I don't know if you need a huge increase in capacity/kg - present Telsas work ok but are expensive. I'd be surprised if costs don't fall considerably. As to falls vs similar tech products I'm not sure which tech products you'd compare them to. They'll probably fall in price slower than memory chips and faster than railway lines for example.
I think we'll reach $50/kWh well before 2025. That's also around the same time we should have a global production of about 800GWh-1TWh per year (bulk of that from Chinese factories), or about 20x the current production.
Assuming an average battery size of 50kWh for an EV by then, even that capacity should only be enough for around -15-20 million EVs a year, or about 20-25% of the annual car sales. I may be a little optimistic here on battery size. It's possible many EVs will be super-cheap with 30kWh batteries, but we'll also see many more buses and trucks with 300+ kWh batteries. We'll need to go from 1TWh to 2 and 3TWh pretty quickly especially if we are to use batteries for utilities, too.
Around the same time we should begin to see car makers start using the much safer solid state batteries in their EVs. These will be more expensive (probably not more than what Li-Ion batteries cost right now) and they will start shipping in $50,000+ EVs at first, but they will eventually trickle down just as Li-Ion batteries have and will.
What I want to know is why do smartphone manufacturers think it's okay to sell $800 phones with 3,000 mAh batteries about four years after shipping them for the first time on the market. They did exactly the same thing with storage. They kept 16GB as default for a few years in their flagships, to the point where it cost them 4x less/GB than it did when they first launched with a 16GB drive.
Probably not until significantly more capacity is added. Right now all the big battery suppliers (CATL, CALB, EVE, LG Chem, Panasonic) are all at capacity meaning they have no incentive to lower prices.
If new capacity comes online and it's not greeted by increased demand (unlikely) then prices could fall. Wouldn't hold my breath though, the targets China has for EVs is going to provide strong support for demand even if the rest of the world goes into recession.
Last I saw the battery expectation is around 15 years. In 15 years, at the rate of development of EV's and research/development being put into batteries, it would be reasonable to expect that batteries would be significantly cheaper with much better technology.
Battery production needs to scale about two extra orders of magnitude- current production can't backup current renewables.
The current battery prices are reflective of relatively small spale, high value needs of consumer electronics industry and a nascent electric car industry.
Hopefully the price will drop massively, like it did for solar panels, but currently we can't even produce enough for cars
Batteries are following the same price curve of solar panels, and are about to get stupid cheap.
EDIT: If Tesla is able to drive down battery costs to below $100/kWh, I assure you, EVs won't be the biggest success story; you'll be able to turn every wind and solar generator into dispatchable generation cheaper than coal, nuclear, and natural gas. We'll be off fossil fuels in ~10-15 years.
There’s not enough material right now to make EV batteries for everyone; that price is only going to go up unless a new battery recipe is made commercially viable (including the necessary mass production facilities), or new deposits are made available at similar prices.
'From 2010 to 2016, battery pack prices fell roughly 80% from ~$1,000/kWh to ~$227/kWh (Exhibit 4).4 Despite that drop, battery costs continue to make EVs more costly than comparable ICE-powered variants. Current projections put EV battery pack prices below $190/kWh by the end of the decade, and suggest the potential for pack prices to fall
below $100/kWh by 2030'
So in 6 years the cost of battery packs has dropped 4 to 5 fold. And by 2030 may drop a total of 10 fold vs 2010 prices.
The cost of batteries is falling at a current rate of 16% per year and it's accelerating. As such, battery storage will become increasingly competitive with peaker plants.
"From around 1995 through 2010, energy storage costs had fallen by about 14% a year – a rate that means the price will halve in a little more than five years. In 2010 – that rate sped up to 16% a year, and while a 2% increase might seem small it actually means that instead of taking five+ years to halve – it would now take slightly less than four years, more than 20% faster. Tesla’s Gigafactory has now increased the rate of price decrease even faster than the 16%. It is estimated that the Gigafactory, by doing nothing more than moving all of the supply chain arms under a single roof, has decreased the price of battery packs by 30-50% – while doubling the global volume."
Well if EV battery prices continue to decline at a similar rate - and there’s no reason not to expect this - then in 8-10 years the cost of the batteries is going to be about ¼ of today’s cost. So it doesn’t really seem like it will be such a burden.
The price of batteries has declined by 97% in the last three decades:https://ourworldindata.org/battery-price-decline. And it continues to go down! The chart ends at 2018, $181/KWH. 2024 forecast is $94/KWH (half of 2018 price), 2030 forecast is $62/KWH. Thats just Lithium Ion. Newer chemistries are even cheaper. CATL first-generation cells (Sodium Ion) cost $77 per kWh, expected to drop to $40/KWH.[1]
Current estimate for a battery replacement is 4K - 20K. With energy storage's learning curve, this will be soon under $3K.
Batteries are quite likely to continue to decrease.[1] Most industrial processes follow a learning curve inverse to the cumulative units produced. And it makes sense: each efficiency improvement has a fixed cost, and only gets made if enough units get shipped.
Estimates I have seen are that LI is on a 13% annual decrease, which means that your $16k pack will be $4.5k by 2030.
By then, I would bet that the Honda Civic EV is cheaper than the Honda Civic ICE. In addition to the batter, there are fewer moving parts and simpler assembly, which means less labor; this type of manufacturing has barely started to scale up. Not guaranteed, but my estimates might turn out to be conservative.
And as for rare earths: as demand increases, it becomes increasingly profitable to extract marginal deposits. That's what fracking is, after all.
Newer tech with greater power density would surely help, but a far bigger issue is infrastructure. Not in charging stations, but in manufacturing, servicing and recycling batteries. Once the infrastructure is in place, prices will fall naturally. Batteries are highly recyclable.
If you have the space I think you would be better off using lead acid batteries or wait another 5-10 years. Though lithium based battery production costs are still falling 10-20% a year the demand even at current prices is high enough that we are not getting better prices at consumer wholesale let alone retail. So far to me it seems the battery demand from electric car manufacturers as well as grid scale battery installations is rising faster than the supply. With the current gas and oil prices the demand is going to increase even faster where as supply will still take years to catch up.
Actually, when demand for EVs goes up, lithium mining won't be able to keep up, so in the next decade or so we'll see steep increase in battery prices.
But prices have fallen sharply in recent years, and may continue on down. 2016 is two generations back, in battery years.
Probably future decreases will come from better power density, requiring less physical material for a given capacity, as demand for materials soars. It is remarkable how little lithium there is in a typical Tesla.
I don't know if you need a huge increase in capacity/kg - present Telsas work ok but are expensive. I'd be surprised if costs don't fall considerably. As to falls vs similar tech products I'm not sure which tech products you'd compare them to. They'll probably fall in price slower than memory chips and faster than railway lines for example.
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