Comment by hn_throwaway_99 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by hn_throwaway_99 | Hacker News Reader

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hn_throwaway_99

> This is a process tweak incremental improvement, not anything truly fundamental.

Regardless of whether this is a "process tweak" or something "truly fundamental", a 50% increase in battery lifespan would be huge, regardless.

The conspiracy theorist in me though thinks that a lot of consumer electronics makers wouldn't like this, because lower battery capacity has to be a big driver of upgrade cycles. I'm guessing a lot of folks are similar to me: these days, somewhere in the 2-3 year mark my cell battery capacity starts degrading noticeably. My phone otherwise works great, and I certainly don't need the features in the latest model phone, and of course I know I can pay for just a battery replacement, but sometimes I think "Well, if I need to replace the battery, I might as well get a new phone - it's got <some feature that is marginally better but that I'm now convincing myself is super cool to justify my not-really-necessary upgrade purchase>".

I think with 50% more battery lifespan I would rarely, if ever, use dwindling battery capacity as an excuse for an upgrade purchase.

Sorry that I didn't jump back on to respond sooner.

Re: consumer electronics, the obvious big example is cell phones, and notably major manufacturers have started adding features to extend battery lifespan by capping charge levels. Samsung has had this for a few years, originally capped at 85% but changed in a recent update down to 80%. I believe this occurred around the same time they extended their software support to 5 years. Apple added the same thing in iOS 17 with the iPhone 15 models, but despite obviously having the hardware capability ("optimized charging") they didn't enable the feature on earlier models.

I doubt it. Most electric car manufacturers offer a 8-10 full battery warranty with their vehicles. I don’t think an extra 4-5 years is something they would risk consumer satisfaction for.

Right? That's why our cell phones all have replaceable batteries and use the same charging cable!

You can replace the battery, it’s just that they want to save as much space as possible for smaller and smaller phones. Also having to take it in to replace the battery means you’ll probably think about buying a new phone instead which is what you’re implying.

We have been trained to think of cell phones as semi-disposable. If people had to replace their car's $10k battery as often as they replace their phone they would be dead in the water.

At the price of cars they have to last. If cars only lasted 1 year then they would sell a lot more cars, but they would be all bare bones and lower overall profit - many buyers would be willing to save $500 by not getting the heater option since they have to pay the entire cost of the car every year. Because the average car is 12 years old car manufactures can sell the trade in value of the car - they know someone else will buy the car when it is 3 years old and so the real cost of a brand new car is 1/3 to 1/2 the actually price.

Vehicles differ greatly from consumer electronics. Batteries are usually thermally managed, way more mass to absorb the thermal changes plus charging is spread over thousands of cells, there is a reserved capacity hidden from the user...

Biggest things is that 20% degradation in a cell phone means it can't survive a whole day; whereas that difference isn't that noticeable in a vehicle, where you're not running it to 0 anyway, just charging when needed.

If you get 50% from a process tweak what else do you tweak? Have they changed the battery formula to get longevity where it is? What does that tweak due to volumetric power density? What does it do to price? Recyclability?

What nice things can you do if you take 130% longevity and something else?

Incentives could be flipped with legislated battery lifespan and capacities.

I think this is something the market could fix on its own. A manufacturer wouldn't want to be known for 33% less battery lifetime.

That is, if the results will be reproduced. I'm very skeptic about battery news.

As others have mentioned - features that preserve battery longevity have become common in many consumer devices, usually at the cost of current battery capacity. I'm not sure your conspirational side is all that accurate here :P

There's no conspiracy necessary here. Most people I know upgrade because they lose it, break it, or want the new camera or want a better screen or whatever. Or people who really hold on to their devices upgrade because the OS isn't getting upgraded anymore and apps won't install/update anymore. And then a lot of people who don't need any of those new things just replace the battery.

That's great that you use it as an excuse to get a new phone, but whatever small percentage of people wind up being motivated to upgrade specifically because their battery doesn't hold enough charge, then gets outweighed by people who will buy one phone over another specifically because it's supposed to maintain its capacity for more years. Capitalism at work.

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