Remember how in the 90s the intel pc completely overwhelmed and completely destroyed several layers of computing competitors. Intel and their PC manufacturing bretheren did that by providing a decent quality product at the lowest price. Then they used the benefits of manufacturing scale to improve the price quality ratio to the point where the intel PCs were higher performance than even the fancy work stations that cost 10 times as much.
Well the chinese are about to do that with EVs. EVs are very similar to PCs in this respect, because they have a lot of potential for manufacturing efficiencies.
Western manufacturers (other than Tesla) should drop their prices and try to get to scale as soon as possible. Tesla is at scale but it has a bunch of other problems. Elon should stop his public stage embarrassments (latest having to do with antisemitism and neo nazis) and should concentrate on making cars people like.
For 2023, China's BYD has globally outsold Telsa by over 50% and 8 out of the top 10 brands for global electric car sales for Oct 2023 are from China.
The BYD qin plus, for instance, is about $20k, the Wuling Mini-ev is about ~$10k, Aion Y is $20k. They're eating everyone's lunch and expanding into Central America, Africa and Europe.
Cars like the Cherry QQ, which are $5,000 aren't meant to be compete with new cars but instead, to the vast majority of price-sensitive buyers who normally purchase used cars. Introduce a used-price new car, however ...
They're poised to do to the American auto market what Japan did 40 years ago and just like then, American auto seems to be asleep at the wheel.
This is a classic Clayton Christensen innovators dilemma formula.
Edit: Apparently factual statements are unpopular once again. The internet is so cool.
The often quoted sales figures, that you appear to be referencing, that have them way out in the lead include ICE and Hybrid cars, so if you're going to include those you're really comparing overall auto sales not BEV sales.
https://www.investors.com/news/tesla-vs-byd-2023-comparing-e...
Christensen formula is still in play.
(For people reading that's not to say it's a good stock buy, btw. Please don't try to divine financial advice from this comment)
I read an article that said this all started with Tesla production in China needing local manufacturing to support. The Tesla way allowed Chinese brands to see what was being done and catch up almost immediately on the processes and technology. That was step 1. Step 2 was applying the better understanding of what the Asian market wants to the Tesla business model. VW was the largest Chinese manufacturer, but VW EVs have flopped and are by all measures worse than what is offered by say BYD. There was a VW anecdote about BYD having in-car karaoke and this never occurring to Germans as something people would want.
"Sing mit die Hasselhoff zur die autobahn, jah!"
Aside from US consumers, everyone stands to lose from cheap EVs flooding the market: oil companies, conventional domestic and import manufacturers, electric manufacturers like Tesla, dealerships, arguably even state and local governments who under current laws make less in tax revenue on electric cars.
The US automotive market plays a completely different game than the rest of the world, with a bunch of protections and quirks that have a great potential to stifle a disruptive innovator.
First: the products themselves are regionally unique. The #1 selling vehicle in the US is the F-150, a truck that is a completely insane purchase for most of the rest of the world’s population. Japan may have disrupted the US market, but many of their vehicles they sell in big volumes are designed in America built in America sold primarily to Americans. BYD can’t sell the Qin Plus in America, they need to sell something more like the Rivian R1T. That means BYD needs a US factory to avoid the chicken tax…
Second: The US already shows high willingness to “chicken tax” EVs. All the vehicles that qualify for the EV tax credit are Ford, GM, and Tesla vehicles with high domestic part counts. The government can play this game until the cows come home giving the big 3 ample time to catch up.
So we’ve established that if you’re selling big volumes in America, you are producing cars in US factories. In that regard, China has a weak record of success. If they want to sell trucks in America they’ll probably have to have a UAW factory. The documentary “American Factory” comes to mind for me.
At best, this means that China won’t get the typical labor cost advantage that their entire export economy thrives on. What is their competitive advantage at that point?
Third: the dealer network. Operating in the US means dealing with independent dealerships often enshrined by law. Tesla had to fight an improbable battle to get to the scale it is now without independent dealerships.
Fourth: the incumbents have good tech and are high volume producers in their own right. BYD is big. You know who is bigger? Volkswagen. Toyota. GM. Ford. Even Tesla is bigger by global revenue. 17 other global automotive companies pull in more revenue than BYD, and 9 pull in more revenue than SAIC.
By the way, the “$5,000 used car killer” has been a legend for decades and will never happen in developed markets with strong safety regulations and demanding living standards. Americans literally do not buy city cars, new or used. Get back to me when the Cherry QQ more closely resembles the Ford Maverick.
Now, I'm skeptical that, after all the US safety regulations are met, that it could still be made for $4,000, but the utter manufacturing advantage of paying Chinese workers in Chinese factories local wages is not to be underestimated.
https://www.youtube.com/@Wheelsboy
I'm really blown away with some of their exterior designs. Less so with their touch interfaces (which range from atrocious to outright dangerous).
The car they bought looks really good too: https://youtu.be/kDRDNRuDnOA?si=DPzacq2fMcrJf-dj&t=250 (BYD Yuan PLUS, $21k, 480 km range).
Stuff is just cheaper in China.
I highly doubt BYD could sell a car in the US for $20k.
Yeah I see no way that happens. They have no dealer network to fall back on, so they have to either partner with someone already established, or they have to try and spin up a mobile service network like Tesla did. That costs money, and isn't going to happen while selling $20K cars.
(And yes, it is because of him, Blue Origin, Arianespace, and many others haven't been able to compete at the level of China, and neither have any electric car makers with BYD on a serious numbers level)
even a golf with typical latam striped down specs (no center console, no glove box, manual windows, non adjustable side mirrors, etc) is OVER $20k
it seems to point down now, but who knows?
I saw a BYD logo on a vehicle on the roads of London UK a few days ago. I knew they were coming, and now they are arriving.
Geely is more stealthy, Electric vehicles from Geely subsidiaries (Volvo, Polestar, LEVC) have been around for years. The last, LEVC ( https://levc.com/ ), is the current London "black cab" taxi.
Why wouldn't they?
https://en.byd.com/news/byd-and-the-city-of-lancaster-announ...
But BYD seems more advanced in getting consumer automobiles into EU markets than US markets.
They also make electric busses: https://en.byd.com/news/byd-receives-largest-battery-electri...
I'm an American. I've never been to China or seen one of these Chinese electric cars in person but everything suggests they're on their way to a formidable auto industry in the electric and city-car/light use space - the demographic that Honda and Toyota captured in the 70s and 80s.
Of course if you've done any traveling you'd find many countries have a national auto-manufacturer that's deeply popular in country without much penetration outside (take Vinfast or Saipa for instance) and the Chinese auto companies have yet to prove they can stake a foothold outside of their home country at the Kia or Mercedes level but they just started.
BYD just entered Japan under 2 months ago and XPeng entered Europe only about 6 months ago.
Time will tell, but we could be seeing the very early stage of Chinese auto brands becoming household names.
In response, European automakers are both innovating and pressuring governments for restrictive measures.
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/eu-launches-anti-subsid...
But these are sold with service contracts and so on, so it doesn't necessarily transfer to cars.
They already have - volvo makes nice evs but pretty pricey
This isn't necessarily true. A good case study is the Tata Nano which carried a lot of press around being the world's cheapest new car and ultimately flopped: https://www.autoweek.com/news/a1702021/tata-nano-failed-beca... . Arguably cars can be cost optimized to a point where people would rather buy a nicer used car.
The issue isn't necessarily how small it is, but if things get cost-engineered so much that people feel that the quality isn't there compared to a used vehicle.
I would grant that PC manufacturing is wildly different than manufacturing an internal combustion engine car, but is it wildly different making an EV car? A lot of complexity disappears once you don't have to orchestrate thousands of tiny explosions, then transmit the thrust from those explosions to multiple wheels in different areas of the car. My understanding of EVs (which is limited) is that they are much simpler.
Just the paint alone is hard to get right. Wrong alloy with wrong paint, it chips and flakes. Wrong application, it fades or scratches. Introduce new colors and they might react differently. So now you need to be a paint expert, and be a expert at applying paint, in multiple phases, for multiple parts, many times a day, and never make a mistake.
Now do that for 23 other systems in the car and try not to make a mistake. Suspension, steering, brakes, air con, heat, ECU, brake controller, headlight controller, trim fitting, interior fitting, seats, signal and tail lights, seat belts, front/side impact air bags, bumpers, crush zones, windows, speakers, stereo, main electrical / battery, alternator/inverter, wheels, tires, etc, etc. If you screw up the torque on a bolt, break a clip, forget a fitting or connection, etc, the car now has a defect and needs to be repaired or your brand suffers from consumer complaints (in the best case) or down right safety violations or injuries (worst case).
Compare that to a small metal box which has about six breadboarded electrical components, a screen and a keyboard. The car has that too, plus everything else!
This is not even the interesting thing about lower battery prices. It may happen, but the interesting thing is that it enables different kinds of electric vehicles.
If the cost of the battery in itself rivals the entire price of a subcompact economy car, you obviously can't put one in a subcompact economy car and offer a competitive price in that market. So right now the electric vehicles with significant range are premium products. With cheaper batteries you could have a traditional subcompact economy car with mechanical controls etc. and an electric powertrain.
Likewise, trucks need large batteries to have adequate range while hauling loads. So this gets you to an electric version of the Ford Maverick, for example.
It doesn't just lower the price of the existing models, it allows the low-end models to exist.
I predict more of an S-curve growth in EV sales. Probably >65% of new car sales by 2030, far more than the 47% in the ‘hyper adoption’ scenario in the article.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_PC_compatible#"IBM_PC_comp...
https://www.wsj.com/business/autos/are-americans-falling-out... https://www.wsj.com/business/autos/ev-makers-turn-to-discoun...
I have little trust many of the older car manufacturers as well; GM, Chrysler, Ford seem to be 30+ years behind on shipping reliable technologies like variable valve timing or independent rear suspension. Have you seen the Ford Bronco crash test? The Kia key debacle has only recently taken over the fact that Chrysler was 20 years behind Japanese makers adding chip on key/immobilizer tech. The american makers put off tech like coil on plug, and port injection 8+ years compared to Japanese and European.
Teslas are claimed to be the safest cars ever made. In fact, Tesla uses instrumentation to track accelerations many times a second during actual crashes, and gather statistics on what gets hit, and what goes where during a crash.
This is data of a quality head and shoulders above the competitors, and it shows.
On top of that, they are using similar techniques to have the car avoid the crash altogether. These comprise active safety measures which are included with FSD, but which are also standalone and included generally in Tesla cars.
No, instead demand is rapidly drying up, because suddenly people realize most EVs are vastly, vastly inferior to what they were supposed to replace. The only EVs that make sense are small ones, small battery, for urban transport without the emissions, so you can keep the city air clean.
From that point on, the bigger you get, the worse it gets. Notice that although Tesla has sold several million sedan/compacts and... uhmm "SUVs" (really: just slightly bigger Model 3s), they keep postponing the CyberTruck and Semi. They've only made 90 Semis and avoiding mass production. CyberTruck also won't be in mass production for at least a year more as they test the market (expect several thousand sold).
That's because no amount of hype can hide the facts for too long. These cars are expensive to buy, but way more expensive to own. Insurance is shooting up to the sky as they have to write off entire cars over minor damage because they dented the battery and this sh*t can't be fixed.
EVs will also be increasingly a liability when parked tightly below residential buildings, malls, ferries and so on. If it catches fire, the whole parking lot is done.
The EV bubble is popping before your eyes. The future is not electric. The future is hybrid and I mean this in multiple ways. Diesel trucks, gas pickup trucks, hybrid family cars, and small electric urban cars and electric scooters.
I don't know how anyone with any knowledge of EVs whatsoever can make this argument in 2023. Maybe this was forgivable 10 years ago, but now? This feels like bad faith.
> The future is hybrid
The future of personal transport vehicles is battery-electric, full stop. Why? Because you no longer need any of the trappings of an internal combustion engine. People forget why cars were awesome in the first place -- because you didn't need a horse anymore. In the same way, the big gain in the BEV is NOT adding the battery and the electric motor, it's getting rid of the ICE.
Getting rid of the ICE is only an indirect benefit. It makes the car lighter and cheaper. If you don't need gas for anything, then getting rid of it is worth it. However if you need the gas for something (long trips?) then you need it.
The battery is the single most fragile, heavy, dangerous, expensive, stressful ("range anxiety") and annoying component of an EV, and one which degrades at an alarming rate, just by using it normally.
Guess what, a fuel tank doesn't shrink every time you fill it.
And it doesn't shrink even FASTER when you fill it to the top.
Or let it go empty.
Or run in cold weather.
Or hot weather.
Or you drive fast.
Or too slow.
Or when you fill the tank too fast. Where "too fast" is dripping it in for 30 to 60 minutes a pop.
Or when you don't drive the car for too long.
On top of that, the starting range of the top BEV is half an ICE car. That's on a new car, before all the magical "shrinking" happens.
Batteries are WORSE than anything the automobile industry has from the past 50+ years. And people are slowly realizing that.
EV sales are still at only around 20% of the market, which is a lot! But given that the majority of lithium batteries are already going into EVs now total battery production needs to go up by something like a factor of 5 by 2030 just to meet EV sales. That's a huge amount of growth for any industry, let alone high tech manufacturing.
I would not be surprised to see the relative growth of EV sales stall soon as manufacturers have trouble sourcing enough batteries, and in response we may see some Hybrids or EREVs coming onto the market to meet the shortfall. After all, a battery that gets you 50km is good for 90% of trips for a significant number of people, but you couldn't buy it without a range extender because of that last 10%.
If fossil hydrogen ever gets off the ground I still have hope for fuel-cell/battery hybrids. Since they generate water vapor as a side product they'd also be beneficial to a small extent for arid climates.
I'm not happy if the harvesting of fossil hydrogen harms the subterranean ecosystem, but then I'm not happy about the ecosystem harms of oil or mining either.
haha well Luton Airport fire was not caused by an EV !! https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-67077...
The risks are going in the opposite direction with lifepo4 batteries this reduces by a large margin (( far better than petrol and diesel )), then the next step is semi-solid state batteries and then solid state.
Just no contest...
"can't be fixed" well insureance companies will need to be forced to make sure they are fixed !!! it's poor regulations that are causing this not the tech!! standard and modular replaceable batteries problem solved and this also reduces prices.
Yes, there’s a risk with EVs, but there is plenty of risk with ICE cars too!
are you saying your tesla's total cost of ownership is higher than gasoline cars you've had? Or that your car is somehow unusually cheap, given that you bought an expensive one and we are before 2025?
Tesla is best seller outside China, but they're hitting a ceiling of demand as well, and they can drop prices only so much before they're underwater.
And in China, guess what? Most EVs sold are small urban vehicles. Which I covered in my embarrassing huge argument on faulty grounds. Watch what happens next. Or if you catch up slowly, the final outcomes will be in 2024.
The West can only hold back value Chinese EVs for so long.
Vastly inferior?
I have one of the cheapest EVs that you can buy in the US. The quick charging standard is obsolete. And yet I'd rather drive it than most gas cars. Instant torque (even with a wimpy motor that's the size of a baseball), silent operation, zero time spent at gas stations. Free charging at work means I don't pay for fuel to commute (and it's more than 50 miles each way). But even if I did pay, it would be far cheaper than gas.
> These cars are expensive to buy, but way more expensive to own.
It's the cheapest car I've ever owned. I leased, then purchased after the lease. It cost about the same as an entry level Honda Civic. 4th year, $0 maintenance, other than a cabin air filter.
No oil changes, no emissions testing.
> the bigger you get, the worse it gets.
That's true for all vehicles, although you do have a point with power density requirements. SUVs and 'trucks' are only viable because US gasoline is still cheap even in CA peak prices and parking is usually plentiful. Notice how they are rare worldwide.
> Insurance is shooting up to the sky as they have to write off entire cars over minor damage because they dented the battery and this sh*t can't be fixed.
Insurance is fine for me. Again, non Tesla. Not all cars have the same design or have batteries that are structural - or batteries that aren't too different from laptop ones.
> EVs will also be increasingly a liability when parked tightly below residential buildings, malls, ferries and so on.
Statistics are hard to come by, but you'll find some manufacturers that have a higher incidence of fires. In particular, LFP chemistries are very, very tame. Heck, Toyota still uses NIMH for their hybrids.
By the way, you contradict yourself when you say the future is hybrid, but then go on to talk about battery fires. Even small hybrid batteries store a lot of energy, enough for a pretty serious fire if they do catch on fire. So which is it?
Many of your criticisms seem to be about Tesla. Tesla does a lot of things that are questionable. Repairs tend to be very expensive, for one. The Cybertruck makes no sense and the Semi is probably not viable. That's not about "EVs" though, that's a Tesla specific thing.
I'm hoping we'll see improvements to the designs here, e.g. modular replaceable batteries, so that if the battery is damaged in a collision there's a $1000 cost to replace one of 4 battery modules, rather than a $40000 cost to replace the entire vehicle.
Some of this will come as mechanics decide they need to learn how to service EVs. However some of it depends on a good design for repair.
Because batteries are HEAVY. A modular design means the batteries can't be structural, so you need more structure to support the car around the battery, and a solid structure holding the replaceable battery itself. Boxes in boxes in boxes in boxes. This makes the car heavier. Weight means less range. To increase the range you need more batteries. Which adds more weight. Which means less range.
Do you see what I mean? It's just physics. We can't fix this. Only some amazing battery breakthrough would fix this, but so far we have only sensationalist articles about something working in a lab supposedly and nothing out there in production.
I'm not sure being an EV is the biggest hurdle for manufacturing that abomination. Tesla had troubles putting plastic panels together, so steel ones might be an issue. If they actually end up trying to manufacturing it at scale they'll end up having redesign it which will lead to significant delays.
You just revealed yourself as someone uninformed about what's actually happening with Cybertruck.
If they actually end up trying to manufacturing it at scale they'll end up having redesign it
You're about a year or so late with this "prediction."
As far as the cybertruck ... this is just the stupidity elon musk has been affected by lately. The cybertruck body is supposed to be made by a fancy new method which Tesla has a lot of problems bringing to mass manufacturing. Rivian is making ev trucks and suvs that are quite popular.
But the price, coupled with the mass spying in every new vehicle... Looking like it will be used ICE cars for me pretty much indefinitely.
That would be quite the milestone
I’m curious at what point it will flip and EVs become cheaper than ICE
And this can keep going.
A big pending change: if the solid state battery with 10 minute charge time works, gas stations can become charging stations. Pull out the pumps and tanks, put in the chargers, keep the islands and the convenience store. Charging stations now look like gas stations, not parking lots. Transitioning to BEV does not require new real estate.
By 2030-2035, people with gas cars will be looking at maps to find open gas stations.
With adoption already at 5%, that's a serious threat to gas station visits; imagine 10% fewer people stopping at a gas station a given week, or 20%. And this doesn't only apply to bevs, but to a smaller degree phevs too.
Service centers (fewer oil, brakes, coolant changes), dealerships (because engine and transmission failure decreases), and eventually auto parts stores will also see this volume of customers decrease.
Getting to 2030 is going to be wild.
Manufacturers will find new ways to break "your" stuff, unless regulation is put in place to prevent it.
You really don't need to even do that. You can put a charger at every parking lot in front of the convenience store (Already happening in a few locations around me).
But also, most charging (at least early on) will be happening at home. There really is no need to convert every gas station into a charging station. We just need major throughways covered. The one missing piece is L2 chargers, We need more of those installed in more locations. For example, employers could easily put them in office parking lots. With 8 hours to charge, you could even do L1 chargers.
Once charging drops below 10 minutes, it's all about throughput. You don't want people clogging the charging units. You want to get them in and out. Revenue per charging unit, that's what it's all about.
That's a wild statement. Not everyone replaces their vehicles every year. Some people drive a car for 10-20 (+) years before ditching it. There will assuredly still be plenty of open gas stations in 2035.
2035 is a long time away. iPhone was released 16 years ago and the world changed within the next decade.
When cheap cars and trucks really arrive the primary limit will be supply. ~nobody uses feature phones anymore. Electric vehicles could well be like that once we get real scale, and especially in countries that don’t currently have very high car ownership because they won’t be defending the old regime. Countries that embrace and accelerate this change will receive the most economic benefits.
Gasoline vehicles will become more expensive to maintain and run, and more of a hassle to refuel, so even people like me who like to keep their cars for ages will be forced to switch a lot earlier than normal - especially if you live in the city.
Once the EV market share hits something like 50% (middle of next decade, ish), petrol business will be down much more than 50% from today. Many petrol stations will have disappeared. Most commercial fleets will be close to 100% electric at that point (or striving to be). Most long distance road travel will be electric. Because it's vastly cheaper than anything else at that point. Any heavy road users will switch sooner rather than later because of the cost benefits from going electric. As soon as they can basically.
EVs will be over represented in miles driven collectively. As in, people might still own ICE vehicles but they would not be driving them a lot as that would be costly. And hence not use as much fuel.
film development, pay phones, radio stations, record stores, video rental, etc...
I am not sure of this at all. At the very least, we can bet by that timeframe the number of gas stations will be going down. Why? For the same reason I don't have a Boston Market or Pei Wei near me any more. Because capitalism.
Investors will not necessarily wait for even 50% of the cars on the road to be electric before they start pulling their money out of gas stations. And especially because most stations make very little at the pump anyway -- they make most of their money in the attached convenience store. I don't know how long pumps and underground tanks last, but I would expect that by 2030 some stations will be opting out of replacing warn out pump equipment. And I expect this to start in neighborhood stations in wealthy areas first, where EV adoption and land value are both high.
And sadly, as older cars majority areas will reflect economic status and local crime, service deserts are more likely to develop.
I drive a 20 year old ice.
I expect the change to EVs will follow a similar path, and in ten years there will be "experts" looking back saying "It's unprecedented - we NEVER could have predicted this!".
I'm already doing that now for true Diesel #2 in SoCal with my '15 VW GSW TDI SEL. Diesel was always hit-and-miss being at about a third of stations, but now it seems like two-thirds of the stations which had Diesel #2 converted to some B20-B50 variant or even R99.
I wonder how many diesel fuel systems are getting absolutely pwned by ignorant owners putting high(er) biodiesel content fuel in contact with gaskets which will swell and fail once the owners switch back to Diesel #2...
150 wh/kg sodium ion and 200+wh/kg LFP is going to be the workhorse of this price improvement. Sodium Ion should only be 30-40$/kwhr, and 2025-ish is when CATL expects to hit 200wh/kg sodium ion and 250 wh/kg LFP.
So its a double assault: higher density with cheaper materials. Waiting in the wings are solid state and sulfur techs among others.
IMO what is needed is a gradual phase-out EV price credit (not a tax credit) that starts at $10,000 and drops $1000 per year. Meanwhile, ICE cars should get taxed at registration $500 extra and that increases $500 per year.
Gas prices alone are enough stick for this transition.
The Sodium Ion battery should enable the cheap 200 mile city car that about 4-5 billion people in the world want. If it gets to the price point it is the true revolution of EVs, not fancy high-density stuff, although sodium-sulfur will obviously be a similar revolution if/when it gets figured out.
If Tesla can pull off some of the manufacturing efficiencies and improvements they talked about at their last investor day, it seems very likely their up coming "smaller" vehicle will be exactly that.
After I figured in gasoline costs and my commute in California, I worked out that my used luxury EV would save 100% of its purchase price in gasoline (even accounting for electricity costs) in something like 3-5 years.
Can confirm; >5 years on a Model 3 and other than tires $0 in maintenance so far. >3 years on a Model Y and other than tires, $0 in maintenance so far. Absolute huge cost and time savings compared to my ICE vehicles, even when I perform my own maintenance on them.
(I am aware of YourMechanic and other similar services, but having the unified experience with a brand is nice and fancy, I can order it in the Tesla app and the maintenance records can easily transfer to the next VIN owner)
People talk about "oh I don't want to spend 15 minutes charging at a supercharger on road trips". Yeah, I'd rather do that once in a blue moon rather than the weekly drive out of my way to spend 5-10 minutes at a gas station with semi-sketchy people loitering the area. Or deal with the ever-changing gas prices that go up every time a dictator in the middle-east sneezes.
Once the average person knows the maintenance cost is that low it will probably provide yet another inflection in EV curve adoption.
Cost to go a mile varied between 1/5 and 1/10 of ICE, but had limited range (which worked for me).
>$0, so far
Come now, amortize what the eventual service costs will be...
If we play at being objective and get caught leaving bits out, people shut down and label you a liar.
I presume brakes and tires partially cancel out, depending on car model. Some vehicles do engine braking automatically (mine does).
Once they normalise EV prices will be still really far off.
The average ICE engine hasn't changed, from a technology standpoint, has not changed in decades. What's changed is all the internal technology (entertainment systems, parking cameras) as well as trim that's become standard (power everything). These standards are defined by the market. Case in point: see what the standard for cars (both quality and price) are for a given market like US vs India.
It's unlikely they will lower margins so much as to make less money from EV's than from ICE cars. An analogous model are iPhones. The old iPhones could be sold today at a fraction of the price but instead they release new models with better features to justify the higher price point.
(This is all with a caveat that I'm talking about sticker price. Given that EV maintenance should generally be cheaper, without a doubt the target is to have the total cost of ownership be lower than an ICE car as that's how EV's are being positioned today.)
I want the 2cv/fiat 500/vw beetle equivalent with a nation wide network of mechanics. Tesla is already a pain tlin the ass in that matter and I doubt any "new player" will reach their scale anytime soon
Now the battery costs are falling and in a few years we will probably see an oversupply situation which will be good times for anybody who uses batteries. I'm a bit hopeful about decarbonization efforts for the latter half of the decade. I think battery prices will drop enough to make grid storage viable in more places and further allow the deployment of wind and solar generation. As this article mentions EVs will see a major price drop in their most expensive component.
Then of course a bunch of the manufacturers will go out of business because the prices dropped too low and then the market will consolidate into a couple of companies and prices will creep upward again as they fail to compete with each other. But that's a problem for the future.
Grid storage is the major one. As price starts to decline you are going to see power providers soak up any excess battery supply.
There are companies that take old EV batteries and break then down. The steel and plastic is recycled. The valuable metals end up in one big lump right now, but as I understand they are storing them for future use as that part is still being commercially developed and they expect it to be valuable.
If we take a look at lead acid batteries, the majority of the lead that is used in the manufacturing of new batteries comes from old batteries that are recycled.
* LFPs are really starting to take off which pull a lot of pressure off higher capacity NMC batteries.
* Sodium ion batteries are just starting to hit the market which further reduce demands on Lithium.
The ramp up on alternative chemistries is playing a fairly good role here and sodium ion will likely push prices down even more aggressively.
Further, I expect that battery recycling will really start to be a major contributor to lower costs in the next 10 years or so. So I'd expect even lower prices as the battery market starts approaching saturation.
Limiting factor [1] can be really good at breaking things down and covering current battery tech (they are fairly bullish on tesla). But I also get bits and pieces from google news feeds, renewable focused social media, and diving into anti-renewable social media :D. I don't mind reading into a critical piece to challenge my preconceived notions.
It does help, though, to simply know who the big players are and watch what they are actually manufacturing (and then read up on that tech). I mostly ignore the "this battery is 8 billion times cheaper than lithium ion!" news stories because they are sensationalist. An article about CATL building a solid state battery line and now I want to know what it is, how it works, and what the cons are.
CATL is probably the most interesting manufacturer to watch if you want to know where the cutting edge is. (Similar to TSMC being cutting edge when it comes to chip manufacturing).
Very much so. I suggest watching the following video to see where we are at. [1]
> Won't it become less so as new batteries become cheaper?
Recycling will be the key to making batteries even cheaper. Getting already refined iron, nickel, and other chemicals will be far cheaper than trying to mine these materials fresh.
Very similar to how pretty much all lead acid batteries are recycled. Mining new lead is a lot more expensive than reusing old lead.
Recycling isn't always economical (see paper and plastic) but in the case of batteries, it absolutely is. The biggest problem battery recycle have is there's simply not enough batteries to recycles. Demand far outstrips supply at the moment.
For cars, they are pushing lfp and sodium ion as perfectly reasonable & cheap batteries.
But the ultra dense stuff will also help as well, especially with heterogenous cell architectures and the like.
Find me a after the market Chinese cell phone battery that lasts 24 hours or an after the market laptop battery that lasts two hours on a charge and I'll be a devotee to Chinese electric cars for whole my life.
This feel good tech utopia of endless possibilities where wind can power terra watts, sunlight can do wonders and such sells well but otherwise is irrational and non scientific. At the moment.
Problems are harder than that.
Major EV Manufacturing expansion has been cancelled by automakers, including Tesla
The manufacturing costs that were propped up by cheap Chinese labor and exotics is ending.
Not enough exotics available for a long term plan to convert the US to EVs. Cost ends up driving EV prices too high for foreseeable future.
Not enough infrastructure in the US. This isnt changing anytime soon.
Money is tight and risk averse consumers avoid EVs, especially anything that isnt the current models.
Oddly e-bike prices have continued to rise without a real correction after the covid shortage constrained supply price spike, and the used market is kept from balancing it out through very high replacement battery pricing with various vendor lock in mechanisms. (eg: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1396568/average-e-bike-p...)
Eg this says the e-bikes YoY growth has been only 10% ish and forecasted to continue that way: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1261084/global-e-bike-ma...
And that's despite the fact that the US lags behind the Asian and European markets when it comes to e-bike demand: https://electrek.co/2022/02/08/us-electric-bicycle-sales-tra...
Without more data, I think it's too soon to conclude that EVs are outselling e-bikes, at least in terms of units shipped. And the fact that EV subsidies are expiring around the globe puts downward pressure on EV demand in a way that doesn't apply to e-bikes.
It wouldn't surprise me if BYD, CATL, and Tesla were already there now. Not sure if there's public information on that though. I'd imagine they'd keep it a secret if they can.
Funny they mention nickel and cobalt, since they're not actually required. I think LFP cells are somewhere around half the EV-battery market these days.
Agreed!
Will they last 10 years? Probably too early to say. Battery degradation isn't the problem people thought it would be. But anything mechanical is going to need some maintenance.
It's not like their quality is worse - far from that. It's just that they're engineered to last a very specific engine hours figure.
Current approaches like silicon-enriched or pure lithium metal anodes indeed use less materials, but they're decreasing the size of the less dense of the two electrodes, as the metal cathode is typically much denser and heavier than the graphite anode, so ultimately you're getting more density, but largely because you're decreasing the volume of the whole thing.
Lithium is the limiting component, since it carries the charge - there's a theoretical limit how little you can use and we're within an order of magnitude of that.
[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S24058...
[2] https://ars.els-cdn.com/content/image/1-s2.0-S24058297193110...
About the only one who seriously committed to it was Elon Musk and his engineers. It may have been the last sensible thing he did, but it was a doozy.
With the caveat that demand is decreasing right now. [0]
0. https://www.wsj.com/business/autos/ev-makers-turn-to-discoun...
In reality there were some pretty big price bumps in the past year that softened demand and now they're having to walk those back via incentives. In other words normal business shit.
Seems like the cheaper batteries will solve that
The current battery tech is responding to demand (and demand predictions) from a couple years ago.
The main thing is that the cost of fuel vs. the cost of electricity meant that we are saving ~$100/month and the difference in car payments for ICE vehicles vs EV was smaller than that.
Although I'm pretty sure this only holds for new vs. new. The "used" market for EVs is almost non-existent and the savings you get is not nearly as large in used as it is for ICE. So if you are willing to buy used, then yes, ICE is still going to have an advantage for a while. But for new vehicles at least, modulo all those factors up above, it's already the case that some EVs are cheaper than comparable ICE vehicles.
It does depend on where you are. In the Nordics an EV is definitely cheaper than even a used ICE. Biggest reason being the reduced fuel costs, but also lower tax.
Depends
Here in New Zealand we get 3-year old ex Japanese vehicles at about half new price
Or on depreciation. When some battery breakthrough finally hits the market and unfucks EVs so they don't weigh twice as much as regular vehicles to go half as far, then you'll be left with $1-2k worth of metal around a worthless battery that nobody will want to buy anymore.
I had solar panels installed a little over ten years ago, for environmental reasons, and I was surprised to learn that the economics were already good enough to make it work out as a benefit in purely financial terms. Equipment has only gotten better since then.
Will the person plan on living there for the next 5-10 years? Will installation costs finally start falling three years from now? Will the government institute a large grid connection fee so as to significantly impact payback periods? Is the roof going to need replacement within the next 10 years?
Incentives and prices will vary over time. While there is new "tech" for solar in the pipeline, it will take time to reach market. As prices decrease, incentives will as well. Be mindful of how incentives and financing may stack, EnergySage will provide all the info you need to make an informed decision.
I love it. Went there, and it gave me two options. One with a 17.2 year payback, and a second where I get a loan and my 20 year savings are -$27K. Ha! Seems like they should just replace that second option with "we calculated this one and it turns out you'd lose a bunch of money, it's not feasible."
Alas, 17.2 years is longer than my current roof has left before replacement, and almost certainly longer than I'll live here. Maybe the next house. Especially since I'm thinking of moving somewhere with enough open land that I can just DIY a nice ground-mount setup instead of mucking about with holes in the roof.
If I could really buy 1 kWh of cells for $130, I would expect to see them show up on eBay for not much more than that. (Or, even for less, because eBay has a lot of factory seconds, damaged goods, etc)
However, prices for new bare cells on eBay is more than double the numbers quoted in this article.
It makes me think there are market distortions going on, and the real price is differing from the advertised price.
> damaged goods
A damaged battery is recycling material, not a resale item.
Is Goldman confident this is a long term trend? I didn't see in their report that the decline in price is due to permanent increased supply or increased efficient extraction etc...
The article uses words like “expect”, “might”, “could”, and “hope” throughout. Look at where 2023 is on those charts: way to the left on the x-axis.
I hope batteries really do get cheaper in the future but this is optimistic prediction headlined as present-tense fact.
Basic transport in the NEV class is far superior and benefits with tech true innovation.
Bigger heavier more shit to break is what I see Lincoln advertise meanwhile in Texas car payment insurance gas parking tolls (sound familiar?) take a huge chunk of income. It’s dumb. Fix this first.
EVs provide the sweetest kind of demand for a grid, they are parked 23 hours a day, can charge whenever power is free and less than free. Power prices go negative 200 million times/year[1]. Batteries, Solar and Wind and still in the early stages, as volume grows, both will get a lot cheaper. Batteries add the much needed gigantic-distributed-storage-reservoir, soaking up all the excess production that is currently wasted.
An insightful comment from a HNer (don't remember who), if there is excess production we have to either move it across time or across space. Across space requires building transmission lines (costly, takes a decade). Across time is easy, we just need more EVs, everywhere.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:3-Learning-curves-for-e...
(2019 article) “Batteries will fall much faster than you are forecasting.” The key determinant of our forecast is the relationship between price and volume. From the observed historical values, we calculate a learning rate of around 18%. This means that for every doubling of cumulative volume, we observe an 18% reduction in price. Based on this observation, and our battery demand forecast, we expect the price of an average battery pack to be around $94/kWh by 2024 and $62/kWh by 2030: https://about.bnef.com/blog/behind-scenes-take-lithium-ion-b...
Learning rate for Solar is 20%. According to this article (https://ourworldindata.org/learning-curve), the price declined from $106 to $0.38 per watt in these four decades. A decline of 99.6%. It looks like modules are a lot more cheaper, its now $0.14 per watt for TOPcon(28% efficiency) and $0.12 per watt for PERC (24% efficiency).
A common critique that comes up is, we don't have electricity for all the EVs. This is nonsense.
(1) Renewable energy is currently curtailed. A lot of production is wasted, because there is no demand at that time. EVs absorb all that.
(2) See the calculations here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35845334
(3) Electricity is used heavily in fossil fuel and oil production. We simply shift it to EVs. No additional demand.
(4) Right now, everyone's energy is fragmented: natural gas for cooking, water heating, boiler for heating, gas for cars and electricity. When people switch to EVs, a lot of them switch to solar, consolidating all energy, saving ~$1000/month. And also lowering consumption from the grid.
(5) We somehow found a ton of electricity everywhere for bitcoin, 127 TWh. We can definitely find electricity for EVs.
But, more importantly, EVs can replace natural gas peaker plants (the costliest part of electricity) and make some money! Powerwall owners are making $150/day: https://electrek.co/2023/07/05/tesla-electric-customers-repo.... When virtual power plants start popping up, there will be a huge rush to buy EVs. A ton of people are buying homes for 500K+ to put them up on airbnb and they barely make 100/day. Owning an EV (replacing your existing ICE) and make $100+ per day just by opting in to participate in a VPP is the very definition of passive income.
[1]https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-08-30/trapped-r...
