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Comment by soulofmischief | Hacker News Reader

Extra 21% capacity. Current practice still burns 9%. Lithium batteries have become very cheap, and I would pay a markup for a 50% longer battery life, assuming it didn't (a) further normalize non-replaceable batteries in consumer electronics or (b) lead to even worse conditions for the quasi-slaves currently mining lithium. Unfortunately, I doubt either of those will hold.

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> Extra 21% capacity. Current practice still burns 9%.

On a normalized basis, if current practice yields 91% finished capacity (i.e. 9% deactivation loss), and the new proposed process is expected to yield 70% finished capacity (i.e. 30% deactivation loss), then the question is how much initial material must the new proposed process start with to end with the equivalent finished capacity as the current practice?

  FinCap = InitCap * (1 - DeactivationRate)

                                        0.91
    0.91 = InitCap * 0.70 --> InitCap = ---- = 1.30
                                        0.70

Good point, I didn't think that through. Thanks for the correction.

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