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Why Is a Laptop's Battery Dearer Than a Lawnmower's?
Barence writes "PC Pro's contributing editor Paul Ockendon has bought a new lawnmower powered by lithium-ion batteries — part of a recent flood of such lithium-ion-powered garden and workshop tools which are taking over from NiCd and NiMH thanks to lighter weight, longer life and lack of the pernicious 'memory effect.' This is pretty much the same battery technology used in laptops, mobile phones and MP3 players, so volume manufacture is already established. Yet laptop manufacturers charge more per Watt-hour than lawnmower makers. This blog investigates whether such a seemingly ludicrous situation can be justified."
Or market economics...turns out a lawnmower purchaser is not willing to pay the same for a battery that a laptop purchaser is or perhaps the lawnmower has cheaper non-lithium competitors it must compete with which drives down it's market price. I guess technically that's greed, charging what you can but without it where would we be?
Basically the only thing on newer laptops is that there is actual circuitry inside of the battery pack now, but it is all very basic and couldn't cost more than a dollar or two at best. I used to work at Radioshack in college (I know, I know, but I was actually intelligent and truly helpful... not a drone) and I once replaced the cells in my Thinkpad 600 right there on the counter with the Li cells we sold... Everyone was amazed that, that was all that was inside of there. People always seem to think because it has to do with a computer it must be magical and exotic. Basically as long as you know how to properly solder them without killing yourself (the ones with tabs help) it's a 5-10 minute job and cost about $10-15.
http://teasphere.wordpress.com - A little spot of tea
Unlikely, people don't do things for the heck of it.
Says the user posting for the heck of it, on the site created for the heck of it back in the day...
It is called market segmentation, and in general it is good. Different segments for the same products/technologies have different values for good intrinsic to them.
As an example, Taylor Hobson makes a fine stylus profiler. It is the standard in industry and precision manufacturing for determining shape and surface quality for parts. They charge (hypothetically) $60k for this instrument when they sell it to a manufacturer of metal precision components.
However, the exact same instrument, with a couple of new software features is sold into the Optics production market. The price is ~ 2.5X the price of the same tool sold to the industrial market. They get this premium, because the optics production segment has a different value proposition for the measurements it makes.
Same thing in laptop batteries. Same technology, but the application is different. Squeezing a few extra watt-hours into a smaller space is worth the premium. Also, you use you laptop much more than you use yard implements, so the perceived value of good life and longer cycles between recharging is a higher value.
It is irrelevant that they use the same technology.
Suppose you were an idiot and suppose you were a member of Congress
Part of the issue is a lack of government enforced standards since the phillips screwdriver.
Capitalism works well when vendors can't form monopolies easily. Due to legal changes, it's become increasingly easy to form monopolies.
Imagine if the form factor and plug type for lithium batteries was legally mandated to be 3"x1"x8" with a standard six wire plug.
In this case, standard lithium batteries would compete based on cost and charge duration. Given standard batteries, it would be very likely that recycling and reuse programs could develop.
Another perfect example of this is many car subsystems. You don't need 1200 Alternators and Voltage regulators. You probably need at most a dozen alternators for normal cars and trucks. If these were standardized, the cost would be lower. But we've let car makers take the same basic object and attach different custom fittings to it so it can't be reused and you must pay a premium for it.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
The designer of the laptop system selects batteries on things like power capacity and form factor/size. But since laptop batteries are, in fact, batteries of cells, the form factor can be customized. You can arrange cells within the battery casing almost at will, as long as you're willing to design the wiring appropriately, so the form factor of the battery becomes something which can be customized. (Also can be standardized, but we've already discussed that.)
So, all things being equal, you design the battery to best match the available space among the layout of the other components in the laptop casing. And, while you're at it, coincidentally, the battery will be incompatible with laptops of other manufacturers, darn the luck.
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