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Comment by trog | Hacker News Reader

Meanwhile, in reality, there's an article on HN right now that appears practically side by side with this one from Goldman saying batteries are going to be 50% cheaper by 2026.

The most likely scenario in 10-15 years is that the batteries have degraded some low double digit percentsge, which matches most real world data that I've seen, but will otherwise still be as viable as any other vehicle. And if battery prices do drop as is being predicted replacing them with something similar should not be prohibitively expensive (and possibly will mean extended range as well).

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If you give me your email I can send you an email at the end of next year, confirming that there will not be any significant battery improvements in any car sold by that year

These kinds of announcements/articles have been published every few months, and pretty much never end up in any products because theyre pretty much never economically viable after scaling it up

I'm even willing to put money on that, if you actually believe your own words to be true, I'd easily bet pretty much any amount that we will not have a 50% upgrade in battery capacity in any car as compared to the previous model that's been published 1-3 years prior to that. To keep it simple, say $10 000? It'd be easy money if you yourself think you weren't just talking none sense ( ◕ ᴗ ◕ )

Ars debunked this weird idea that batteries aren't improving a few years back: https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/05/eternally-five-years...

I didn't mean they didn't improve at all. They absolutely have. Just not enough to matter in the context of cars.

And even if we did get a 50% battery capacity upgrade in 2025 as compared to 2024 - while I wouldve lost the bet... My original point would've still been just as correct, because even at that point, they're still annoying to work around vs ICEs and their biggest cost would still come from a single component (battery) that has a pretty short expected lifespan compared to a regular engine

And you yourself likely know that as well, considering you didn't even acknowledge my bet ( ◠ ‿ ・ )

I didn't bother acknowledging your bet because a) it feels like a bad faith proposition and b) it's a goalpost shift from my first comment which was about batteries getting cheaper, not more efficient.

I'd also argue we're seeing battery improvements in cars pretty consistently, which is one of the reasons I can now buy an EV with 350km range for AUD$30k.

The bet was definitely an afterthought, but definitely not made in bad faith. The claim of 50% improvement yoy in a long established category like batteries was just so outlandishly improbable to me, that it'd be willing to bet that that's not gonna happen.

There have definitely been improvements in that regard, just not in such a short period of time

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