but the first with gas was in 1996.
7-11's history and relationship with gas is more complex, but most legacy stores were freestanding store only (no gas).
https://www.burlingtoncountytimes.com/story/business/2014/04...
2037-38 seems like a reasonable estimate for ICE vehicle market becoming smaller than EV, and all the accompanying things that go with it, like disappearing gas stations and more and more restrictions on ICE vehicles (e.g. city centers, commercial sales only, etc.)
If the diesel transition takes time, I think the gas pumps will also stay along the major truck routes, but one might feel like a NG fuel user looking for an airport station in regions with a lot of urban density.
(Even without these pressures, an EV is already 1/3 the price to operate so that pushes ICEs toward infrequent users which accelerates the downward spiral of gas stations and gas consumers.)
I am not sure of this at all. At the very least, we can bet by that timeframe the number of gas stations will be going down. Why? For the same reason I don't have a Boston Market or Pei Wei near me any more. Because capitalism.
Investors will not necessarily wait for even 50% of the cars on the road to be electric before they start pulling their money out of gas stations. And especially because most stations make very little at the pump anyway -- they make most of their money in the attached convenience store. I don't know how long pumps and underground tanks last, but I would expect that by 2030 some stations will be opting out of replacing warn out pump equipment. And I expect this to start in neighborhood stations in wealthy areas first, where EV adoption and land value are both high.
I expect the change to EVs will follow a similar path, and in ten years there will be "experts" looking back saying "It's unprecedented - we NEVER could have predicted this!".
Gasoline vehicles will become more expensive to maintain and run, and more of a hassle to refuel, so even people like me who like to keep their cars for ages will be forced to switch a lot earlier than normal - especially if you live in the city.
These already exist for large trucks, buses, vans and so on. They are just starting to be introduced for the oldest diesel cars.
film development, pay phones, radio stations, record stores, video rental, etc...
And sadly, as older cars majority areas will reflect economic status and local crime, service deserts are more likely to develop.
I drive a 20 year old ice.
Once the EV market share hits something like 50% (middle of next decade, ish), petrol business will be down much more than 50% from today. Many petrol stations will have disappeared. Most commercial fleets will be close to 100% electric at that point (or striving to be). Most long distance road travel will be electric. Because it's vastly cheaper than anything else at that point. Any heavy road users will switch sooner rather than later because of the cost benefits from going electric. As soon as they can basically.
EVs will be over represented in miles driven collectively. As in, people might still own ICE vehicles but they would not be driving them a lot as that would be costly. And hence not use as much fuel.
You really don't need to even do that. You can put a charger at every parking lot in front of the convenience store (Already happening in a few locations around me).
But also, most charging (at least early on) will be happening at home. There really is no need to convert every gas station into a charging station. We just need major throughways covered. The one missing piece is L2 chargers, We need more of those installed in more locations. For example, employers could easily put them in office parking lots. With 8 hours to charge, you could even do L1 chargers.
There's no reason L2 chargers can't be profitable. We'll be better off solving that problem.
Government incentives and regulations are why every home has indoor plumbing and electricity. Those, I think, are widely seen as a good.
But to this, these things can absolutely be profitable. However, landlords may not want to take on the initial purchase price for fear that none of their tenants will use it or for dumber ideological reasons. A modest charge over the utility price would be all that's needed to indefinitely maintain these chargers.
EV charging companies will offer revenue sharing (if they aren't already) so that the apartment complex gets a cut every time a car is charged.
Prices will be marked up because only the apartment management company can offer the convenience of charging at home.
EV charging companies will offer revenue sharing (if they aren't already) so that the apartment complex gets a cut every time a car is charged."
Yes, this is exactly how it works at my (sort of) condo.
Once charging drops below 10 minutes, it's all about throughput. You don't want people clogging the charging units. You want to get them in and out. Revenue per charging unit, that's what it's all about.
I'm already doing that now for true Diesel #2 in SoCal with my '15 VW GSW TDI SEL. Diesel was always hit-and-miss being at about a third of stations, but now it seems like two-thirds of the stations which had Diesel #2 converted to some B20-B50 variant or even R99.
I wonder how many diesel fuel systems are getting absolutely pwned by ignorant owners putting high(er) biodiesel content fuel in contact with gaskets which will swell and fail once the owners switch back to Diesel #2...
With adoption already at 5%, that's a serious threat to gas station visits; imagine 10% fewer people stopping at a gas station a given week, or 20%. And this doesn't only apply to bevs, but to a smaller degree phevs too.
Service centers (fewer oil, brakes, coolant changes), dealerships (because engine and transmission failure decreases), and eventually auto parts stores will also see this volume of customers decrease.
Getting to 2030 is going to be wild.
Manufacturers will find new ways to break "your" stuff, unless regulation is put in place to prevent it.
Once they normalise EV prices will be still really far off.
The average ICE engine hasn't changed, from a technology standpoint, has not changed in decades. What's changed is all the internal technology (entertainment systems, parking cameras) as well as trim that's become standard (power everything). These standards are defined by the market. Case in point: see what the standard for cars (both quality and price) are for a given market like US vs India.
It's unlikely they will lower margins so much as to make less money from EV's than from ICE cars. An analogous model are iPhones. The old iPhones could be sold today at a fraction of the price but instead they release new models with better features to justify the higher price point.
(This is all with a caveat that I'm talking about sticker price. Given that EV maintenance should generally be cheaper, without a doubt the target is to have the total cost of ownership be lower than an ICE car as that's how EV's are being positioned today.)
I want the 2cv/fiat 500/vw beetle equivalent with a nation wide network of mechanics. Tesla is already a pain tlin the ass in that matter and I doubt any "new player" will reach their scale anytime soon
After I figured in gasoline costs and my commute in California, I worked out that my used luxury EV would save 100% of its purchase price in gasoline (even accounting for electricity costs) in something like 3-5 years.
150 wh/kg sodium ion and 200+wh/kg LFP is going to be the workhorse of this price improvement. Sodium Ion should only be 30-40$/kwhr, and 2025-ish is when CATL expects to hit 200wh/kg sodium ion and 250 wh/kg LFP.
So its a double assault: higher density with cheaper materials. Waiting in the wings are solid state and sulfur techs among others.
IMO what is needed is a gradual phase-out EV price credit (not a tax credit) that starts at $10,000 and drops $1000 per year. Meanwhile, ICE cars should get taxed at registration $500 extra and that increases $500 per year.
The Sodium Ion battery should enable the cheap 200 mile city car that about 4-5 billion people in the world want. If it gets to the price point it is the true revolution of EVs, not fancy high-density stuff, although sodium-sulfur will obviously be a similar revolution if/when it gets figured out.
Gas prices alone are enough stick for this transition.
* LFPs are really starting to take off which pull a lot of pressure off higher capacity NMC batteries.
* Sodium ion batteries are just starting to hit the market which further reduce demands on Lithium.
The ramp up on alternative chemistries is playing a fairly good role here and sodium ion will likely push prices down even more aggressively.
Further, I expect that battery recycling will really start to be a major contributor to lower costs in the next 10 years or so. So I'd expect even lower prices as the battery market starts approaching saturation.
Limiting factor [1] can be really good at breaking things down and covering current battery tech (they are fairly bullish on tesla). But I also get bits and pieces from google news feeds, renewable focused social media, and diving into anti-renewable social media :D. I don't mind reading into a critical piece to challenge my preconceived notions.
It does help, though, to simply know who the big players are and watch what they are actually manufacturing (and then read up on that tech). I mostly ignore the "this battery is 8 billion times cheaper than lithium ion!" news stories because they are sensationalist. An article about CATL building a solid state battery line and now I want to know what it is, how it works, and what the cons are.
CATL is probably the most interesting manufacturer to watch if you want to know where the cutting edge is. (Similar to TSMC being cutting edge when it comes to chip manufacturing).
Very much so. I suggest watching the following video to see where we are at. [1]
> Won't it become less so as new batteries become cheaper?
Recycling will be the key to making batteries even cheaper. Getting already refined iron, nickel, and other chemicals will be far cheaper than trying to mine these materials fresh.
Very similar to how pretty much all lead acid batteries are recycled. Mining new lead is a lot more expensive than reusing old lead.
Recycling isn't always economical (see paper and plastic) but in the case of batteries, it absolutely is. The biggest problem battery recycle have is there's simply not enough batteries to recycles. Demand far outstrips supply at the moment.
For cars, they are pushing lfp and sodium ion as perfectly reasonable & cheap batteries.
Now the battery costs are falling and in a few years we will probably see an oversupply situation which will be good times for anybody who uses batteries. I'm a bit hopeful about decarbonization efforts for the latter half of the decade. I think battery prices will drop enough to make grid storage viable in more places and further allow the deployment of wind and solar generation. As this article mentions EVs will see a major price drop in their most expensive component.
Then of course a bunch of the manufacturers will go out of business because the prices dropped too low and then the market will consolidate into a couple of companies and prices will creep upward again as they fail to compete with each other. But that's a problem for the future.
Grid storage is the major one. As price starts to decline you are going to see power providers soak up any excess battery supply.
There are companies that take old EV batteries and break then down. The steel and plastic is recycled. The valuable metals end up in one big lump right now, but as I understand they are storing them for future use as that part is still being commercially developed and they expect it to be valuable.
If we take a look at lead acid batteries, the majority of the lead that is used in the manufacturing of new batteries comes from old batteries that are recycled.
But the ultra dense stuff will also help as well, especially with heterogenous cell architectures and the like.
Find me a after the market Chinese cell phone battery that lasts 24 hours or an after the market laptop battery that lasts two hours on a charge and I'll be a devotee to Chinese electric cars for whole my life.
This feel good tech utopia of endless possibilities where wind can power terra watts, sunlight can do wonders and such sells well but otherwise is irrational and non scientific. At the moment.
Problems are harder than that.
Major EV Manufacturing expansion has been cancelled by automakers, including Tesla
The manufacturing costs that were propped up by cheap Chinese labor and exotics is ending.
Not enough exotics available for a long term plan to convert the US to EVs. Cost ends up driving EV prices too high for foreseeable future.
Not enough infrastructure in the US. This isnt changing anytime soon.
Money is tight and risk averse consumers avoid EVs, especially anything that isnt the current models.
Oddly e-bike prices have continued to rise without a real correction after the covid shortage constrained supply price spike, and the used market is kept from balancing it out through very high replacement battery pricing with various vendor lock in mechanisms. (eg: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1396568/average-e-bike-p...)
Eg this says the e-bikes YoY growth has been only 10% ish and forecasted to continue that way: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1261084/global-e-bike-ma...
And that's despite the fact that the US lags behind the Asian and European markets when it comes to e-bike demand: https://electrek.co/2022/02/08/us-electric-bicycle-sales-tra...
Without more data, I think it's too soon to conclude that EVs are outselling e-bikes, at least in terms of units shipped. And the fact that EV subsidies are expiring around the globe puts downward pressure on EV demand in a way that doesn't apply to e-bikes.
It wouldn't surprise me if BYD, CATL, and Tesla were already there now. Not sure if there's public information on that though. I'd imagine they'd keep it a secret if they can.
Funny they mention nickel and cobalt, since they're not actually required. I think LFP cells are somewhere around half the EV-battery market these days.
Agreed!
It's not like their quality is worse - far from that. It's just that they're engineered to last a very specific engine hours figure.
Will they last 10 years? Probably too early to say. Battery degradation isn't the problem people thought it would be. But anything mechanical is going to need some maintenance.
With the caveat that demand is decreasing right now. [0]
0. https://www.wsj.com/business/autos/ev-makers-turn-to-discoun...
The current battery tech is responding to demand (and demand predictions) from a couple years ago.
In reality there were some pretty big price bumps in the past year that softened demand and now they're having to walk those back via incentives. In other words normal business shit.
Seems like the cheaper batteries will solve that
About the only one who seriously committed to it was Elon Musk and his engineers. It may have been the last sensible thing he did, but it was a doozy.
Current approaches like silicon-enriched or pure lithium metal anodes indeed use less materials, but they're decreasing the size of the less dense of the two electrodes, as the metal cathode is typically much denser and heavier than the graphite anode, so ultimately you're getting more density, but largely because you're decreasing the volume of the whole thing.
Lithium is the limiting component, since it carries the charge - there's a theoretical limit how little you can use and we're within an order of magnitude of that.
[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S24058...
[2] https://ars.els-cdn.com/content/image/1-s2.0-S24058297193110...
If you check the vehicle info in the door, they note they're made in China: https://static.cargurus.com/images/forsale/2023/11/04/04/31/...
MG is also Chinese.
Save time, I used to spend time filling up my car. It now charges while I sleep.
The main thing is that the cost of fuel vs. the cost of electricity meant that we are saving ~$100/month and the difference in car payments for ICE vehicles vs EV was smaller than that.
Although I'm pretty sure this only holds for new vs. new. The "used" market for EVs is almost non-existent and the savings you get is not nearly as large in used as it is for ICE. So if you are willing to buy used, then yes, ICE is still going to have an advantage for a while. But for new vehicles at least, modulo all those factors up above, it's already the case that some EVs are cheaper than comparable ICE vehicles.
It does depend on where you are. In the Nordics an EV is definitely cheaper than even a used ICE. Biggest reason being the reduced fuel costs, but also lower tax.
Depends
Here in New Zealand we get 3-year old ex Japanese vehicles at about half new price
Or on depreciation. When some battery breakthrough finally hits the market and unfucks EVs so they don't weigh twice as much as regular vehicles to go half as far, then you'll be left with $1-2k worth of metal around a worthless battery that nobody will want to buy anymore.
As for depreciation, I'm not one who really buys new cars very often. The vehicle I replaced was was over a decade old and it's resale value isn't that much higher than it's scrap value.
And for people who _do_ go through vehicles more often than I do, I think it's a bit too early to tell. I'm personally skeptical that the lifetime fuel savings for most people won't cover the difference in depreciation. But I guess we'll see!
Incentives and prices will vary over time. While there is new "tech" for solar in the pipeline, it will take time to reach market. As prices decrease, incentives will as well. Be mindful of how incentives and financing may stack, EnergySage will provide all the info you need to make an informed decision.
I love it. Went there, and it gave me two options. One with a 17.2 year payback, and a second where I get a loan and my 20 year savings are -$27K. Ha! Seems like they should just replace that second option with "we calculated this one and it turns out you'd lose a bunch of money, it's not feasible."
Alas, 17.2 years is longer than my current roof has left before replacement, and almost certainly longer than I'll live here. Maybe the next house. Especially since I'm thinking of moving somewhere with enough open land that I can just DIY a nice ground-mount setup instead of mucking about with holes in the roof.
If you can't buy the system outright consider getting a Home Equity loan. This is exactly the sort of thing they are designed for and have much less overhead than any other option.
In the US we suffer from high demand in a small market allowing installers to inflate the system prices considerably. We should be paying less than $2/watt installed, but you see quotes for like $4-$8/watt all the time because these companies get to pick their customers.
Hmm, not sure how much prices have changed, but I installed my own ground mount 7kW array(s) back in 2020, and that was right around $2/watt with me doing all the work except a concrete mixer dump session for the footings.
While I agree in general, your numbers seem off. In expensive Northern California I regularly see systems running $3-4/watt, not $4-8.
Unfortunately, loans aren't quite what they were when I got solar over a year ago, 0.99% APR was one of my offers with the lowest cost quote. >10 year payback is quite high, mine is 4-5 years (not accounting for inflation or annual increases in electricity costs).
I had solar panels installed a little over ten years ago, for environmental reasons, and I was surprised to learn that the economics were already good enough to make it work out as a benefit in purely financial terms. Equipment has only gotten better since then.
Will the person plan on living there for the next 5-10 years? Will installation costs finally start falling three years from now? Will the government institute a large grid connection fee so as to significantly impact payback periods? Is the roof going to need replacement within the next 10 years?
If I could really buy 1 kWh of cells for $130, I would expect to see them show up on eBay for not much more than that. (Or, even for less, because eBay has a lot of factory seconds, damaged goods, etc)
However, prices for new bare cells on eBay is more than double the numbers quoted in this article.
It makes me think there are market distortions going on, and the real price is differing from the advertised price.
> damaged goods
A damaged battery is recycling material, not a resale item.
Is Goldman confident this is a long term trend? I didn't see in their report that the decline in price is due to permanent increased supply or increased efficient extraction etc...
The article uses words like “expect”, “might”, “could”, and “hope” throughout. Look at where 2023 is on those charts: way to the left on the x-axis.
I hope batteries really do get cheaper in the future but this is optimistic prediction headlined as present-tense fact.
Basic transport in the NEV class is far superior and benefits with tech true innovation.
Bigger heavier more shit to break is what I see Lincoln advertise meanwhile in Texas car payment insurance gas parking tolls (sound familiar?) take a huge chunk of income. It’s dumb. Fix this first.
EVs provide the sweetest kind of demand for a grid, they are parked 23 hours a day, can charge whenever power is free and less than free. Power prices go negative 200 million times/year[1]. Batteries, Solar and Wind and still in the early stages, as volume grows, both will get a lot cheaper. Batteries add the much needed gigantic-distributed-storage-reservoir, soaking up all the excess production that is currently wasted.
An insightful comment from a HNer (don't remember who), if there is excess production we have to either move it across time or across space. Across space requires building transmission lines (costly, takes a decade). Across time is easy, we just need more EVs, everywhere.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:3-Learning-curves-for-e...
(2019 article) “Batteries will fall much faster than you are forecasting.” The key determinant of our forecast is the relationship between price and volume. From the observed historical values, we calculate a learning rate of around 18%. This means that for every doubling of cumulative volume, we observe an 18% reduction in price. Based on this observation, and our battery demand forecast, we expect the price of an average battery pack to be around $94/kWh by 2024 and $62/kWh by 2030: https://about.bnef.com/blog/behind-scenes-take-lithium-ion-b...
Learning rate for Solar is 20%. According to this article (https://ourworldindata.org/learning-curve), the price declined from $106 to $0.38 per watt in these four decades. A decline of 99.6%. It looks like modules are a lot more cheaper, its now $0.14 per watt for TOPcon(28% efficiency) and $0.12 per watt for PERC (24% efficiency).
A common critique that comes up is, we don't have electricity for all the EVs. This is nonsense.
(1) Renewable energy is currently curtailed. A lot of production is wasted, because there is no demand at that time. EVs absorb all that.
(2) See the calculations here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35845334
(3) Electricity is used heavily in fossil fuel and oil production. We simply shift it to EVs. No additional demand.
(4) Right now, everyone's energy is fragmented: natural gas for cooking, water heating, boiler for heating, gas for cars and electricity. When people switch to EVs, a lot of them switch to solar, consolidating all energy, saving ~$1000/month. And also lowering consumption from the grid.
(5) We somehow found a ton of electricity everywhere for bitcoin, 127 TWh. We can definitely find electricity for EVs.
But, more importantly, EVs can replace natural gas peaker plants (the costliest part of electricity) and make some money! Powerwall owners are making $150/day: https://electrek.co/2023/07/05/tesla-electric-customers-repo.... When virtual power plants start popping up, there will be a huge rush to buy EVs. A ton of people are buying homes for 500K+ to put them up on airbnb and they barely make 100/day. Owning an EV (replacing your existing ICE) and make $100+ per day just by opting in to participate in a VPP is the very definition of passive income.
[1]https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-08-30/trapped-r...