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Lithium Ion Battery Costs Could Drop 50%

ecogeek.org — Battery manufacturer Ener1 just announced that they're foreseeing an 50% drop in the price of lithium ion batteries as production increases. Where exactly this price drop will be coming from, we're not sure.

Who dugg this? Made popular Sep 2, 2008

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louiebaur Sep 1, 2008

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54 Comments

SVOboy, on 09/01/2008, -1/+23Electric cars = cheap laptop batteries? WIN!!
allaboutdatiki, on 09/02/2008, -2/+21It happened with everything from calculators, to RAM, to LCD screens ... as the factories come on line and production ramps up, prices will fall. The natural resources are abundant. It's primarily a question of production capacity.

The automotive world's going electric. There's no going back.

Get ready to say goodbye to the grip of big oil.
inactive, on 09/02/2008, -1/+15Yea, I think electric car research is fueling a lot of new battery technology
jggube, on 09/01/2008, -2/+16Sweet - cheaper batteries for my wireless mouse! :)
yourmanstan, on 09/02/2008, -2/+13nice thought... would be nice if they provided something more than sheer speculation
josepablos, on 09/02/2008, -2/+11first .. google chrome . and now this .. .. . GOOD DAAAAAAAAAAAY!!
RyeBrye, on 09/02/2008, -1/+8Are electric cars using Li Ion batteries? Ugh!

"A unique drawback of the Li-ion battery is that its life span is dependent upon aging from time of manufacturing (shelf life) regardless of whether it was charged, and not just on the number of charge/discharge cycles. So an older battery will not last as long as a new battery due solely to its age, unlike other batteries." ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium_ion )

No matter what, you are going to have to replace a Li Ion cell every few years... and the range of your car will be slowly going down as the life of it increases. :(
zxe420, on 09/02/2008, -1/+6Get ready to say hello to the grip of big power companies.
AnotherBrian, on 09/02/2008, -0/+5No they don't.
Caliente, on 09/02/2008, -0/+5total crap. Do some research on LiFePO4 before you fire off the lithium is unsafe salvo.
edgedmurasame, on 09/02/2008, -0/+4I'd think that quality's going to drop, judging by the way price drops have been.
apeweek, on 09/02/2008, -0/+4Unlike oil dependence, batteries do not depend on just one technology.

Aside from lithium based batteries, there is promise in NiMH batteries (which will be available again for cars once the oil-industry-owned patents expire in a few years), and supercapacitors.

Plus, unlike oil, materials used in batteries are typically recycled.
apeweek, on 09/02/2008, -0/+4Incorrect. Lithium phosphate batteries (the type used in EVs) are not prone to fires or explosions. I agree with the poster above me, do some research.
Astaro, on 09/02/2008, -0/+4I regularly abuse lithium ion batteries in my model helicopter, and no, they dont catch fire. they dont 'puff up' they only get a bit warm. A battery big enough for a car will operate at SUBSTANTIALLY less current draw per unit area of cell-membrane. in other words, they will be even less stressed than my models batteries.
sockpuppets, on 09/02/2008, -0/+3owned by former oil companies.
inactive, on 09/02/2008, -0/+3This is great news!
abajaj2280, on 09/02/2008, -0/+3YAY!
I can now turn on my electronics without the fear of the battery icon staring at me.
DASK, on 09/02/2008, -0/+3One of the big cost reductions (other than by scale) may come from the fact that many manufacturers are switching from lithium cobalt oxide to other materials (lithium iron phosphate, manganese based materials, nickel, etc...) for the cathode: removing cobalt alone could drop the price by 30%.

A previous commenter is somewhat right about the Lithium issue however: There seems to be plenty, but the rate at which we can extract is far too low. Furthermore, the biggest cheapest deposits are classified as "national strategic resources" in Chile, Boliva and Tibet. Bolivia won't even let foreign companies exploit it.. while Chile has given a defacto monopoly to two companies.

Good news for batteries, but we aren't out of the woods yet. The biggest blessing may be that batteries are modular... ie " what you got under the hood? Li Ions, sweet. I only have Zebras, but I'm saving up"...
apeweek, on 09/02/2008, -0/+3Incorrect. The formulation used for cars is LiFePO4, which is not an explosion or fire hazard.

Look at this page:

http://www.iloveebikes.com/batteries.html

Scroll down, you'll see a lithium Phosphate battery being drilled into while still performing safely.
paker, on 09/02/2008, -0/+3Build a windmill and generate your own.
EtherGnat, on 09/02/2008, -0/+3Honda recently dropped the prices for the Insight batteries by about 40%. Prices have likewise come down significantly for Prius batteries. The technology will get better and prices will drop. It's just a fact of life.
apeweek, on 09/02/2008, -0/+3Battery technology has not stood still. Newest designs for Li-Ion batteries, like the nanotechnology-based batteries in this car:

http://phoenixmotorcars.com

have lifespans of hundreds of thousands of miles, and up to twenty years of shelf life. The A123 batteries that GM is considering for the Volt are of a similar design.
EatSleepJeep, on 09/02/2008, -0/+3Everybody laughed in 2002 when Samsung claimed that Plasma televisions would be priced below $50 per inch before 2010. They ended up being proven wrong. It happened in 2006.
Majora26, on 09/02/2008, -0/+2That's good! yey for cheaper stuff! This day is turnin out pretty good!
T440, on 09/02/2008, -0/+2Can't help but think that this company is just trying to create some buzz on their product. The actual article said that "their" batteries will be reduced in price by 50% and also that they haven't signed any major deals yet.

IDK....I just want my damn electric car that Minority Report promised me....or atleast a car that runs off my trash.
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Dgen_X, on 09/02/2008, -0/+2no...the "value" is going to increase

hasn't walmart taught you anything?!
inactive, on 09/02/2008, -2/+4That's a li and you know it lol
Virgule, on 09/02/2008, -0/+2Its true. the Tesla's battery pack is supposed to last 160 000 kms or 5 years, whichever comes first, then you have to replace the whole pack. I asked Tesla how much its going to cost me a whole month ago and have yet to receive any answer.

I sure hope there is a good way to dispose/recycle/re-use these batteries. There is a hell of a lot of them around.
Virgule, on 09/02/2008, -0/+2Its depends... I.E. the Tesla use a pack of over 6800 lithium laptop sized batteries.
Barackalypse, on 09/02/2008, -1/+3So we're trading our oil dependence for lithium dependence? "In chat with EV World, Tahil said that while lithium salts production could double in the next few years, the industry can't produce enough lithium to build the hundreds of millions of large-format batteries needed to power the electric cars and plug-in hybrids of the future."
http://www.theinquirer.net/en/inquirer/news/2007/0 ...
Perhaps we should be researching technologies that use plentiful, inexpensively extracted and processed materials.
e4digg, on 10/09/2008, -0/+2We don't need lithium batteries. A company called FireFly Energy (Google 'em) is making a standard lead acid battery using a lead carbon foam instead of lead plates.

The US is a top recycler and producer of lead. This keeps the materials domestic so we're not simply trading one import (oil) for another (lithium).

This won't solve any electric needs for small electronics devices, but will open up doors for alternative energy applications.

I hope I can get my hands on some of these for my electric car.

http://www.ZeroGasoline.com
Amazetbm, on 09/03/2008, -0/+2I wonder how much the price will drop on the Tesla Roadster, now.
inactive, on 09/03/2008, -0/+2A price drop would be welcome; as would an increase in capacity.
Zippo, on 09/02/2008, -0/+2Good, laptop batteries are too ***** expensive.
EtherGnat, on 09/02/2008, -1/+3Unless you're suggesting a lithium cartel is going to take control of the lithium market and create artificial scarcity I don't think your comparison to diamonds is warranted.
Virgule, on 09/02/2008, -0/+2I did not know laptop LIons are a pack. I always thought it was a unit whole. Thats good to know.

Do you happen to know if LIons can be recycled and/or reused after they start crapping out of old age or are they dying for good?
HappyScrappy, on 09/02/2008, -0/+2And Tesla is expect to sell 150 cars a year. That's 0.1% of world supply. Apple puts 20x more LIons just in iPods alone.

When they say laptop sized batteries, they mean the cells in a laptop pack. If you take apart a laptop pack, you'll see it has 6-8 cells in it.

Come to think of it, there's no way my estimation of only 1B LIons sold a year is right. I only counted music players and phones, and laptops probably add at least another 10%. I bet it's not as high as 2B though.
apeweek, on 09/02/2008, -0/+2Put up a solar panel. An EV-sized panel for your garage roof can be had for a thousand or two. And solar is getting cheaper by the day.
digghasnoethics, on 09/02/2008, -2/+3What, you mean apart from limited Lithium resources resulting in Peak Lithium within the foreseeable?

http://www.evworld.com/article.cfm?storyid=1180

Scaling up production of something doesn't necessarily reduce the cost, not when you're resource limited it doesn't. Otherwise we'd be knee deep in $1 diamond rings.
threon, on 09/02/2008, -0/+1I expect the next headline to be "High demand and shortage of lithium triggers cost increase."
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alex144, on 09/02/2008, -0/+1Yeah. I am attempting to buy a new Battery for my laptop.
albaniax, on 11/30/2008, -0/+1F***ing Spammer

http://seo-black-hat.de/
skabyss, on 09/02/2008, -1/+2There seems to be an article about cheaper batteries on digg at least once a week. The fact is, your going to pay the same amount for them, the manufacturer will just be making 50% more off you.
inactive, on 09/02/2008, -1/+2Maybe they hired a psychic
Virgule, on 09/02/2008, -3/+2They keep you eyes open for a Tesla fireball!
Show 51 - 54 of 54 discussions
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