# Where Are Li-Ion Battery Costs Going?



## Sunking (Aug 10, 2009)

Chi-Coms have already bottomed out some time ago.


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## PhantomPholly (Aug 20, 2008)

Moltenmetal said:


> http://investorintel.com/technology...turing-economics-part-2/?sthash.66AiiVlW.mjjo
> 
> Interesting article- looks like some solid data behind it too. Is he right? No idea. But he makes an convincing argument that the bottom isn't too far away.


This is what I have been saying for 4 years on this site. What the article fails to mention is that this process is repeated for each new technology. Looking at the 60 year trend for battery cost per Kwh stored and released, the netted trend across multiple technologies (Alkaline; NiMH; LiIon; etc.) we have seen a near-perfect exponential curve where the cost drops by 1/2 per lifetime Kwh stored & released about every 5-8 years. Traditional LiIon cylindrical cells are reaching maximum entropy on price, but several new technologies are already here and just beginning their technological life cycles.


http://www.popularmechanics.com/cars/g785/8-potential-ev-and-hybrid-battery-breakthroughs/?slide=2
http://www.extremetech.com/tag/batteries
http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/techtank/posts/2015/09/15-five-emerging-battery-technologies
Much of the development cycle has to do with demand at a current price point - without profit potential, potential new manufacturers do not invest in new facilities. The only reason global battery production today is not sufficient to make all cars EVs is that the price point is too high. But, we are about to hit the price point where manufacturing will literally explode with growth.


Pick your investments well....


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## Moltenmetal (Mar 20, 2014)

Where's the next new technology in production, then?

It seems to me, and the author of that paper I linked to agrees, that what we've seen over the past 5-10 yrs isn't a breakthrough- just some modified chemistry or "special sauce", inside the same old cans. People are getting better at making the cans, but that incremental refinement doesn't give big cost gains forever.

There are exciting things on the horizon, particularly the secondary metal-air batteries, but most of these discoveries don't pan out and fail to go into production. 

When NiMH was going strong in power tools etc.and had more or less killed Ni-Cd for those applications, Li-ion was already in cellphones and some laptops. By that measure, the next great leap beyond Li-ion should already be here in high dollar niche applications. Where is it? I'm not convinced it exists- yet. And to stick to your improvement curve, the big breakthrough is overdue.


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## Karter2 (Nov 17, 2011)

Moltenmetal said:


> Where's the next new technology in production, then?.....


..Next thread down maybe ?


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## PhantomPholly (Aug 20, 2008)

Moltenmetal said:


> Where's the next new technology in production, then?


You did not bother read any of the links I provided, did you?



> It seems to me, and the author of that paper I linked to agrees, that what we've seen over the past 5-10 yrs isn't a breakthrough- just some modified chemistry or "special sauce", inside the same old cans. People are getting better at making the cans, but that incremental refinement doesn't give big cost gains forever.


You didn't even read my post, did you?



> There are exciting things on the horizon, particularly the secondary metal-air batteries, but most of these discoveries don't pan out and fail to go into production.


Actually a lot of new discoveries do pan out, but generally fail to gain acceptance because another discovery around the same time simply proves to be cheaper to manufacture.



> When NiMH was going strong in power tools etc.and had more or less killed Ni-Cd for those applications, Li-ion was already in cellphones and some laptops. By that measure, the next great leap beyond Li-ion should already be here in high dollar niche applications. Where is it?


Right in front of you - open your eyes.



> I'm not convinced it exists- yet.


Take your pick - 24M's manufacturing improvements, which will eventually bring manufacture of current chemistry down to 20% of current costs (probably the tail end of the life cycle for current chemistry); carbon nanotubes (we are only just beginning to uncover the miracles of this stuff); metal-air (we have at least 10 more years to figure those out before the curve gets even measurably impacted); or something entirely new not in the labs yet. 

The answer will undoubtedly be "all of the above, and some others we haven't thought of yet." In the immediate future 24M seems likeliest to go into production this year, and if the pilot plant proves successful I suspect dozens more will pop up before Tesla can even get their gigafactory on line.



> And to stick to your improvement curve, the big breakthrough is overdue.


Incorrect. Blips of a few years don't matter to the overall curve. The Tesla Gigafactory is right on the timeline to take the current battery process to the next cost point right on schedule. If there were greater demand at the price point Tesla will be able to sell them for then we would see more companies jumping in with funding for even more gigafactories - but there isn't and investors know it.

The curve obviously will not continue forever - but it doesn't need to. Once battery prices make EVs more economically attractive than ICE vehicles ICE is toast. Once grid storage is cost-effective solar will explode. Solar will probably never comprise 100% of all power generation, but it really doesn't need to. Some blend of nuclear, wind, solar will fulfill all our needs for less than today's prices.


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## JRP3 (Mar 7, 2008)

Moltenmetal said:


> http://investorintel.com/technology...turing-economics-part-2/?sthash.66AiiVlW.mjjo
> 
> Interesting article- looks like some solid data behind it too. Is he right? No idea. But he makes an convincing argument that the bottom isn't too far away.


Written by John Petersen, long term anti EV and anti Tesla troll on Seeking Alpha and pretty much any outlet that would allow him to print his articles. He's basically been wrong about everything regarding EVs and batteries for many years. He was pumping his AXPW penny stock while bashing Tesla, predicting Tesla would go to zero and AXPW would skyrocket. The opposite has happened. Believe nothing he says.


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## Moltenmetal (Mar 20, 2014)

Oh good old Phantom, proving once again that he can be rude and obnoxious even when discussing something far less controversial than politics or global warming!

YES, I DID read those links you provided. The Popular Mechanics listed a slew of them which are speculative, not ready for production, and basically the same as links that get posted here sometimes two and three a week. Research lab "breakthrough" spam, most of it. The Brookings paper is a list of things people are working on- some of which people have been "working on" for fifty years so far. The ExtremeTech link took me to a bunch of useless click-bait, not anything relevant.

The question I asked is, where is the next technology IN PRODUCTION, akin to the Li-ion cells that were already out in high value applications when Ni-MH was still rising to its ascendancy? I'll tell you where it is: it doesn't exist yet. Is it coming? Perhaps, but it's overdue to keep the cost curve rolling. That's not a blip of a few years- Li-ion has been king for a decade already. I think we're actually against a fairly substantial wall, requiring a real breakthrough to get more than small incremental improvement. I would love to be wrong.




> Actually a lot of new discoveries do pan out, but generally fail to gain acceptance because another discovery around the same time simply proves to be cheaper to manufacture.


 Partially true. But many also fail because underlying problems inherent to the technology only became apparent on scale-up, are underplayed by the researchers who publish merely as a means to draw in more investment, or which seem likely to be surmountable on the lab bench but actually turned out to be total deal-killers. Others fail because of bad management, poor execution etc., and are left in the dust without being picked up by smarter or braver souls.



> Once battery prices make EVs more economically attractive than ICE vehicles ICE is toast. Once grid storage is cost-effective solar will explode


 I seriously doubt the first statement, though I hope it will come true eventually. I see ICE and fossil fueled vehicles coexisting for a long, long time- I doubt the ICE will be "toast" even fifty years from now. And grid storage has a very long way to go before it's cost effective. You'd think this would be by far the easier of the two to deal with, given that it is far less weight and volume-sensitive than EV storage, and yet we're still miles away from that.

We don't differ about the destination- we differ significantly about how quickly and how completely we'll get there.


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## JRP3 (Mar 7, 2008)

I think for high value applications, such as frequency regulation and demand response, battery storage is already competitive with peaker plants.


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## PhantomPholly (Aug 20, 2008)

Moltenmetal said:


> Oh good old Phantom, proving once again that he can be rude and obnoxious even when discussing something far less controversial than politics or global warming!


Think again. Your post was rude - asking questions already answered in plain English is effectively trolling. Pointing out YOUR rudeness is not "being nasty," it is giving honest feedback. 'nuff said.



> YES, I DID read those links you provided. The Popular Mechanics listed a slew of them which are speculative, not ready for production, and basically the same as links that get posted here sometimes two and three a week. Research lab "breakthrough" spam, most of it. The Brookings paper is a list of things people are working on- some of which people have been "working on" for fifty years so far. The ExtremeTech link took me to a bunch of useless click-bait, not anything relevant.


The Tesla Gigafactory is not speculative, and will be on-line in time to fulfil the next turn of the cycle - giving another 5-8 years after that for "whatever else lies next." As the articles clearly pointed out LiIon chemistry will probably remain dominant for another decade but will undergo improvements. When it comes on line it will begin manufacturing batteries at about 50% of current costs, thus insuring the next price step down in the 5-8 year cycle. That means 10-16 years (approximately) until something else has to emerge to "continue the cycle." 

Like Moore's Law, the cycle is not actually a "law" but an observed pattern. It is not "broken" if it varies a bit; however, as in so many other technological areas it is a reasonably reliable indicator to predict how long it will take until we reach a given price point.



> The question I asked is, where is the next technology IN PRODUCTION, akin to the Li-ion cells that were already out in high value applications when Ni-MH was still rising to its ascendancy?


And I answered your question explicitly. The Tesla gigafactory comes on line within 5 years. 24M will probably start ramping up even before then, but may take a while before enough plants are built to affect prices even more. 



> I'll tell you where it is: it doesn't exist yet.


If it did we would already be in the next cycle, and you'd be asking where the NEXT improvement is coming from, ad infinitum. The way the cycle works is that that which does not yet exist will emerge in a predictable period of time, and that period does not include "right this minute.



> I think we're actually against a fairly substantial wall, requiring a real breakthrough to get more than small incremental improvement. I would love to be wrong.


You can rejoice - you are already wrong.  24M alone has the probability of covering the next two cycles of price drops (projected costs <= 25% of current costs), so we are already covered for 10-16 years with existing chemistry. Carbon nanotubes are still in their infancy, who knows how many more cycles they will take us?



> Partially true. But many also fail because underlying problems inherent to the technology only became apparent on scale-up, are underplayed by the researchers who publish merely as a means to draw in more investment, or which seem likely to be surmountable on the lab bench but actually turned out to be total deal-killers. Others fail because of bad management, poor execution etc., and are left in the dust without being picked up by smarter or braver souls.


I agree, all absolutely true. My point was that when you point to the historical OUTCOME to measure "how many successes there were," that being that out of hundreds of "possibles" only one or two survive, you are ignoring the fact that if the one or two which DID survive HAD NOT then there were probably 20-30 others which would have been "almost as good." All of those were "successes in that they COULD have been produced for a better price than what came before; they were only "failures" because they weren't as cheap or useful as the BEST that came from that period.

In other words, 20-30 out of 100 new technologies may be technical successes but only 1-2 succeed economically. It is impossible to know ahead of time which will be the winners, but that does not mean that all 30 did not "succeed in their design goals." So, the failure rate is not really as high as you make it out to be - the "other 18" were "in the can" if the winning few did not pan out for some reason.



> I seriously doubt the first statement, though I hope it will come true eventually. I see ICE and fossil fueled vehicles coexisting for a long, long time- I doubt the ICE will be "toast" even fifty years from now. And grid storage has a very long way to go before it's cost effective.


Again, different design parameters change the criteria for "success." Grid storage need not be light nor compact. Technologies using cheap materials like Aquion (already in production) turned into megabatteries, or perhaps Harvard's new "rhubarb flow battery" which one projection suggested could cost as little as $27 / Kwh, will ultimately lead to cost effective solutions. If we succeed in this in the next 30 years (I predict as little as 15) we have "won" - it doesn't need to be here today.



> You'd think this would be by far the easier of the two to deal with, given that it is far less weight and volume-sensitive than EV storage, and yet we're still miles away from that.


You are thinking linearly, not exponentially. The Human Genome project was hailed as a failure 1/2 way through (7.5 years in) because they had only charted 1% of the human DNA. They finished early. That program is typical of technological advance.



> We don't differ about the destination- we differ significantly about how quickly and how completely we'll get there.


And I could be wrong, but the evidence is on my side. Read, "The Singularity is Near" by Ray Kurzweil (technology adviser to 7 Presidents) to understand how all technological progress for the past 7,000 years has been exponential, not linear.


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