The price of electric car batteries has dropped 89% in 10 years

Economy of scale in action. New battery tech is also coming around. Check out QuantumScape Corp for solid state Lithium batteries.

The price of electric car batteries has dropped 89% in 10 years

A decade ago, a lithium-ion battery pack used in an electric car cost around $1,110 per kilowatt-hour. By this year, according to a new survey, the cost had fallen 89%, to $137 per kilowatt-hour. And by 2023, the cost is likely to fall far enough that car companies can make and sell mass-market electric vehicles (EVs) at the same cost as cars running on fossil fuels.

“If you look at the remarkable cost reduction over the last decade, and what’s expected over the next few years, and pair that with escalating policy measures in Europe and expected in the U.S. and China, then you have this very powerful combination of factors to underpin EV uptake, starting now,” says Logan Goldie-Scot, head of clean power at Bloomberg New Energy Finance, who did the survey. “They will continue and accelerate over the next few years.”

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After purchase, EVs are already cheaper to operate than traditional cars, both because they require less maintenance and because electricity is cheaper than fuel. Today, some luxury EVs are already at price parity with their luxury gas counterparts, according to Goldie-Scot, but cheaper batteries will make that true more broadly without any subsidies. New innovations in battery technology will make costs drop even further.


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From the perspective of climate change, it’s necessary to reach the tipping point on the price of electric cars quickly, because cars stay on the road for years. In the U.S., transportation is now the largest source of emissions. “Even if 100% of vehicles sold were EVs, it would take over a decade to replace all the cars on the road, or even 50% of the cars on the road,” Kamath says. “So this is a long haul and a gradual evolution at the same time.”


https://www.fastcompany.com/90586803/the-price-of-electric-car-batteries-has-dropped-89-in-10-years?partner=rss&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=rss+fastcompany&utm_content=rss

Solar power booms in Texas

Story behind a paywall at WSJ. This is all I was able to cut and paste.

Solar Power Booms in Texas

The state, a leader in wind energy, will be home to the nation’s largest solar farm, part of an expected surge in development

Wind power made Texas the leading renewable-energy producer in the U.S. Now solar is fast catching up.

Invenergy LLC broke ground this year on a $1.6 billion solar farm northeast of Dallas that is expected to be the largest in the country upon completion in 2023. AT&T Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google are among the large corporations that have contracted to purchase power from the project, which will span more than 13,000 football fields and supply enough electricity to power 300,000 homes.

It is part of a growing number of solar projects in sunny, land-rich Texas, where experts long predicted solar farms would bloom. Solar-farm development in Texas is expected to accelerate in the coming years as generation costs fall and power demand grows. That growth puts it on track to claim a much larger share of a power market dominated by wind farms and natural-gas power plants.

Invenergy has developed wind farms in west and central Texas, but the solar project is its first one in the state. Ted Romaine, the company’s senior vice president of origination, said that unlike wind, which often peaks at night, Texas solar has the potential to boost electricity supplies when daytime demand is highest.

“Solar is the natural next step in a state like Texas,” Mr. Romaine said.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/solar-power-booms-in-texas-11606579200

Electrify all US school buses by 2030