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Transportation Technology

Bloomberg Predicts EVs Cheaper than IC Engine Cars Within 10 Years (computerworld.com) 266

Lucas123 writes: With the price of lithium-ion batteries continuing to plummet, already dropping 65% since 2010, electric vehicles will become cheaper to own by the mid-2020s, according to a new report by Bloomberg New Energy Finance. The report also forecasts that sales of EVs will hit 41 million by 2040, up from 462,000 in 2015. By 2040, EVs will make up 35% of new light-duty vehicle sales, even if the price of crude oil goes back up from $33 today to $70 in the future. The adoption of EVs will displace about 13 million barrels of oil per day by 2040, when the clean-energy cars represent about one-quarter of cars on the road.
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Bloomberg Predicts EVs Cheaper than IC Engine Cars Within 10 Years

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  • Peak battery (Score:3, Insightful)

    by ickleberry ( 864871 ) <web@pineapple.vg> on Friday February 26, 2016 @09:40PM (#51596157) Homepage
    EV batteries last a couple of thousand cycles at the most. Which might be 5 or 10 years worth of driving. After that they are recycled into stainless steel pans and other items that aren't batteries. It seems that Lithium ion batteries are harder to recycle back into batteries than for example lead acid or nickel iron (both impractical for powering cars).

    So instead of eating into the world's supply of hydrocarbons we're eating into the world's supply of Lithium and a couple of other elements that there isn't all that much of once you start producing 10s of millions of cars. Great progress.

    Of course there are ways of getting these metals in plentiful supply from seawater, asteroids and other sources but as with super-efficient solar panels, they're always 10 years away.
    • Re:Peak battery (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 26, 2016 @10:06PM (#51596263)

      Ummm the Lithium is recycled. It comes down to the economics between cost of cycling compared to cost of getting it out of the ground.

      Tesla seem adamant that recycling will end up cheaper source of lithium than mining will.

      Also Lithium isn't the cost inhibitor and never has been. Lithium has gotten way more expensive in recent years, while lithium batteries have dropped massively in price. The lithium itself is a very minor part of the cost.

      There are only 10kg of lithium in a big car battery, there are 22 million kg's of known lithium reserves. I doupt there will be a problem with lithium shortage for a long time.

      • by x0ra ( 1249540 )
        So you'll limit the car pool to 2 millions car ?
        • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

          by Anonymous Coward

          Above number, 22 million kg's of known lithium reserves is off.

          According to the USGS, there are 13 million tonnes of known lithium reserves.

          Note a tonne is a thousand kg, so...

        • by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) on Friday February 26, 2016 @11:39PM (#51596587)

          So you'll limit the car pool to 2 millions car ?

          No. GP is mistaken. There are not 22 million kg, there are ~22 million metric tons, or a thousand times as much. So the limit would be 2 billion cars. But there is an additional 230 billion metric tons of lithium in the ocean, enough for 20 trillion cars.

    • "EV batteries last a couple of thousand cycles at the most. Which might be 5 or 10 years worth of driving. After that they are recycled into stainless steel pans and other items that aren't batteries."

      Actually, EV batteries that are replaced still have about 70% capacity and move onto productive lives as solar storage batteries which doesn't need anything like the capacity a car does. For example, Tesla sells their powerwall which has a capacity of 7kWh but a typical spent car battery is still going to have

      • by sshir ( 623215 )
        That 70% capacity left is total bullshit. After Li battery hit that mark it starts to degrade at a fast and ever accelerating rate. Basically, you cannot cycle it much after that. So yes, maybe some backup power application, where it just sits there, but otherwise... nope.
    • by dbIII ( 701233 )

      So instead of eating into the world's supply of hydrocarbons we're eating into the world's supply of Lithium

      That's going to take a while:
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salar_de_Uyuni

    • Re:Peak battery (Score:5, Interesting)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) on Saturday February 27, 2016 @06:33AM (#51597557) Homepage Journal

      Maths fail.

      The Panasonic cells used in Tesla batteries are rated for 3000 cycles (80% capacity remaining). A full charge gives you 300 miles range. 3000x300 = 900,000 miles, or about 3x what a modern petrol engine can do before it needs replacing.

      Tesla have actually tested up to 750,000 miles with 86% capacity remaining, as you would expect based on the maths. Similarly, taxi companies running Nissan Leafs at 150,000 miles are seeing >90% capacity remaining, as expected.

      Chances are that most EV batteries will outlast the car by a long way, and find use as home backup/solar smoothing packs or replacements in other vehicles. Eventually they will be recycled, because they are very recyclable.

      • 3000x300 = 900,000 miles, or about 3x what a modern petrol engine can do before it needs replacing.

        A modern petrol engine will do a million miles, but only if you actually properly maintain it throughout its lifecycle. It will require a lot more maintenance than an electric, obviously. Most people don't even change their oil frequently enough, let alone their coolant. Doing both is critical to engine longevity. You also have to stay on top of chain guides, pulleys, tensioners and what have you. People mostly don't.

        What the ever-living fuck is this more-than-one-minute posting delay about? I can never fig

        • The lithium battery, and the car's electric motor for that matter, require zero maintenance or parts replacement for that lifetime. The money you'll spend on oil, belts, coolant, timing belt, gaskets, plugs,.... etc to achieve that mythical million-mile "life" is the reason that EVs are much cheaper over their lifecycle, aka TCO.

        • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          You can keep anything going forever with enough maintenance. I agree, the delay is insufferable.

  • by dAzED1 ( 33635 ) on Friday February 26, 2016 @09:47PM (#51596193) Journal
    Went to Catalina Island for a few days this week and on the way there, saw a sign that is repeated on this website: "Due to the lithium ion batteries Hoverboards are ILLEGAL to transport upon Catalina Express." [catalinaexpress.com] Disregarding cameras, cell phones, watches, pacemakers, blah small electronics etc, anyone who has been to Catalina knows cars are scarce there (it's a 30 year waiting list to get a car permit) and everyone drives golf carts - which more and more use large lithium ion batteries now. I thought the sign to be really funny, yet sad (obviously). Hoverboards aren't banned because of the lithium-ion batteries, they're banned because they're 90degrees off and they're not hovering. Errr...they're banned because they were very cheaply manufactured, and have safety problems.
  • by Idou ( 572394 ) on Friday February 26, 2016 @10:25PM (#51596329) Journal
    The Nissan Leaf is one of the cheapest cars you can get that can blow away most other cars when accelerating from 0 to "legal in-town speed."

    If your commute involves stop lights and changing lanes, it is super fun to drive and a bargain. The general public still seems oblivious to its acceleration, which adds to the fun when you quietly blow past them when they try to cut you off in a "funny looking car" (while their ICE wails in futile protest. . .)
    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by ncy ( 1164535 )

      ... Leaf ... that can blow away ...

      i see what you did there lol

  • I predict that in ten years half the cars on the road today will still be on the road. I recall reading that the half life of a typical automobile is ten years or so, maybe as low as eight. So, even if the only factor in buying an electric car for the public was price we'd still be a long way from moving our national vehicle fleet off of fossil fuels.

    I predict that in ten years the price of gasoline will be within 10% of what it costs now, not in dollars but in hours per day that the average working perso

  • There isn't a single manufacturer that has any sort of a road-map for a 20-25 years time-span. When the manufacturers themselves don't even have the faintest of plans laid down, this prediction of where the market will be heading is a wild speculation at best
  • The gains we've made in battery technology have been to improve on the cost, size, and weight of pretty much the same chemical reactions. At some point this technology will hit some very real limitations on improvements that can be made to battery technology. I wonder if we have not met those limitations already.

    Like many technologies humans have made and improved upon over time the limits of physics start to come into play. At that point any gains start to come at a cost somewhere else. We might be ab

  • "In the next few years, the total-cost-of-ownership advantage will continue to lie with conventional cars, and we therefore do not expect EVs to exceed 5% of light-duty vehicle sales in most markets -- except where subsidies make up the difference," Morsy said. "However, that cost comparison is set to change radically in the 2020s."

    Subsidizing the dinosaur burning car industry is "corporate welfare" but subsidizing EV ownership is... what exactly?

    I had my liberal friends tell me that the big automakers in the USA had to be bailed out years ago because those companies were "too big to fail". Now we have to subsidize EVs to compete with these companies. I say we would have had a lot more EVs on the market if we allowed the dinosaur burners to go out of business so that the EV makers could have bought up the factories at fire sale pric

    • by dbIII ( 701233 )

      Subsidizing the dinosaur burning car industry is "corporate welfare" but subsidizing EV ownership is... what exactly?

      Giving someone other than an incumbent a chance. Not doing it results in things like Ford and GM sitting around until the Japanese and Europeans showed the consequences of having nothing but complacent incumbents run by trust fund babies.

      The question is do we try to have a local industry or do we just wait until China owns the market and sells EVs to us.

  • On this site IC typically means integrated circuit instead of internal combustion. The former sounds pretty good, an engine with no moving parts.

    I think it's doable actually, wrap the "rails" from a maglev train around the inside of the wheels. Use SCRs to electronically control the electro-magnetic field for propulsion... and there you go, and integrated circuit engine with no moving parts except the wheels.
  • by rossdee ( 243626 )

    Won't Electron Volt cars still have Integrated Circuits ?

  • Bloomberg is being very conservative on the date at which electric vehicles will replace liquid fueled vehicles. I also doubt that lithium ion will be the winner in the advanced battery contest.
  • I have to admit that I've warmed to the idea of an electric car, but it's not really ready for prime time (i.e. the 99%) yet.

    Come see me when I get the same range as a gas-powered car, I can charge it relatively quickly (15 mins, tops), the number of publicly available charging stations is within a reasonable parity with gas stations, and desert heat won't destroy the life of the storage medium.

    Until then, it'll take a hell of a lot more than price parity to get me in an EV... Like a Tesla Roadster fo
    • by shilly ( 142940 )

      Why would you need to have both the same range as a gas-powered car *and* fast recharge times? An electric car does something a gas-powered car doesn't: home charging. Do you routinely and frequently drive 500 miles, refill, and drive a further several hundred miles? What other circumstances require both long range and swift recharge when the car can be charged overnight and have its full range available in the morning? (Similar question applies to charging stations)

    • I have to admit that I've warmed to the idea of an electric car, but it's not really ready for prime time (i.e. the 99%) yet.

      Neither are cars. That's why we have vans, lorries and motorbikes.

  • The car companies will switch to renting the batteries, like Renault for example does it with the Twizy car.
    Somebody crashed my Smart car (2. car in the family) and I wanted to buy a Twizy, but 50€ a month is too much, with my Smart I put gas for 25€ in it and I drive for 5-6 weeks, so this would cost me more than double the amount. So I bought another Smart.

    I wait for the day that they claim that building your own battery will violate their 'copyright'.

    This seems to get more common, I just read a

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