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

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.

Comments

Peak battery

[ickleberry]

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

[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...

Re:I hope so

[DogDude]

I'm a libertarian, who will most likely vote for Trump

Fuck you, asshole.

Re: Li-On batteries

[Chuq]

I'm just glad a petrol powered car has never caught fire before.

Re:Scary Lithium-Ion batteries!

[rahvin112]

The energy storage they talk about with these batteries is not what you think. The batteries are expected to have 80% of their capacity remaining, and they are typically placed in shipping containers and hooked up to large industrial or commercial buildings. There is NO company planning to recycle batteries into consumer homes. Your information is very faulty.

Re:what point? Libertarians vote fasist

[PopeRatzo]

However, with the constant childish name-calling, spite-filled, intolerant, unadulterated hate that comes from the extreme left-wing in this country, I would never ever identify myself as a "progressive". What the left has become is to spit in the face of what true liberalism is about and many rational nominally left leaning people don't want anything to do with it.

There's a difference between those excellent points and blaming "Obama and the SJWs" for the milk going bad.

Donald Trump is not the outcome of leftist policies. He's the result of a major political party riding the tiger of talk radio shock jocks who are all trying to be more horrible than the next one and calling it "talking tough". It's the result of the Southern Strategy, it's the result of creating a victim mentality among white working class people, convincing them that they're being oppressed. It's the result of a cheapening of discourse and the stoking of irrational fears - of xenophobia and plain, old bigotry. It's the result of the "bully effect", where weak-minded people feel empathy toward the strong papa-figure, as long as he sounds sufficiently like a hard-ass. It's the result of a fascism that's been dormant in the US for over a century and a half and really started to flower in 1980. The 20th century was stained with rivers of blood from what happens when that sort of ugliness takes hold in a portion of a society.

Don't blame some stupid college kids or feminists for the rise of the first candidate in decades that's been embraced by actual white supremacists and Nazis.

http://www.theguardian.com/us-...