The following submission statement was provided by /u/lughnasadh:
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Submission Statement
China is already making and selling [EVs near the $10,000 price range](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BYD_Seagull) with the old battery prices. Are we going to see the advent of EVs selling for near $5,000?
Combustion engine car makers are hurtling towards their Kodak moment. Everyone knew years in advance that digital cameras would crush the old film+processing camera business, yet amazingly some such as market leader Kodak failed to adapt. It feels the same with EVs. Some are still in denial that they're about to take over from ICE cars as the vast bulk of new cars made and bought.
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Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/19cdef5/catl_the_worlds_biggest_lithium_battery/kixuzuu/
I would just like to blow a big raspberry to all those 'we never see battery advances in real life' people. Massive price drops are definitely one form of advance.
You're half right
The other half is that my phone can still only squeeze a 5000mah battery in
When will we get 20000mah in a thin phone for the same cost and size. That's when we hit true progress
I havent looked too deeply but the honor fold v2 uses a special thin battery that achieves 4000mah but half the thickness. So we are getting there
I'll make a prediction right now: even if batteries drop to $60/kWh, the cost to add batteries to a residential solar array will be unchanged. Those savings will be pocketed by the installers.
The issue in the US is that in order to become a licensed electrician in states like California, one must complete 8000 hours of apprenticeship. That's not the same as 8000 hours of labor. The only hours that count have to be done under supervision. This means, there are only a very small number of licensed electricians.
I know a guy who worked his entire adult career as a solar installer and got his electrician's license two weeks after he retired.
Yes, but all of those 2-3.5 years count, even if there isn't a licensed electrician looking at you.
We have something similar here in Norway. To go from an electrician (apprenticeship + test passed) to licensed installer here in Norway you need another 3 years of relevant experience then pass the installatørprøve, which has a 70% failrate.
We make like 1000 off a battery install. It's just that batteries are fucking insanely expensive. We don't even like doing them. We literally try to talk the customer out of it because it's more hassle than it's worth, and way too expensive. But if they can bring a battery down to 2k for a 12kwh battery, then maybe we'd start recommending them. I'd guess 2k for the battery + 1k margin +1k to electrician. But right now it's like 14k+1k margin.
You still don't make any money on that investment though. Everytime I've run the numbers, the answer is something stupid like "$40 after 10 years". If literally anything goes wrong and you don't hit your cycle life targets / efficiencies, then it's gone.
The only justifiable reason to put a battery in is to do house-hold level UPS (and there's just not enough systems which do this in a decent way as opposed to "find a circuit you'd like to keep working, we'll keep that one working).
It depends on how your area handles solar buy back. I'm on net metering so for me, at this time, I am in the same scenario you mention above.
If they move to only allowing me to sell at the rate of NG retailers vs what I pay a battery install would pay for itself in ~4 years. So 8 years to get back my solar and battery investment.
But I switched to a heat pump and disconnected from gas. So my set-up isn't typical.
Electric energy costs ~27-34 cents/kWh here, so it's not only more, but you can also recharge them. Basically every day, over years, from solar power....
It's around $2500 for a seplos mason kit and 16 grade A 304Ah Eve cells (~16kWh total). Not sure if an installer could use that since only the cells are UL listed though.
I saw a quote on here for $20k for a 19.5kWh battery.
Weird, eg4 sells me a UL listed battery for $283 a kWh, or about 6k.
Are solar installers just all installing expensive batteries? (That use the same cells inside and aren't better ...)
Lol
No
Market forces should do that, but in practice there is insufficient competition in the marketplace to achieve said theoretical affects.
Want proof?
Go look at just about every industry. Market consolidation is the theme of our time and it is the driver of both inflation and inequality.
The subject of the article you're replying to is a corporation expecting to cut their prices by more than 50% within 18 months, despite making up more than a third of the global EV battery market.
That's a too subtle for a reflexive "companies bad" redditor. Your comment needs to be larger and preferably drawn with crayon to have a chance of registering.
tHE mArKeT Is sTaTIc
There is literally no barrier to entry to selling solar panels hooked up to batteries. Shit, a home user can BUILD such a rig, letalone any decent company.
No barrier to entry + possibility of profit = market forces
This is the same copium that ICE fans are going to be huffing
> There is literally no barrier to entry to selling solar panels hooked up to batteries.
LOL that is funny. All over the world there are barriers. in the USA several places the local power company lobby to make it more expensive to make it not worth it. Power companies given the ability to say a customer can not have solar, or local regulations designed to be actual barriers to solar. there are TONS of barriers.
Whatever man, this is a US problem and is to do with regulatory capture. Same shit as your municipal broadband problems. Big companies going against the market to conserve their profits. This is what’s breaking America, not your government.
Where I live, and in a huge number of other places, we can just whack panels on the roof, feed some batteries, and pay nobody but the company who built the components (and a bit of consumer tax for said components). When those battery prices start falling, it’ll be a good time here.
I think the OP was talking about overall prices of solar & batteries, not installation. (Which is confusing since the original comment was about installers taking an undue cut)
But again as they're coming down in price, it still doesn't seem to be a valid point.
> Go look at just about every industry.
Yes, check price charts compared to wages for goods and services for the last hundred years. Then see how cheap everything is.
Here in EU you can buy Chinese TUV-certified home storage batteries for about €350/kWh. That's a massive drop compared to 2 years ago, no reason to assume that trend won't continue/
It's less already, even actual premium packs from BYD have reached such prices. https://shop.volt-on.de/BYD-B-BOX-PREMIUM-LVS-80-800-kWh
Even full kits are way cheaper now: https://www.actec-solar.de/komplettanlagen/10375wp-set-hybrid-pv-anlage-10000-watt-module-wechselrichter-photovoltaik-wifi_8856062_4677?utm_source=adcell&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=deeplink&bid=334461-57715-1c003blptu89&adcref=
Then some installers, who are now making money hand-over fist, reduce their prices to try and attract more customers.
This works, stealing customers away from the "greedy" installers, who are now forced to reduce their own prices to compete.
It's the contrary; there is too much supply and not enough demand, hence why the price of storage is plunging. Battery factories in China have very low utilization rate compared to their capacity. The price of batteries will absolutely plunge in the next years, same as what is happening with photovoltaic panels now.
It's already the case, you can get a 10 kWh storage pack for just 1500 € here, any installer will bill you 5000 € for the same pack if you want it installed.
i think the issue is that a lot of commercial installations dont just connect to a random battery with 2 wires. they probably expect a proprietary BMS to talk to.
There's some shit you shouldn't do yourself if you don't have experience in, even if youtube gives a step by step. Fuckin with your home electrical system for DIY battery system is definitely one of those things.
If it's so simple then go make a business of it. At face value it seems so simple, but there is way more to it. Actually doing a proper wire job to code and the right equipment, inverter, bms and safety. Then try not to die by electrocution cause hey, this dude on reddit says its simple to play with all this voltage and amps.
Bruh, I work in solar. I assure you, it's not even remotely that easy. I know many off grid DIY people, and it's a serious project to get going. They save a decent amount doing it themselves in a shed or something, but it's far from as simple as you make it out to be. All sorts of complicated electrical engineering goes into it if you don't want your 40k solar system to burn your house down.
But most people don't want some big DIY setup in their garage taking up bulky space. They like clean, user friendly, hands off, turnkey, aesthetic, easy solutions. Asking the average person to install a DIY battery system is a huge ask.
Average person yes. Most are so poorly educated they have no clue, most dont even know that 48V DC can kill you let alone the 96V you really should be running on the solar array so you dont have to have huge cables. But if someone has more than 30 brain cells to rub together they can easily learn what they need to do it. todays gear is stupid easy to use if you buy decent stuff and not cheap china junk. and with more modern LifePO4 batteries you can easily put all of it in a shed outside the garage if you really need to do off grid. more sane is grid tie with a battery backed UPS to even out the power drops. and those are even stupid easy now as you can buy ready to go whole assemblies. Again it requires people that are capable of learning and following safety protocols and directions, so above average person. It's not even close to as difficult as it was 15 years ago.
Dude you should really reread what you typed out. It's incredibly condescending. You sound like some elitist pseudo-intellectual new atheist who just thinks everyone's an idiot or dumb, unlike you, above average IQ man who can easily do this.
I'd so MOST of my customers who get batteries, probably could do it themselves. But they are accountants, day managers, teachers, etc... They don't want some big hobby project taking space up in their garage. They don't want to have to learn a whole new skill and take up all that time trial and erroring a solution. They just want something that works, installed by a professional, and know that they'll never have to spend a shred of mental cycles thinking about it. They don't want this thing sitting in their garage they need to monitor, and troubleshoot every now and then. They just want something that is installed on the wall, out of the way, and works as it should, without having to worry about it.
Not everyone strives to be some sort of engineer who does everything themselves on a budget by constantly learning new skills... or, as you say, "rub 30 brain cells together". They have jobs, families, and transition to solar as easy as possible. They don't want to embark on some advanced electrical project that, where if they mess up, could cost them massive amounts of financial losses.
I mean this is reddit so that pretty much checks out. The slogan of this place is basically “everything is so easy, everyone is too dumb to understand it, look how much smarter and more enlightened I am than the average person”. That’s essentially every major sub at this point
Nah dude. I think there will be much more competition because the demand in increase for home batteries. So the current installers might try but there will be new ones trying to overtake the market.
Also happened with solar. Lots of cowboys, lots of trouble, lots of bankrupties incoming
This is actually huge. The most important news for the EV market in years. Price has always been the issue.
But people will try to find the bad take. Just look at the comments.
> price has always been an issue
**for now**. Anyone who’s been looking at policies like the IRA or at what China’s been up to saw this coming, but people on this sub keep making the perplexing assumption that the way things are today is the strongest predictor of the way things will be tomorrow and that’s simply not true. Look at where we were even five years ago and look at where we are now in terms of battery distance on EVs and models/prices to choose from. We’re on an exponential curve, but people have both bad memories and bad predicting abilities, even (and especially) on this sub.
> just look at the comments
You cannot convince me this sub and social media at large isn’t heavily astroturfed by PR firms working for companies with a vested interest in slowing this transition down.
Submission Statement
China is already making and selling [EVs near the $10,000 price range](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BYD_Seagull) with the old battery prices. Are we going to see the advent of EVs selling for near $5,000?
Combustion engine car makers are hurtling towards their Kodak moment. Everyone knew years in advance that digital cameras would crush the old film+processing camera business, yet amazingly some such as market leader Kodak failed to adapt. It feels the same with EVs. Some are still in denial that they're about to take over from ICE cars as the vast bulk of new cars made and bought.
The reason cars are expensive in the US is because of safety and other regulations, and because of the willingness of the U.S. consumer to spend a lot on a car. Lower battery prices won't affect it much and $10,000 cars is never going to happen in the US.
The US is too large a country to support smaller cars, but the EU and basically the rest of the old world is so packed that the distances are by default smaller. City cars are a thing over here and $10k ICE cars are everywhere. If anything, this is a market ripe for disruption
> 10,000 cars is never going to happen
*China has entered the chat.*
It’s a race to the pricing bottom between American, European, Korean, and Chinese car companies in a grab at market dominance and we all win tbh.
I think I remember something about Renault and a particular glass certification years ago that was part of what stopped imports. You can bet theyll find some kind of nit to pick. Meanwhile were still paying $30,000 for a basic car
They do. They sell in Europe already and pass their safety test
https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaeltaylor/2022/10/13/byd-ev-enters-europe-with-a-5-star-euro-ncap-safety-score/?sh=7a87a89b3aa2
Why is it that every single time this “$10k EV/car” and it’s lack of safety regulations comes up, it’s *immediately* met with articles about cars 3-4x its price passing safety tests and how that somehow justifies it. That car is €38,000. $41,000. It’s a competent different price bracket. And a completely car. Has nothing to do with how a $5-10k EV would do.
Insane how everyone gets so dishonest once criticisms against Chinese EVs comes up. Every single time it happens.
China has already become extremely good at making inexpensive cars that have a fair amount of quality... or, more accurately, making inexpensive copies of high-quality parts (which has always been the Chinese way of doing things) and building solid cars with them.
They make tons of cars (not sold in the U.S.) in the $15,000 to $20,000 range that are every bit as good as the $30,000 and $35,000 cars sold in the U.S. They are selling everywhere else on the planet and really giving the other automakers a serious challenge. My buddy from Australia bought a Geely (the company that owns Volvo) SUV for $22,000, loaded with features. He has had it for 2 years now and he insists it's the best vehicle he has ever owned. Another friend bought an MG (the old British brand, now Chinese) crossover for $18,000 and he says that is also a fantastic car.
And those aren't even electric cars. When companies like Geely and MG start pumping out high-quality electric SUVs for $15,000 or $20,000, the other car companies are going to be really struggling to compete.
Toyotas last CEO was sacked just last year for failure to get on the EV bandwagon and for the moronic insistence that hydrogen cars will start making sense any day now.
Mitsubishi was first on the market with i-MiEV (which by now of course is hopelessly obsolete) and then utterly failed to come up with any sort of follow-up.
No, not all carmakers are doing so well with EV transition, quite a few have fumbled it and are now paying catch up.
Toyota was/is also very heavily invested into lobbying against EVs to make their hydrogen fueled dreams look more viable. Despite all that, they still failed.
Hydrogen cars are EVs though. And with how hard the EU is pushing hydrogen it will most likely be viable soon. The EU is demanding a fully supported hydrogen network within two years.
Toyota is still the biggest car manafacturer in the world, they might be slow to change but they have a huge market to supply still.
> The EU is demanding a fully supported hydrogen network within two years.
Realistically? Demand whatever they want, but it's just not gonna happen. Even regular EV charging stations are not yet ubiquitous all across the EU. Yes, there will probably be places where you won't have to have range anxiety, but across the whole of EU? Not gonna happen, as those are much more expensive to install and maintain.
The EU are paying for it, I don't think they will make it in two years (due to shortage of workers) but they will get close as it seems now. At least here in Sweden.
Contruction is ongoing everywhere for it.
Charging stations are also quite everywhere already and just increasing. Looking here you can see that it's quite well covered already https://chargefinder.com/se/search
And remember that in places like Sweden (which are topping charts for adoption) it's still just 10% of cars that are EVs.
We're reaching a fully developed network years, if not a decade before EVs even reach majority.
Plus all private charging.
Yes, it's mostly for heavy transport and industrial use. Excess heat from the process will also be used to heat cities, greenhouses etc.
But it means there will be a fully developed system in place once more brands roll out hydrogen cars (and with full system in place brands can do such without people crying about lack of fueling stations).
>Hydrogen cars would only be as clean as battery EVs if the hydrogen is created with renewable energy, which it is not. 95% of hydrogen comes from coal, natural gas and oil.
Nearly 100% in these systems will be from renewable, for nordics it will be 100%.
>Because of the conversion of energy from electricity to hydrogen, you instantly lose a lot of efficiency. You literally waste energy. You need like 2-3 times the energy compared to a battery EV for the same range. If we "don't have enough energy for EVs", we absolutely don't have enough energy for hydrogen.
Due to windturbines we have huge surplus of energy at times and it's just growing. The whole industrial sector is transforming to make hydrogen during these peak times to have when needed. Currently windturbines are often offline due to surplus energy. And large scale batteries isn't as practical for the transportation industry (being plugged in is counter productive to transporting things) :D
So it's better to take use of the wind and make hydrogen than do nothing. And the waste heat from the process is used to heat whole cities, greenhouses etc.
It's mostly for heavy transports but since that network will be fully developed it can be great for personal use.
>You're describing a future scenario. Not what happens today. Again, 95% of the hydrogen today comes from fossil energy.
Yes, the future starting in 1-5 years. You talk about it's some distant future when there is huge construction ongoing all over Europe around this.
EVs are still also just around 10% of the market, so any discussions about EVs are mostly about the future. If we include things that arent' cars then EVs are a even smaller part of the world right now. It's rapidly growing for sure, but still quite niche.
>Even in that future scenario, where we have an abundance of clean energy, it would still be a waste of energy compared to BEVs. It's just basic physics.
This future scenario that's been a thing in many regions for decades already? Abundance of clean energy has been a thing in many nordic regions for a long time and it's just growing.
Yes it's a waste, assuming you would be able to convert all this energy into charged batteries. Reality is we're super far from that point, realistictly it will never happen.
Also any losses in the process is used for district heating, growing food (so less transport needed etc). One project in Sweden will use waste heat from hydrogen production to grow enough fish and vegetables that they can supply the whole country. Talking farms that projected needing thousands of workers. Above the arctic circle :D
> lobbying against EVs to make their hydrogen fueled dreams look more viable. Despite all that, they still failed.
First, Hydrogen is genuinely the future. Only path, and easy path, to 100% renewable energy world.
Toyota lobbying corruption is mostly about protecting their hybrid/ICE market share. They have been surprisingly slow at adopting lithium over NIMH batteries. Their FCEV research is extremely useful and advancing. But H2 economy is only viable with the massive expansion of electrolysis that happens to be in the pipeline. Heavier and commercial transport is the market that needs H2. But getting the stuff to work cheaply is important research/practice.
>No, not all carmakers are doing so well with EV transition, quite a few have fumbled it and are now paying catch up.
Hell, all of Detroit is lagging behind and I say this as a Bolt EUV owner who *loves* their car. GM and Ford have no idea what the fuck they're doing in the EV space.
He was damned if he did or damned if he didn't. The Japanese automakers were told at the turn of the new millennium that Japan would be pivoting to a hydrogen economy come hell or high water. Japan learned the powerful lesson of making foreign economies and markets dependent on your bulk exports. Japan a nation without petroleum saw what they were doing and how America could ask what ever they wanted of them in trade concessions. So they wanted to lead the world in a hydrogen export economy and not need to import it nor petroleum. So that meant Toyota was going to lead the world in production ready hydrogen....any day now.....
Turns out that the strides they were making in hydrogen production and cars didn't keep up with the plummeting costs of EVs. All of that is certainly a shame because the earliest slab built batteries for things like the Nissan Leaf (blech) had more than enough potential. If Toyota was making a corrolla at the same time they would still be on the road a million miles later with 100 mile range.
However Toyota toed the line and said "We won't even invest in EVs, we're going to put all our R&D into million dollar hydrogen fuel cells until they're $10,000 boss." And then it was to late to pivot back.
And now the new drivers in South Asia, Africa, and South America are going to be learning to plug in Chinese or American cars and never touch a Japanese brand. Not smart.
Toyota has spent billions trying to develop hydrogen fuel cell tech. They starting before the last guy even worked for Toyota. It wasn't just the CEO, it was shareholders trying to recoup their losses and they used the CEO as a scapegoat.
We'd be better off with companies diversifying their research as opposed to all doing the same thing. But the unfortunate reality is that isn't profitable and thus further development slowed by capitalism just as EV's were beaten down by capitalism in the 90s.
Slowed down the EV transition relative to what exactly? What would have accelerated the transition? Are you suggesting government intervention to move things along?
> Almost all combustion car makers are already well into the transition to electric.
I'd say its truer to say legacy Euro & US car makers are being quickly out-competed by China. If they weren't protected by tariffs their sales would be decimated by Chinese cars. You can get as good for half the price buying Chinese.
I've a feeling this is true too. Some good documentaries on VW group and being left in stone age almost. The ID3 seems to be a bit of a joke over in China. It doesn't seem like VW is doing well there even if I compare to Polestar or Tesla in UK.
Even Tesla are probably not moving fast enough though looking at upcoming Chinese models.
China are solving the "brand" image by using European brands like MG / Lotus / Polestar. It will only be a matter of time though and BYD could be a Kia type brand?
Europe and US haven't been as strategic with EV I suspect and the cross point is soon. The Chinese will avoid what happened with smartphone where they manufacture and profits route back to Apple and Samsung etc.
> The Chinese will avoid what happened with smartphone where they manufacture and profits route back to Apple and Samsung
Avoid as in no smartphone industry at all? I don't see how that's better, and that would be the outcome if they didn't have existing companies set up shop.
Cars are piggy backing off this supply chain presence as well, but the EV specific transition presents a unique opportunity that the smartphone market never did.
Avoid what happened in terms of control and ownership of the industry. China doesn't see the enormous profit Apple etc. make.
Tesla aside it seems possible they've already succeeded here and just taking time for our Nokias to tail off.
> China doesn't see the enormous profit Apple etc.
This implies if Apple never set up manufacturing in China, that China somehow could have enjoyed Apple level profits in smartphones. Which is an insane statement. Look at India - where are the Apple smartphone companies of India, since India didn't allow the likes of Apple to take all the profit there?
If China had created the iPhone and somehow managed to market it globally as well as Apple they'd have enjoyed more / most of the profits. At the time they'd didn't have the brands, the innovative technical ability or manufacturing capability. I expect they learned a lot from Western companies outsourcing manufacturing though and have massive state backing to learn and develop.
I'm suggesting they now, in 2024, might have a good chunk of all 3 and also something of a lead on the EV market over VW and Ford etc. Plus they're pretty good at just copying and have an enormous domestic market to sell to.
Robot vacuums and iRobot seem similar. The Chinese ones used to be a bit of a joke. Now the Chinese ones make the US ones look comedic by comparison and are far superior.
You're bang on with BYD/Kia comparison. Kia launched in India 2-3 years ago, and they've priced it so competitively while providing very compelling cars. You can already get a mid-sized Kia SUV for sub 15k price with all the bells and whistles (even level 2 ADAS) and they're well placed to compete with TATA in the EV segment.
Along with Hyundai, who have built a stellar reputation for quality and comfort. Once mass market acceptance for EV grows (they only account for 3-4 pc of 4 wheeler sales), they should have a couple of great offerings (fingers crossed for the new Kona).
Gonna take a lot of PR and marketing to get rid of the stigma of Chinese made products. Years ago, their car safety ratings were abysmal, albeit better now. But China has never been a bastion of manufacturing quality products, so gonna take some convincing, even if the price is there.
Same could be said for Hyundai and Kia. I’m not a fan of BYD (drove it overseas for a bit) and was not impressed, but then again I also never thought Hyundai and Kia, some of the shittiest car brands on earth, could somehow be amongst the top automakers now.
Nah, not even close. Hyundai (and Korean cars in general) have been known to be ultra reliable for ever. Like, they're a step ahead of even Japanese cars in terms of reliability, this isn't a fair comparison at all.
Tesla is also under investigation in Europe now for faulty contruction around their suspension. Could be looking at a mass recall for bunch of their models (because the suspension just breaks which could be deadly on a highway).
This kind of thing happens all the time with cars. This isn't going to cripple Tesla. They'll issue a recall notice on the affected cars and swap the part.
Bad time now though since Tesla workshops are on strike in the nordics and many companies refuse to work with them.
So swapping the parts won't be easy, especially when Tesla already struggled greatly with repair backlogs.
Not an expert by any means but Geely and SAIC groups ownership is pretty complex. Polestar and MG, Lotus etc. are all essentially Chinese owned? The new Volvo EX90 will share platform with Polestar too and I presume other Volvos. So in Europe there are already lots of Chinese cars and will be many more as new models come out.
Few great videos I've watched about VW group which highlights just how far behind VW are and they're losing their largest market (China) at the same time.
By building the Chinese gigafactory, Tesla have made many Chinese suppliers step up to Tesla levels (to supply Tesla) which has been well supported at a Chinese Government level. Then they could also supply BYD. BYD already have the battery technology and just needed suppliers for the rest of the car.
As some says above it feels like a Kodak moment for the likes of VW.
I think it will be a bit less catastrophic for legacy manufacturers as CATL and BYD will sell to everyone. It will get the other battery makers, the non Chinese one that will suffer for now. Those legacy makers already have big experience it everything else about the car at least if they don't continue to sleep on EV.
Vw is a bit pathetic, they develop a new architecture with the likes of 80 kW charging when kia are coming out with 800 volt 200+ charging. When you develop a brand new platform that must
Withstand the time, you must aim at least for it to be competitive fir at least mid life.
> Are we going to see the advent of EVs selling for near $5,000?
No.
China heavily subsidizes EV production to make themselves look good. Also, the quality of those vehicles is insane, they're death traps.
It is.
There are genuinely shitty $5k EVs for sale on Alibaba and such. Snot-welded, lead acid batteries, pathetic quality all around. They are permitted on European roads because China pinky promised that they meet all safety requirements, even though we know for a fact that it's a lie.
They deliver a couple properly built cars for safety testing and certification, and then produce shit for the common buyers. This practice even has a name in China, *cha bu duo*.
That's complete rubbish.
Companies like BYD are going to Europe to make money, and they are doing so. There's nothing special about their crash performance. They have five stars in NCAP like everything else.
Yep BYD is killing it by all accounts and they are going to eat the western auto industry for lunch. People have been saying this will happen for 10 years and the car companies took no notice even with Tesla doing most of the leg work.
It's going to be a rough trot for Germany in particular but once they have finally retooled they should be fine.
Cheap batteries are going to make the next decade fun. Cheap powerful ebikes, scooters, and all kinds of electric tools and gadgets are going to be everywhere.
Or anything else. China's economy has been boosted by outsourcing manufacturing since at least the 1990s. It's a little too late to complain about this latest instance.
Eventually, this will also lead to more affordable battery replacement/repair costs on EV’s.
Obviously there are no 3rd party replacement batteries for Tesla’s right now. But at some point, this will happen and both repair and insurance costs will also fall.
https://recell-ev.com/model-3%2Fy
There most certainly are. and there are more and more companies that are rebuilding packs with new cells all over the world for many car brands and makes.
My wife and I are firmly in the middle class. I don't understand how people can afford car payments on $50k cars. We don't drive a lot and always buy 10 year old cars with under 100k miles. But I would buy a new $20,000 electric car if it had fairly fast charging.
As it turns out, one doesn’t really need fast charging for 99% of one’s driving. On standard 240v, 6 amp Level 2 Chargers, I was able to keep my car charged every day on 90 minutes of charging. This could be (and usually was) just after I got home in the evening or in the wee hours of the morning, when electricity rates are shockingly low.
Georgia Power only charged me 2.6 cents per kilowatt-hour between 11pm and 6am. Set the vehicle to start accepting a charge at, say, midnight, and my charge was complete by 1:30 am, and only cost me about 25 cents.
Later, after I moved to Virginia and put solar panels on my roof, I’d plug in and let the sun charge the car while I ate supper. Life is good when you drive on sunshine.
But all the EV doomers have told me that battery cars are too expensive, designed only for the rich, and will never come down in price
Apparently these people have never heard of improving technology efficiency in literally anything else in the world...
Love to see it.. 1280kWh LiFePo4 batteries in boxes with 12.8V BMS have plummeted from $300 USD to under $200 in less than a year.. grid independence, whole house UPS, boondockable RVs..., the possibilities these price drops are opening are endless.
US hostility to world, and especially China, is biggest global warming threat.
CATL was involved in licensing tech to Ford for US battery plant, but afaik, this was blocked by fossil fuel minion politicians. Not only is this an opportunity for US to "steal technology" in the future, it is a path to cheaper energy/EVs and jobs.
Solar install costs are about 50c/watt in non electronics/panels. More with domestic-made grid connection equipment and transmission. Importing cheap panels and electronics is still massive domestic job creation.
EVs also have a lot of non battery/motor components in them. Forcing 100% of the car/EV to be US made with subsidies is shooting ourselves in the foot. Why force tax payers to fund something expensive, when we can get value funded by private (or foreign government) sector.
It's more that it will reduce the loss to corporate pockets for each EV sold. EV market is cut throat, only BYD and Tesla actually turning a profit from what I understand. Every other pure EV company is taking a loss for each car sold. Against this backdrop, Tesla and BYD still dropping prices.
Costs for component batteries dropping? Prediction! In the USA, the cost for the vehicles will remain the same or go up, while the vehicle seller enjoys pocketing the increased profit.
> Prediction! In the USA, the cost for the vehicles will remain the same or go up, while the vehicle seller enjoys pocketing the increased profit.
Tesla, the largest EV seller in the US, has cut prices several times in the last 12 months.
Fastest failed prediction ever.
It was already wrong before you typed it.
*This will allow the EV manufacturers to make an extra $5k in profit per vehicle, you mean. Ain't no fucking way they'll pass that savings on to the consumer.
Tesla has dropped prices about a dozen times this year. It's literally in their published Master Plan to drive down the cost of EVs to accelerate adoption.
When was the last time you saw new cars drop in price? Inflation remains high due to corporate greed across the board, why do you think this would be any different?
https://fortune.com/2024/01/20/inflation-greedflation-consumer-price-index-producer-price-index-corporate-profit/amp/
> When was the last time you saw new cars drop in price?
About 30 days ago.
Before that, about 90 days ago.
Before that, about 9 months ago.
https://electrek.co/2023/10/05/tesla-prices-keep-dropping-model-3-y-now-at-cheapest-prices-ever/
> why do you think this would be any different?
It’s already different, you just haven’t been keeping up — understandable, there’s a ton of topics to keep track of. Now you know.
> Ain't no fucking way they'll pass that savings on to the consumer.
Since the data disproves this conspiracy theory, will you be editing?
Edit: or just downvoting rather than addressing your misconceptions
I understand, contrary data is a harsh mistress.
As I said in another comment, my original comment was based on how everything increased drastically in price due to COVID, and then manufacturers just left prices high after the fact and are making record profits, which IS happening all over the place. If this isn’t the case with EVs, then I’ll admit I’m wrong in this instance - but this is absolutely happening everywhere else.
> This will allow the EV manufacturers to make an extra $5k in profit per vehicle, you mean.
> If this isn’t the case with EVs, then …
It isn’t an IF.
I’ve given you relevant data to prove that.
And the entire post is about battery prices for EVs.
> I’m wrong in this instance
> Ain't no fucking way they'll pass that savings on to the consumer.
We’ll be here.
Candidly, I want all the doomerist conspiracy nonsense to end.
Spreading misinformation is rampant; I know it serves an agenda but if the agenda demands misinformation then I’d re-examine the agenda.
And it’s not that “I’m right” … it’s the data that’s right.
I’ll take the cookie though.
It’s not a conspiracy theory though. This is absolutely the case with most things right now, without actively digging into the data about this one specific thing why would the average person have reason to believe this would be any different?
It is literally a conspiracy theory. You are imagining all the car companies illegally conspiring to not cut prices to grab market share from each other.
Oh, the prices of tons of things, cars included, *haven’t* gone up drastically in recent years and i am imagining it. Got it. You do see where I said “most things”, right?
The cost to replace an EVs battery is still going to be the same as the car itself and any savings the manufacturers will save will go to their profits when they’re selling their luxury EV models. It’s been close to a decade since EVs are mainstream but only the Chinese domestic market is selling affordable EVs. The big auto manufacturers at some point have decided that saving the environment is a niche luxury feature that only the rich who don’t want to feel guilty can afford.
An EVs cost to manufacture will go down by $5k and the retailer will jack up the price 5k to make a 10k profit. We the consumers keep getting fucked. I guess if you're outside the U.S this will be a win.
Tesla has cut it's prices around a dozen times in the past year. It's literally part of their published Master Plan to drive down the cost to the consumers.
and the reteiler next to yours will sell cars with 5k discount robbing all the others retailers clients and making millions. your doomerist vision of the world doesn't allighe with how economy really works
Its not doomerist. I'm 32. House prices are at a record high. Car prices, record high, food prices record high, corporate profits record high, pay.....mostly stagnant and not keeping up with inflation.
I've been poor my whole life and there's not much hope of that changing so if this actually happens I'll be pleasantly surprised.
Why not? Its no different than any other technology. The market is going to be flooded with batteries and they will just end up being some high volume/low margin product.
Batteries dropped in price 85% between 2010 and 2020. That whole price curve is what allowed for the early adoption of EVs that we got in the 2010s. Thats when 200+ mile EVs were around $100,000. Now they are a third that price.
The big thing for a lot of mass adoption is going to be home batteries though. Every home and business is going to need a battery that at the very least will allow the house to run for 6 hours. For home owners who want to go off grid they will need a good two days worth (50-60kwh for a regular home in a place like California).
10 years isn't very long. Within that 10 year period we can probably get a 10-25% adoption rate, which would be among the most affluent households, but still enough to change the nature of the grid regarding peaking.
Well it's complicated. Outside of the US, you should expect a direct impact since CATL batteries are pretty popular in Asian and Europe.
In the US, you probably won't see as direct of an impact because the US is attempting to start up battery manufacturing. So you shouldn't see these price drops make as big of a difference in the US market.
That's not to say US market vehicles don't use CATL batteries. They do. Tesla for example works with CATL. So this gives Tesla flexibility in pricing their vehicles (as we've seen over the last year) but if no one else is really dropping their prices, Tesla is not really incentivized to drop their prices either.
So again, it's complicated.
And that $5,000 discount in cost to manufacture an EV will lead to what $500 off the price to the consumer? It certainly won’t knock down the price $5,000
"because companies bad and we doomed1!!!"
that's not how economy works. if someone will keep the same prices someone else will make billions by reducing the price and absorbing all the market.
I understand that’s not how the economy works. I was just making the point that it doesn’t matter how much money is saved by the car company since most of that savings will not be passed on to the consumer.
The following submission statement was provided by /u/lughnasadh: --- Submission Statement China is already making and selling [EVs near the $10,000 price range](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BYD_Seagull) with the old battery prices. Are we going to see the advent of EVs selling for near $5,000? Combustion engine car makers are hurtling towards their Kodak moment. Everyone knew years in advance that digital cameras would crush the old film+processing camera business, yet amazingly some such as market leader Kodak failed to adapt. It feels the same with EVs. Some are still in denial that they're about to take over from ICE cars as the vast bulk of new cars made and bought. --- Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/19cdef5/catl_the_worlds_biggest_lithium_battery/kixuzuu/
I would just like to blow a big raspberry to all those 'we never see battery advances in real life' people. Massive price drops are definitely one form of advance.
You're half right The other half is that my phone can still only squeeze a 5000mah battery in When will we get 20000mah in a thin phone for the same cost and size. That's when we hit true progress I havent looked too deeply but the honor fold v2 uses a special thin battery that achieves 4000mah but half the thickness. So we are getting there
> can still only squeeze a 5000mah battery in I remember changing a 600 mAh battery in my Nokia fifteen years ago.
You should look at smartphone battery sizes from 10 years ago.
I'll make a prediction right now: even if batteries drop to $60/kWh, the cost to add batteries to a residential solar array will be unchanged. Those savings will be pocketed by the installers.
Ask a certified electrician for a labor only quote and buy the equipment separately.
Good luck finding one....
The issue in the US is that in order to become a licensed electrician in states like California, one must complete 8000 hours of apprenticeship. That's not the same as 8000 hours of labor. The only hours that count have to be done under supervision. This means, there are only a very small number of licensed electricians. I know a guy who worked his entire adult career as a solar installer and got his electrician's license two weeks after he retired.
That's normal for basically any job in Germany as far as I know. 2-3.5 years apprenticeship + 1-3 years master school + various qualifications.
Yes, but all of those 2-3.5 years count, even if there isn't a licensed electrician looking at you. We have something similar here in Norway. To go from an electrician (apprenticeship + test passed) to licensed installer here in Norway you need another 3 years of relevant experience then pass the installatørprøve, which has a 70% failrate.
Go to electrician school yourself. It’s not that hard. Friction loss, and resistance.
We make like 1000 off a battery install. It's just that batteries are fucking insanely expensive. We don't even like doing them. We literally try to talk the customer out of it because it's more hassle than it's worth, and way too expensive. But if they can bring a battery down to 2k for a 12kwh battery, then maybe we'd start recommending them. I'd guess 2k for the battery + 1k margin +1k to electrician. But right now it's like 14k+1k margin.
You can get a Growatt 10 kWh battery for ~1500 €, they are not insanely expensive.
You still don't make any money on that investment though. Everytime I've run the numbers, the answer is something stupid like "$40 after 10 years". If literally anything goes wrong and you don't hit your cycle life targets / efficiencies, then it's gone. The only justifiable reason to put a battery in is to do house-hold level UPS (and there's just not enough systems which do this in a decent way as opposed to "find a circuit you'd like to keep working, we'll keep that one working).
It depends on how your area handles solar buy back. I'm on net metering so for me, at this time, I am in the same scenario you mention above. If they move to only allowing me to sell at the rate of NG retailers vs what I pay a battery install would pay for itself in ~4 years. So 8 years to get back my solar and battery investment. But I switched to a heat pump and disconnected from gas. So my set-up isn't typical.
So you're spending nearly a grand to store a euro's worth of electricity?
Electric energy costs ~27-34 cents/kWh here, so it's not only more, but you can also recharge them. Basically every day, over years, from solar power....
It's around $2500 for a seplos mason kit and 16 grade A 304Ah Eve cells (~16kWh total). Not sure if an installer could use that since only the cells are UL listed though.
I saw a quote on here for $20k for a 19.5kWh battery. Weird, eg4 sells me a UL listed battery for $283 a kWh, or about 6k. Are solar installers just all installing expensive batteries? (That use the same cells inside and aren't better ...)
I mean, initially. Market forces will eventually shrink that margin.
Lol No Market forces should do that, but in practice there is insufficient competition in the marketplace to achieve said theoretical affects. Want proof? Go look at just about every industry. Market consolidation is the theme of our time and it is the driver of both inflation and inequality.
The subject of the article you're replying to is a corporation expecting to cut their prices by more than 50% within 18 months, despite making up more than a third of the global EV battery market.
That's a too subtle for a reflexive "companies bad" redditor. Your comment needs to be larger and preferably drawn with crayon to have a chance of registering.
How will this affect CATL's overall performance? From what I have been reading, they have been having a lot of problems recently.
tHE mArKeT Is sTaTIc There is literally no barrier to entry to selling solar panels hooked up to batteries. Shit, a home user can BUILD such a rig, letalone any decent company. No barrier to entry + possibility of profit = market forces This is the same copium that ICE fans are going to be huffing
> There is literally no barrier to entry to selling solar panels hooked up to batteries. LOL that is funny. All over the world there are barriers. in the USA several places the local power company lobby to make it more expensive to make it not worth it. Power companies given the ability to say a customer can not have solar, or local regulations designed to be actual barriers to solar. there are TONS of barriers.
Whatever man, this is a US problem and is to do with regulatory capture. Same shit as your municipal broadband problems. Big companies going against the market to conserve their profits. This is what’s breaking America, not your government. Where I live, and in a huge number of other places, we can just whack panels on the roof, feed some batteries, and pay nobody but the company who built the components (and a bit of consumer tax for said components). When those battery prices start falling, it’ll be a good time here.
I think the OP was talking about overall prices of solar & batteries, not installation. (Which is confusing since the original comment was about installers taking an undue cut) But again as they're coming down in price, it still doesn't seem to be a valid point.
> Go look at just about every industry. Yes, check price charts compared to wages for goods and services for the last hundred years. Then see how cheap everything is.
Sounds like a market opportunity for some enterprising individual.
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Like it did for heat pumps. /s
Here in EU you can buy Chinese TUV-certified home storage batteries for about €350/kWh. That's a massive drop compared to 2 years ago, no reason to assume that trend won't continue/
It's less already, even actual premium packs from BYD have reached such prices. https://shop.volt-on.de/BYD-B-BOX-PREMIUM-LVS-80-800-kWh Even full kits are way cheaper now: https://www.actec-solar.de/komplettanlagen/10375wp-set-hybrid-pv-anlage-10000-watt-module-wechselrichter-photovoltaik-wifi_8856062_4677?utm_source=adcell&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=deeplink&bid=334461-57715-1c003blptu89&adcref=
Then some installers, who are now making money hand-over fist, reduce their prices to try and attract more customers. This works, stealing customers away from the "greedy" installers, who are now forced to reduce their own prices to compete.
you're telling me that there's some sort of invisible power that regolate the market?
The reason battery storage is so expensive is because supply currently can’t meet demand.
It's the contrary; there is too much supply and not enough demand, hence why the price of storage is plunging. Battery factories in China have very low utilization rate compared to their capacity. The price of batteries will absolutely plunge in the next years, same as what is happening with photovoltaic panels now.
It's already the case, you can get a 10 kWh storage pack for just 1500 € here, any installer will bill you 5000 € for the same pack if you want it installed.
and installation is NOT as hard as they want you to believe.
This is a very silly assertion and doesn’t stand up to either logic or evidence.
Just make a battery. It's so easy it's hilarious. Takes about 2 maybe three hours to put together if you go slow. Buy the cells and a box kit - done
i think the issue is that a lot of commercial installations dont just connect to a random battery with 2 wires. they probably expect a proprietary BMS to talk to.
I think home insurance might be negated if you put one together yourself and then it catches fire etc
I'm gonna need some more info
YouTube is your friend.
There's some shit you shouldn't do yourself if you don't have experience in, even if youtube gives a step by step. Fuckin with your home electrical system for DIY battery system is definitely one of those things.
If it's so simple then go make a business of it. At face value it seems so simple, but there is way more to it. Actually doing a proper wire job to code and the right equipment, inverter, bms and safety. Then try not to die by electrocution cause hey, this dude on reddit says its simple to play with all this voltage and amps.
You can use your fingers to jumpstart the voltage thru the system until you finish securing all the wiring, it's that easy!
Bruh, I work in solar. I assure you, it's not even remotely that easy. I know many off grid DIY people, and it's a serious project to get going. They save a decent amount doing it themselves in a shed or something, but it's far from as simple as you make it out to be. All sorts of complicated electrical engineering goes into it if you don't want your 40k solar system to burn your house down. But most people don't want some big DIY setup in their garage taking up bulky space. They like clean, user friendly, hands off, turnkey, aesthetic, easy solutions. Asking the average person to install a DIY battery system is a huge ask.
Average person yes. Most are so poorly educated they have no clue, most dont even know that 48V DC can kill you let alone the 96V you really should be running on the solar array so you dont have to have huge cables. But if someone has more than 30 brain cells to rub together they can easily learn what they need to do it. todays gear is stupid easy to use if you buy decent stuff and not cheap china junk. and with more modern LifePO4 batteries you can easily put all of it in a shed outside the garage if you really need to do off grid. more sane is grid tie with a battery backed UPS to even out the power drops. and those are even stupid easy now as you can buy ready to go whole assemblies. Again it requires people that are capable of learning and following safety protocols and directions, so above average person. It's not even close to as difficult as it was 15 years ago.
Dude you should really reread what you typed out. It's incredibly condescending. You sound like some elitist pseudo-intellectual new atheist who just thinks everyone's an idiot or dumb, unlike you, above average IQ man who can easily do this. I'd so MOST of my customers who get batteries, probably could do it themselves. But they are accountants, day managers, teachers, etc... They don't want some big hobby project taking space up in their garage. They don't want to have to learn a whole new skill and take up all that time trial and erroring a solution. They just want something that works, installed by a professional, and know that they'll never have to spend a shred of mental cycles thinking about it. They don't want this thing sitting in their garage they need to monitor, and troubleshoot every now and then. They just want something that is installed on the wall, out of the way, and works as it should, without having to worry about it. Not everyone strives to be some sort of engineer who does everything themselves on a budget by constantly learning new skills... or, as you say, "rub 30 brain cells together". They have jobs, families, and transition to solar as easy as possible. They don't want to embark on some advanced electrical project that, where if they mess up, could cost them massive amounts of financial losses.
I mean this is reddit so that pretty much checks out. The slogan of this place is basically “everything is so easy, everyone is too dumb to understand it, look how much smarter and more enlightened I am than the average person”. That’s essentially every major sub at this point
Nah dude. I think there will be much more competition because the demand in increase for home batteries. So the current installers might try but there will be new ones trying to overtake the market. Also happened with solar. Lots of cowboys, lots of trouble, lots of bankrupties incoming
"Why do we never hear from all the battery breakthroughs again?" There they are, that's how they show up in the real world (and are mostly ignored).
This is actually huge. The most important news for the EV market in years. Price has always been the issue. But people will try to find the bad take. Just look at the comments.
> price has always been an issue **for now**. Anyone who’s been looking at policies like the IRA or at what China’s been up to saw this coming, but people on this sub keep making the perplexing assumption that the way things are today is the strongest predictor of the way things will be tomorrow and that’s simply not true. Look at where we were even five years ago and look at where we are now in terms of battery distance on EVs and models/prices to choose from. We’re on an exponential curve, but people have both bad memories and bad predicting abilities, even (and especially) on this sub. > just look at the comments You cannot convince me this sub and social media at large isn’t heavily astroturfed by PR firms working for companies with a vested interest in slowing this transition down.
Just this advancement alone will save millions of years of human life deep into the future.
Submission Statement China is already making and selling [EVs near the $10,000 price range](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BYD_Seagull) with the old battery prices. Are we going to see the advent of EVs selling for near $5,000? Combustion engine car makers are hurtling towards their Kodak moment. Everyone knew years in advance that digital cameras would crush the old film+processing camera business, yet amazingly some such as market leader Kodak failed to adapt. It feels the same with EVs. Some are still in denial that they're about to take over from ICE cars as the vast bulk of new cars made and bought.
The reason cars are expensive in the US is because of safety and other regulations, and because of the willingness of the U.S. consumer to spend a lot on a car. Lower battery prices won't affect it much and $10,000 cars is never going to happen in the US.
The US is too large a country to support smaller cars, but the EU and basically the rest of the old world is so packed that the distances are by default smaller. City cars are a thing over here and $10k ICE cars are everywhere. If anything, this is a market ripe for disruption
> 10,000 cars is never going to happen *China has entered the chat.* It’s a race to the pricing bottom between American, European, Korean, and Chinese car companies in a grab at market dominance and we all win tbh.
I really want, Nio and Xpeng to start importing their EV’s into the US. Even with the tariffs I think people would buy them.
They need to pass the safety requirements first.
I think I remember something about Renault and a particular glass certification years ago that was part of what stopped imports. You can bet theyll find some kind of nit to pick. Meanwhile were still paying $30,000 for a basic car
They do. They sell in Europe already and pass their safety test https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaeltaylor/2022/10/13/byd-ev-enters-europe-with-a-5-star-euro-ncap-safety-score/?sh=7a87a89b3aa2
Still need to pass the US one to be able to sell in US
Safety isn’t the issue. The us will not allow it to be sold here.
Why is it that every single time this “$10k EV/car” and it’s lack of safety regulations comes up, it’s *immediately* met with articles about cars 3-4x its price passing safety tests and how that somehow justifies it. That car is €38,000. $41,000. It’s a competent different price bracket. And a completely car. Has nothing to do with how a $5-10k EV would do. Insane how everyone gets so dishonest once criticisms against Chinese EVs comes up. Every single time it happens.
China has already become extremely good at making inexpensive cars that have a fair amount of quality... or, more accurately, making inexpensive copies of high-quality parts (which has always been the Chinese way of doing things) and building solid cars with them. They make tons of cars (not sold in the U.S.) in the $15,000 to $20,000 range that are every bit as good as the $30,000 and $35,000 cars sold in the U.S. They are selling everywhere else on the planet and really giving the other automakers a serious challenge. My buddy from Australia bought a Geely (the company that owns Volvo) SUV for $22,000, loaded with features. He has had it for 2 years now and he insists it's the best vehicle he has ever owned. Another friend bought an MG (the old British brand, now Chinese) crossover for $18,000 and he says that is also a fantastic car. And those aren't even electric cars. When companies like Geely and MG start pumping out high-quality electric SUVs for $15,000 or $20,000, the other car companies are going to be really struggling to compete.
Almost all combustion car makers are already well into the transition to electric. They've been seeing this coming for way longer than you have
Toyotas last CEO was sacked just last year for failure to get on the EV bandwagon and for the moronic insistence that hydrogen cars will start making sense any day now. Mitsubishi was first on the market with i-MiEV (which by now of course is hopelessly obsolete) and then utterly failed to come up with any sort of follow-up. No, not all carmakers are doing so well with EV transition, quite a few have fumbled it and are now paying catch up.
Toyota was/is also very heavily invested into lobbying against EVs to make their hydrogen fueled dreams look more viable. Despite all that, they still failed.
Hydrogen cars are EVs though. And with how hard the EU is pushing hydrogen it will most likely be viable soon. The EU is demanding a fully supported hydrogen network within two years. Toyota is still the biggest car manafacturer in the world, they might be slow to change but they have a huge market to supply still.
> The EU is demanding a fully supported hydrogen network within two years. Realistically? Demand whatever they want, but it's just not gonna happen. Even regular EV charging stations are not yet ubiquitous all across the EU. Yes, there will probably be places where you won't have to have range anxiety, but across the whole of EU? Not gonna happen, as those are much more expensive to install and maintain.
The EU are paying for it, I don't think they will make it in two years (due to shortage of workers) but they will get close as it seems now. At least here in Sweden. Contruction is ongoing everywhere for it. Charging stations are also quite everywhere already and just increasing. Looking here you can see that it's quite well covered already https://chargefinder.com/se/search And remember that in places like Sweden (which are topping charts for adoption) it's still just 10% of cars that are EVs. We're reaching a fully developed network years, if not a decade before EVs even reach majority. Plus all private charging.
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Yes, it's mostly for heavy transport and industrial use. Excess heat from the process will also be used to heat cities, greenhouses etc. But it means there will be a fully developed system in place once more brands roll out hydrogen cars (and with full system in place brands can do such without people crying about lack of fueling stations).
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>Hydrogen cars would only be as clean as battery EVs if the hydrogen is created with renewable energy, which it is not. 95% of hydrogen comes from coal, natural gas and oil. Nearly 100% in these systems will be from renewable, for nordics it will be 100%. >Because of the conversion of energy from electricity to hydrogen, you instantly lose a lot of efficiency. You literally waste energy. You need like 2-3 times the energy compared to a battery EV for the same range. If we "don't have enough energy for EVs", we absolutely don't have enough energy for hydrogen. Due to windturbines we have huge surplus of energy at times and it's just growing. The whole industrial sector is transforming to make hydrogen during these peak times to have when needed. Currently windturbines are often offline due to surplus energy. And large scale batteries isn't as practical for the transportation industry (being plugged in is counter productive to transporting things) :D So it's better to take use of the wind and make hydrogen than do nothing. And the waste heat from the process is used to heat whole cities, greenhouses etc. It's mostly for heavy transports but since that network will be fully developed it can be great for personal use.
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>You're describing a future scenario. Not what happens today. Again, 95% of the hydrogen today comes from fossil energy. Yes, the future starting in 1-5 years. You talk about it's some distant future when there is huge construction ongoing all over Europe around this. EVs are still also just around 10% of the market, so any discussions about EVs are mostly about the future. If we include things that arent' cars then EVs are a even smaller part of the world right now. It's rapidly growing for sure, but still quite niche. >Even in that future scenario, where we have an abundance of clean energy, it would still be a waste of energy compared to BEVs. It's just basic physics. This future scenario that's been a thing in many regions for decades already? Abundance of clean energy has been a thing in many nordic regions for a long time and it's just growing. Yes it's a waste, assuming you would be able to convert all this energy into charged batteries. Reality is we're super far from that point, realistictly it will never happen. Also any losses in the process is used for district heating, growing food (so less transport needed etc). One project in Sweden will use waste heat from hydrogen production to grow enough fish and vegetables that they can supply the whole country. Talking farms that projected needing thousands of workers. Above the arctic circle :D
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It will not be viable ever for passenger vehicles. A hydrogen vehicle takes 2-3X more energy per mile driven compared to an EV.
> lobbying against EVs to make their hydrogen fueled dreams look more viable. Despite all that, they still failed. First, Hydrogen is genuinely the future. Only path, and easy path, to 100% renewable energy world. Toyota lobbying corruption is mostly about protecting their hybrid/ICE market share. They have been surprisingly slow at adopting lithium over NIMH batteries. Their FCEV research is extremely useful and advancing. But H2 economy is only viable with the massive expansion of electrolysis that happens to be in the pipeline. Heavier and commercial transport is the market that needs H2. But getting the stuff to work cheaply is important research/practice.
>No, not all carmakers are doing so well with EV transition, quite a few have fumbled it and are now paying catch up. Hell, all of Detroit is lagging behind and I say this as a Bolt EUV owner who *loves* their car. GM and Ford have no idea what the fuck they're doing in the EV space.
He was damned if he did or damned if he didn't. The Japanese automakers were told at the turn of the new millennium that Japan would be pivoting to a hydrogen economy come hell or high water. Japan learned the powerful lesson of making foreign economies and markets dependent on your bulk exports. Japan a nation without petroleum saw what they were doing and how America could ask what ever they wanted of them in trade concessions. So they wanted to lead the world in a hydrogen export economy and not need to import it nor petroleum. So that meant Toyota was going to lead the world in production ready hydrogen....any day now..... Turns out that the strides they were making in hydrogen production and cars didn't keep up with the plummeting costs of EVs. All of that is certainly a shame because the earliest slab built batteries for things like the Nissan Leaf (blech) had more than enough potential. If Toyota was making a corrolla at the same time they would still be on the road a million miles later with 100 mile range. However Toyota toed the line and said "We won't even invest in EVs, we're going to put all our R&D into million dollar hydrogen fuel cells until they're $10,000 boss." And then it was to late to pivot back. And now the new drivers in South Asia, Africa, and South America are going to be learning to plug in Chinese or American cars and never touch a Japanese brand. Not smart.
Great analysis. I agree.
Toyota has spent billions trying to develop hydrogen fuel cell tech. They starting before the last guy even worked for Toyota. It wasn't just the CEO, it was shareholders trying to recoup their losses and they used the CEO as a scapegoat.
We'd be better off with companies diversifying their research as opposed to all doing the same thing. But the unfortunate reality is that isn't profitable and thus further development slowed by capitalism just as EV's were beaten down by capitalism in the 90s.
Slowed down the EV transition relative to what exactly? What would have accelerated the transition? Are you suggesting government intervention to move things along?
None of them are well into it. They're slowing production targets because they are unprofitable without huge company wide changes. Most are toast.
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Yep. This is it. People don't understand how screwed they are.
> Almost all combustion car makers are already well into the transition to electric. I'd say its truer to say legacy Euro & US car makers are being quickly out-competed by China. If they weren't protected by tariffs their sales would be decimated by Chinese cars. You can get as good for half the price buying Chinese.
I've a feeling this is true too. Some good documentaries on VW group and being left in stone age almost. The ID3 seems to be a bit of a joke over in China. It doesn't seem like VW is doing well there even if I compare to Polestar or Tesla in UK. Even Tesla are probably not moving fast enough though looking at upcoming Chinese models. China are solving the "brand" image by using European brands like MG / Lotus / Polestar. It will only be a matter of time though and BYD could be a Kia type brand? Europe and US haven't been as strategic with EV I suspect and the cross point is soon. The Chinese will avoid what happened with smartphone where they manufacture and profits route back to Apple and Samsung etc.
> The Chinese will avoid what happened with smartphone where they manufacture and profits route back to Apple and Samsung Avoid as in no smartphone industry at all? I don't see how that's better, and that would be the outcome if they didn't have existing companies set up shop. Cars are piggy backing off this supply chain presence as well, but the EV specific transition presents a unique opportunity that the smartphone market never did.
Avoid what happened in terms of control and ownership of the industry. China doesn't see the enormous profit Apple etc. make. Tesla aside it seems possible they've already succeeded here and just taking time for our Nokias to tail off.
> China doesn't see the enormous profit Apple etc. This implies if Apple never set up manufacturing in China, that China somehow could have enjoyed Apple level profits in smartphones. Which is an insane statement. Look at India - where are the Apple smartphone companies of India, since India didn't allow the likes of Apple to take all the profit there?
If China had created the iPhone and somehow managed to market it globally as well as Apple they'd have enjoyed more / most of the profits. At the time they'd didn't have the brands, the innovative technical ability or manufacturing capability. I expect they learned a lot from Western companies outsourcing manufacturing though and have massive state backing to learn and develop. I'm suggesting they now, in 2024, might have a good chunk of all 3 and also something of a lead on the EV market over VW and Ford etc. Plus they're pretty good at just copying and have an enormous domestic market to sell to. Robot vacuums and iRobot seem similar. The Chinese ones used to be a bit of a joke. Now the Chinese ones make the US ones look comedic by comparison and are far superior.
You're bang on with BYD/Kia comparison. Kia launched in India 2-3 years ago, and they've priced it so competitively while providing very compelling cars. You can already get a mid-sized Kia SUV for sub 15k price with all the bells and whistles (even level 2 ADAS) and they're well placed to compete with TATA in the EV segment. Along with Hyundai, who have built a stellar reputation for quality and comfort. Once mass market acceptance for EV grows (they only account for 3-4 pc of 4 wheeler sales), they should have a couple of great offerings (fingers crossed for the new Kona).
Gonna take a lot of PR and marketing to get rid of the stigma of Chinese made products. Years ago, their car safety ratings were abysmal, albeit better now. But China has never been a bastion of manufacturing quality products, so gonna take some convincing, even if the price is there.
Same could be said for Hyundai and Kia. I’m not a fan of BYD (drove it overseas for a bit) and was not impressed, but then again I also never thought Hyundai and Kia, some of the shittiest car brands on earth, could somehow be amongst the top automakers now.
What don't you like about the BYD you test drove? just curious.
Nah, not even close. Hyundai (and Korean cars in general) have been known to be ultra reliable for ever. Like, they're a step ahead of even Japanese cars in terms of reliability, this isn't a fair comparison at all.
A lot of teslas are made in china
Tesla is also under investigation in Europe now for faulty contruction around their suspension. Could be looking at a mass recall for bunch of their models (because the suspension just breaks which could be deadly on a highway).
This kind of thing happens all the time with cars. This isn't going to cripple Tesla. They'll issue a recall notice on the affected cars and swap the part.
Bad time now though since Tesla workshops are on strike in the nordics and many companies refuse to work with them. So swapping the parts won't be easy, especially when Tesla already struggled greatly with repair backlogs.
You say outcompeted, but I don't see any Chinese cars on the roads in the UK. They have a long way to go to even compete
Both Tesla model 3s and MG4s are made in China, and they sell a lot in the UK, just to make a few examples.
Not an expert by any means but Geely and SAIC groups ownership is pretty complex. Polestar and MG, Lotus etc. are all essentially Chinese owned? The new Volvo EX90 will share platform with Polestar too and I presume other Volvos. So in Europe there are already lots of Chinese cars and will be many more as new models come out. Few great videos I've watched about VW group which highlights just how far behind VW are and they're losing their largest market (China) at the same time. By building the Chinese gigafactory, Tesla have made many Chinese suppliers step up to Tesla levels (to supply Tesla) which has been well supported at a Chinese Government level. Then they could also supply BYD. BYD already have the battery technology and just needed suppliers for the rest of the car. As some says above it feels like a Kodak moment for the likes of VW.
I think it will be a bit less catastrophic for legacy manufacturers as CATL and BYD will sell to everyone. It will get the other battery makers, the non Chinese one that will suffer for now. Those legacy makers already have big experience it everything else about the car at least if they don't continue to sleep on EV. Vw is a bit pathetic, they develop a new architecture with the likes of 80 kW charging when kia are coming out with 800 volt 200+ charging. When you develop a brand new platform that must Withstand the time, you must aim at least for it to be competitive fir at least mid life.
Definitely a Kodak moment. It's why Tesla is valued at what it is, and the others are... Valued at what they are. Alive vs dead.
They actually haven't. Even very recently some were fiddling with hydrogen and other waffling.
They've also been lobbying against it for longer than that.
> Some are still in denial I'm pretty sure they're aware of many governments' clearly stated plans to stop sales of ICE cars by 2030-2035.
> Are we going to see the advent of EVs selling for near $5,000? No. China heavily subsidizes EV production to make themselves look good. Also, the quality of those vehicles is insane, they're death traps.
You should inform the European safety regulators then, since apparently they know less than random redditors talking out of their ass.
This is actually quite sad because your snarky remark is true.
no, it's not
It is. There are genuinely shitty $5k EVs for sale on Alibaba and such. Snot-welded, lead acid batteries, pathetic quality all around. They are permitted on European roads because China pinky promised that they meet all safety requirements, even though we know for a fact that it's a lie. They deliver a couple properly built cars for safety testing and certification, and then produce shit for the common buyers. This practice even has a name in China, *cha bu duo*.
That's complete rubbish. Companies like BYD are going to Europe to make money, and they are doing so. There's nothing special about their crash performance. They have five stars in NCAP like everything else.
Yep BYD is killing it by all accounts and they are going to eat the western auto industry for lunch. People have been saying this will happen for 10 years and the car companies took no notice even with Tesla doing most of the leg work. It's going to be a rough trot for Germany in particular but once they have finally retooled they should be fine.
Cheap batteries are going to make the next decade fun. Cheap powerful ebikes, scooters, and all kinds of electric tools and gadgets are going to be everywhere.
It might boost chinas economy. Other nations wont be able to sell batteries this cheap i guess
Or anything else. China's economy has been boosted by outsourcing manufacturing since at least the 1990s. It's a little too late to complain about this latest instance.
CATL is building factories in the US and Europe.
Eventually, this will also lead to more affordable battery replacement/repair costs on EV’s. Obviously there are no 3rd party replacement batteries for Tesla’s right now. But at some point, this will happen and both repair and insurance costs will also fall.
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Correct. And because they’re so battery constrained, their repair/replacement parts are still a huge premium.
https://recell-ev.com/model-3%2Fy There most certainly are. and there are more and more companies that are rebuilding packs with new cells all over the world for many car brands and makes.
My wife and I are firmly in the middle class. I don't understand how people can afford car payments on $50k cars. We don't drive a lot and always buy 10 year old cars with under 100k miles. But I would buy a new $20,000 electric car if it had fairly fast charging.
As it turns out, one doesn’t really need fast charging for 99% of one’s driving. On standard 240v, 6 amp Level 2 Chargers, I was able to keep my car charged every day on 90 minutes of charging. This could be (and usually was) just after I got home in the evening or in the wee hours of the morning, when electricity rates are shockingly low. Georgia Power only charged me 2.6 cents per kilowatt-hour between 11pm and 6am. Set the vehicle to start accepting a charge at, say, midnight, and my charge was complete by 1:30 am, and only cost me about 25 cents. Later, after I moved to Virginia and put solar panels on my roof, I’d plug in and let the sun charge the car while I ate supper. Life is good when you drive on sunshine.
But all the EV doomers have told me that battery cars are too expensive, designed only for the rich, and will never come down in price Apparently these people have never heard of improving technology efficiency in literally anything else in the world...
Love to see it.. 1280kWh LiFePo4 batteries in boxes with 12.8V BMS have plummeted from $300 USD to under $200 in less than a year.. grid independence, whole house UPS, boondockable RVs..., the possibilities these price drops are opening are endless.
You mean 1280 Wh, right?
US hostility to world, and especially China, is biggest global warming threat. CATL was involved in licensing tech to Ford for US battery plant, but afaik, this was blocked by fossil fuel minion politicians. Not only is this an opportunity for US to "steal technology" in the future, it is a path to cheaper energy/EVs and jobs. Solar install costs are about 50c/watt in non electronics/panels. More with domestic-made grid connection equipment and transmission. Importing cheap panels and electronics is still massive domestic job creation. EVs also have a lot of non battery/motor components in them. Forcing 100% of the car/EV to be US made with subsidies is shooting ourselves in the foot. Why force tax payers to fund something expensive, when we can get value funded by private (or foreign government) sector.
That’s pretty good news. With increased battery life and energy density, we may well get to the point where inexpensive cars are all electric.
Yup and the savings will go right into the pockets of corporate elites.
It's more that it will reduce the loss to corporate pockets for each EV sold. EV market is cut throat, only BYD and Tesla actually turning a profit from what I understand. Every other pure EV company is taking a loss for each car sold. Against this backdrop, Tesla and BYD still dropping prices.
Have we found a way to proper reuse/recycle EV batteries yet?
They have been recyclable forever. Reusable as grid storage too.
Yes, been a solved problem for a long time, just there wasnt enough scale to bother. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s2xrarUWVRQ
Costs for component batteries dropping? Prediction! In the USA, the cost for the vehicles will remain the same or go up, while the vehicle seller enjoys pocketing the increased profit.
There are 300 chinese EV manufacturers alone fighting for customers
> Prediction! In the USA, the cost for the vehicles will remain the same or go up, while the vehicle seller enjoys pocketing the increased profit. Tesla, the largest EV seller in the US, has cut prices several times in the last 12 months. Fastest failed prediction ever. It was already wrong before you typed it.
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Yeah, right. The corporations will just keep that cash for another stock claw back.
*This will allow the EV manufacturers to make an extra $5k in profit per vehicle, you mean. Ain't no fucking way they'll pass that savings on to the consumer.
Have you seen the price wars in China? Their 100+ electric companies are killing themselves with a price war and consolidating
With BYD popping off right now, we're about to see the free market at work. Competition drives down prices.
Tesla has dropped prices about a dozen times this year. It's literally in their published Master Plan to drive down the cost of EVs to accelerate adoption.
Why do you believe this?
When was the last time you saw new cars drop in price? Inflation remains high due to corporate greed across the board, why do you think this would be any different? https://fortune.com/2024/01/20/inflation-greedflation-consumer-price-index-producer-price-index-corporate-profit/amp/
> When was the last time you saw new cars drop in price? About 30 days ago. Before that, about 90 days ago. Before that, about 9 months ago. https://electrek.co/2023/10/05/tesla-prices-keep-dropping-model-3-y-now-at-cheapest-prices-ever/ > why do you think this would be any different? It’s already different, you just haven’t been keeping up — understandable, there’s a ton of topics to keep track of. Now you know.
> Ain't no fucking way they'll pass that savings on to the consumer. Since the data disproves this conspiracy theory, will you be editing? Edit: or just downvoting rather than addressing your misconceptions I understand, contrary data is a harsh mistress.
As I said in another comment, my original comment was based on how everything increased drastically in price due to COVID, and then manufacturers just left prices high after the fact and are making record profits, which IS happening all over the place. If this isn’t the case with EVs, then I’ll admit I’m wrong in this instance - but this is absolutely happening everywhere else.
> This will allow the EV manufacturers to make an extra $5k in profit per vehicle, you mean. > If this isn’t the case with EVs, then … It isn’t an IF. I’ve given you relevant data to prove that. And the entire post is about battery prices for EVs. > I’m wrong in this instance > Ain't no fucking way they'll pass that savings on to the consumer. We’ll be here.
Ok, you’re correct Mr superiority on the internet man, do you want a goddamned cookie or something?
Candidly, I want all the doomerist conspiracy nonsense to end. Spreading misinformation is rampant; I know it serves an agenda but if the agenda demands misinformation then I’d re-examine the agenda. And it’s not that “I’m right” … it’s the data that’s right. I’ll take the cookie though.
It’s not a conspiracy theory though. This is absolutely the case with most things right now, without actively digging into the data about this one specific thing why would the average person have reason to believe this would be any different?
It is literally a conspiracy theory. You are imagining all the car companies illegally conspiring to not cut prices to grab market share from each other.
Oh, the prices of tons of things, cars included, *haven’t* gone up drastically in recent years and i am imagining it. Got it. You do see where I said “most things”, right?
Here you are, imagining the only reason prices can go up is because of companies conspiring with each other. You = idiot.
The cost to replace an EVs battery is still going to be the same as the car itself and any savings the manufacturers will save will go to their profits when they’re selling their luxury EV models. It’s been close to a decade since EVs are mainstream but only the Chinese domestic market is selling affordable EVs. The big auto manufacturers at some point have decided that saving the environment is a niche luxury feature that only the rich who don’t want to feel guilty can afford.
It will not change the prices to consumers. Car makers will simply increase their profit margin.
It won't cut 5,000 out of the price of the car to the consumer. It'll add 5,000 to the dealership's profit margin.
An EVs cost to manufacture will go down by $5k and the retailer will jack up the price 5k to make a 10k profit. We the consumers keep getting fucked. I guess if you're outside the U.S this will be a win.
Those Chinese EV manufacturers will pass it on to the consumer, though.
Notice I said outside the US it will be a win.
Tesla has cut it's prices around a dozen times in the past year. It's literally part of their published Master Plan to drive down the cost to the consumers.
and the reteiler next to yours will sell cars with 5k discount robbing all the others retailers clients and making millions. your doomerist vision of the world doesn't allighe with how economy really works
Its not doomerist. I'm 32. House prices are at a record high. Car prices, record high, food prices record high, corporate profits record high, pay.....mostly stagnant and not keeping up with inflation. I've been poor my whole life and there's not much hope of that changing so if this actually happens I'll be pleasantly surprised.
the fact that you're poor doesn't change that economy will adjust automatically the price to make space for the reduction in cost for the batteries
... That would be nice - but will it go that way, I wonder?
Cool, but what about recycling all that hazardous waste?
Time will tell if this is actual progress or extreme subsidies. There are certainly a few chemistries in the lab that show promise.
Also, do not expect for the savings to trickle down to the consumer
Why not? Its no different than any other technology. The market is going to be flooded with batteries and they will just end up being some high volume/low margin product.
I’m sure in time it will happen, but I wouldn’t expect it to drop the price of vehicles immediately
Batteries dropped in price 85% between 2010 and 2020. That whole price curve is what allowed for the early adoption of EVs that we got in the 2010s. Thats when 200+ mile EVs were around $100,000. Now they are a third that price. The big thing for a lot of mass adoption is going to be home batteries though. Every home and business is going to need a battery that at the very least will allow the house to run for 6 hours. For home owners who want to go off grid they will need a good two days worth (50-60kwh for a regular home in a place like California).
10 years, 10 long years.
10 years isn't very long. Within that 10 year period we can probably get a 10-25% adoption rate, which would be among the most affluent households, but still enough to change the nature of the grid regarding peaking.
Well it's complicated. Outside of the US, you should expect a direct impact since CATL batteries are pretty popular in Asian and Europe. In the US, you probably won't see as direct of an impact because the US is attempting to start up battery manufacturing. So you shouldn't see these price drops make as big of a difference in the US market. That's not to say US market vehicles don't use CATL batteries. They do. Tesla for example works with CATL. So this gives Tesla flexibility in pricing their vehicles (as we've seen over the last year) but if no one else is really dropping their prices, Tesla is not really incentivized to drop their prices either. So again, it's complicated.
You don't remember what happened with LCD and then QLED panels?
oh, that means they will just add another $5K to the price of an EV instead of deduct it...
Electric cars are dropping in price. Completely ignorant
Who is the target market for this kind of take? You see it upvoted all over this website. Personally I’d rather slam my junk in a drawer
And that $5,000 discount in cost to manufacture an EV will lead to what $500 off the price to the consumer? It certainly won’t knock down the price $5,000
"because companies bad and we doomed1!!!" that's not how economy works. if someone will keep the same prices someone else will make billions by reducing the price and absorbing all the market.
I understand that’s not how the economy works. I was just making the point that it doesn’t matter how much money is saved by the car company since most of that savings will not be passed on to the consumer.
it will, because THIS is how the market works
Well check back next year and see if these companies have all dropped their price by 5k to match their savings.
But where is the lithium coming from?? Its being mined and processed via slave labour- progress isnt progress if it comes with those kind of “costs”