T-Pain Is On A Boat: Re: [Electric Boats] AC vs DC motors

Thursday, August 4, 2016

Re: [Electric Boats] AC vs DC motors - new EC cat

King...
Incorrect, imho.

Due to many factors, Lion battery costs and tech are, and have been for 15+ years, on an exponential curve of about 9% y/y ramp.
This ramp is increasing, lately, due to (vastly more) money in
more researchers,
more manufacture,
faster growth,
mostly due to auto BEV batteries greatly increasing usage in terms of kWh.

Lithium costs today at 12.000$ / ton are about 200$ total for a 100 kWh battery, ie inconsequential.
Cost of lithium brine or hard rock equivalent, per ton.
Cobalt might, theoretically, be more problematic.
In practice, it wont be, because in a multi-billion industry supply always rises to meet demand, even though a 1 year pinch in availability might be possibe, at 80 gWh/year breakpoint, circa 2019 (imo), 3M+ BEV/yr.

(Lithium used to cost 6000$ / ton, about 1 year ago. Even at imaginary triple the price, say 36.000$ / ton (impossile) it would still be non-material, in a 10.000 $(100$/kWh cost basis, circa 2018, Tesla) battery.)
Lithium battery costs are going down faster, not slower, because anything like lion batteries get much cheaper, really fast, when you make really large quantities.

Today, Tesla uses about 1 million 18650-C batteries from Panasonic, PER DAY.
== 7000 / car, about 142 cars/day, or 1100 / week (old data) current data about 2000 cars/week => .

The Tesla cost is about 180$ / kWh/pack (==80 kWh blended).
With a new chemistry, new format 2710, the unit qty goes to about 4-5000 units, ie about 30-40% less units/pack.
More importantly, the new manufacturing equipment will cost about 1/3-1/2 of current cost / cell.

Just like apple/iphones, boeing/airplanes (1/day !), anything really big, unit manufacturing costs approach parity+margin on resource costs once really high volume is there.
The current lines make batteries based on 10 year old (Panasonic) designs, tweaked, aka version C chemistry (Tesla) vs version A and B available online to anyone.

The 2-3 billion $, 7 years effort, by Tesla, has certainly improved this, by at least as much as everyone else (20-30 manufacturers, 7 major), about 9% year/over (global average).
The curve is exactly like RAM cost, PV cost, HDD cost, processor speed, etc. with a smaller ramp 9%.
For similar reasons.

Lion battery costs will be about 50-60$, in 5-9 years, probability about 98%.
With current incremental development only.
If and only if, the approx 20 new-tech discoveries credibly proven *all fail totally*. I myself consider this unlikely. I think one or more of the new-tech ideas will work.
Satchi (company name) is one example.

If just one of them succeeds, the costs may go down to 10-20$, or the density to 1000 - 3000 Wh/kg ie 10x or 1000% better than today, in the 5-9 year timeframe.
New anodes, new cathodes, solid state, li-air, are just some of the potential options, many demonstrated in tests and well funded at this time.
li-air has potentially 13.000 W/kg, vs Tesla as-world-leader-today of 250 W/kg.

Investors know perfectly well that any actual working battery of longevity over current lion, say 10k cycles, and density over 1000 W/kg, at a 100$ cost, means a multi-trillion dollar immediate, easy profit.
The energy sector alone is about 90 trillion dollars globally, and any battery able to do above, will immeditely take a major slice of the market, effortlessly.

--
Quote:
Tesla battery technology is maturing rapidly, I will give you that. The only problem I see on the horizon is with most modern battery technologies, widespread adoption will drive up the cost of raw materials and so the price reductions one would expect from large scale manufacturing and marketing will not make them significantly more economical than they are right now.
--
Stefan...

I disagree on this..
You are incorrect on facts, imo.

All previously stated opinions and facts stand.

Please note BAE and siemens deliver very little batteries for traction use, in kWh, vs Tesla.
Please note they have zero track record of large-scale multi gw longevity, at reasonable prices.
Please note they do not have cheap, good installations or any data supporting this.

BAE and Siemens have a long, excellent track record of expensive tech delivery at great quality.
Expensive is a non-starter for electric mobility, be it cars or boats.

No-one does, apart from Tesla, and somewhat BYD with cheapish, technically weak batteries of lower energy density. vs Tesla. Lifepo4 by BYD.

Same applies to the previously mentioned old-tech batteries.

I am not a Tesla fan, as such.
More an analyst, principal, investor, with a long track record in incremental-growth industries.

On 04/08/2016 15:15, Stefán Brandur Jónsson stefan@martolvan.is [electricboats] wrote:

Hi

I have been planning an eBoat project for awhile, and found tha in multi KW energy need an storage there are definite leaders in battery technology for marine applications are http://corvusenergy.com/ proven by several MAh of installed battery capacity, and in motors energy control etc. BAE systems and Siemens are the most advanced.

Probably none of them are really cheep but deliver solid proven products, it might be worth checking them out.

2016-08-04 10:05 GMT+00:00 Hannu Venermo gcode.fi@gmail.com [electricboats] <electricboats@yahoogroups.com>:

I disagree on this..
You are incorrect on facts, imo.