Battery Prices Going the Same Way as All Other Aspects of Clean Energy: DOWN.
Here’s a graph for those who said that battery prices could never fall far enough to make electric transportation effective.
Tagged with: electric transportation
Here’s a graph for those who said that battery prices could never fall far enough to make electric transportation effective.
The graph stops before the adoption of the more cost effective 2170 cell, and before the opening of the Gigafactory.
My guess is current prices are already significantly below $190 per kWh, with around 30% further reductions by the time Gigafactory ramps up. My guess is that by the time Gigafactory is fully ramped, costs will be approaching $100 per kWh.
This would put the cost of the model 3 battery pack at not much more than $6000 for the 60 kWh pack.
$100/kWh would be great. I could have 5 days of power for $6500.00.
Craig,
There was never any doubt that almost any product’s unit price will drop with increased mass manufacture, especially when factors such as R&D, material supply, commercialization, investment are amortized over greater numbers.
However, the price of batteries was always only one factor. Battery capacity and usage restrictions still remain. There’s only so many batteries you can fit in a pack before it becomes self defeating.
ESD capacity and convenience of use remain the biggest factors restricting EV’s and for that matter, all renewable energy.
Future advances in energy storage will undoubtedly make even the most advanced batteries of today, seem primitive.
These are very exciting challenges facing the next generation of young scientists and engineers.
Marco, I am curious why you constantly use the term “ESD” which may tend to confuse the issue. The Term “Battery” is perhaps equally bad but it is a common term that has taken on a well understood meaning separate from the origin of the term. A fuel cell, atomic battery, and primary batteries may not be an ESD but many would understand that they would perform the same function. Similarly an ultra cap or flywheel would be an ESD and perform the same function as a battery but are not actually the common secondary batteries we think of inhabiting a BEV.
Craig, to the point of the article, it was only a few years ago when the DOE was advancing the idea that when battery prices reached the “low price” of $400 / watt the EV would become economical.
There is a fellow who writes under the title of “Battery University” and describes 4 qualities of batteries that have been difficult to achieve together. http://www.batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/secondary_batteries
Hi breath,ce) is a term widely used in the EV industry when discussing Ev power-trains. I agree, why the term is used in preference to ” battery” is a little baffling, but probably due to a fad some years ago for the development of Super-capacitors, etc for vehicles.
I guess I’m guilty of simply repeating a common lingo or jargon.
Thank you for referring Craig to “Battery University”. It’s an interesting and informative website.
I have to say that acronyms makes me nuts. ESD is a perfect example. I had to think for a while before I came to the conclusion it must mean “electrical storage device” or something similar but I am not yet convinced that is correct. I have been involved in so many industries that the same combination of letters means different things in each of those industries and I have to think about the context in which these acronyms are used. ESD to me means Electro Static Discharge which was both a test I ran to insure that equipment made by the company I worked for did not catch on fire in the oil refineries or paper mills it was used in and also a condition I used to work to mitigate in the electronics manufacturing industry where a discharge would destroy semiconductors but leave no visible evidence. Of course I also see those round metal things in the street that have GAS cast in them and my first thought is Gallium Arsenide which is a doping material for semiconductors instead of the fact that it is a manhole cover leading to the gas mains.
Brian,
I’m not sure whether to read your post as tongue-in-cheek parody, or serious comment.
I’ve never met anyone who upon viewing a street manhole cover labelled GAS, ponders whether it could mean “Gallium Arsenide”.
I congratulate you ! You certainly live in an interesting dimension. The world needs more eccentrics.
It is real and it is the world I live in. What doping material was used in semiconductors was important in my life for quite a while. It determined a voltage difference I had to account for. I didn’t ponder whether it meant one thing or the other when I saw it in a manhole cover but Gallium Arsenide was the first thing that popped into my head every time I saw it because that’s how it got used in my world more.
The ESD thing also very real. Screw that up and really bad things happen.
Brian,
Thank you for your reply.
You make an interesting observation on how easy it is to become so engrossed in our own little worlds, that we lose perspective of the larger world everyone else inhabits.
Re my earlier comment of battery cost soon to approach $100 per kWh, I was referring to manufacturing cost – not cost to the consumer. Also, I was referring to the battery without 2 way inverter charger. My guess is with battery cost to manufacture at $100 per kWh, a “powerpack 3” will still end up costing around $200 per kWh plus installation of around $1000, or around $5000 installed for a 20 kWh battery system.
Even $200/kWh is cheaper than the $5600 I spent on a 6kWh setup.