> People seriously underestimate both the current economic efficacy of existing lithium ion batteries, as well as the continuous and seemingly inexorable improvement in costs.
Maybe because the cost of devices have skyrocketed and the battery dont last any longer... And in addition to that, you can no longer replace batteries.
How are people STILL repeating this? Does anyone actually remember what phones used to be like? Because I can stream videos for hours and listen to music all day for multiple days before I run out, and I still remember my iphone 3 dying in 6 hours playing music that was already on the device.
The iphone 11 has a 3110 mAh battery. The iphone 3 had 1220 mAh. I don't even remember the last time my phone died on me unexpectedly.
So far with every upgrade they have added features like more powerful processors and power hungry higher density screens. So most people haven't noticed the improvements in battery tech. Now I think phones have reached a point where I don't see many power hungry improvements going forward so we might start seeing longer lasting phones.
That is not exactly true. OLED can be very efficient. Not just in Dark Mode, but you need to be aware of those pitfalls and optimise for it. Since in overall package the Display is roughly the same power but you get much better quality.
Not to mention there are at least 3 - 5 years roadmap of technology in the pipeline that makes it even more energy efficient and thinner. ( Thinner equals potential for larger battery )
The higher density screen might need to require less power but the power to display on them used by the graphics etc is a lot higher. we were on 320x640 screen now we are at 3840 x 2160. Even if the individual pixel takes less power the number of pixel has gone up a huge amount.
I used to charge once a day (10 years ago), and I still do because my phone can't last 2 full days on a full charge... but it does last about 1.5 days ... it is not an iphone 11 but it is still an $800 phone
That's not true in the slightest. Energy per instruction varies a lot but has not decreased that much on recent nodes. The resistance growth just outpaces the shrinking capacitance of the gates.
On top of that processors are faster, applications and sites are hugely more intensive to render, and the hardware (mainly antennas) suck up much more energy.
The ARM11 in the iphone 3 used <1 watt. The A13 in the iphone 11 uses 6 watts.
You're right and wrong. People buy iphones despite the cost and lack of user serviceable battery.
They are a luxury item and a way to signal status. If people stopped buying iphones due to battery life then Apple may change. But Apple has a strong brand and the status of the item is important to people so they act against their own interests and pay lots of cash rather than use a $100 dollar android that's 90% as good.
Batteries aren't a feature to most people.
Also there's lots to be said about the scope of what most 'phones' do these days. The batteries are powering serious computers rather than just phones.
This comment has a pet-peeve of mine, which is using the word "efficient" where it's unclear what the cost and benefit are. Efficiency is just cost per benefit, so it's not a very meaningful word if you don't know what the cost and benefit are.
I don't think you're wrong, I just am not entirely clear on what claim you're making. I'll venture based on context that the cost you're talking about is either electrical charge or time, but it's very unclear what benefit you're talking about.
The issue with a million mile battery is one of testing. If your car has 500 miles of range, a million miles means 2000 charges and discharges. At a standard C/5 rate, that's 2.3 years to finish testing. Even at a fairly brisk 1 C that's 83 days. It makes iterating on a design -which can mean changing component amounts by fractions of a percent- incredibly time consuming.
Dahn's research is so well respected because he was incredibly good and thorough in measuring tiny amounts of heat and voltage changes in batteries so that you could trace their degradation over a much smaller number of cycles, then try them out at longer scales. Tesla has been funding much of his lab. There are very few people who can do this kind of research outside his lab, and IMO he's a wizard who will end up with a Nobel if he makes a few more big contributions.
The bottom line is that the only way to really tell if a battery will last a year or a decade is to watch it for a year or a decade. No amount of technology lets you forecast the future with perfect accuracy, and battery longevity testing takes time. That's the only reason we don't have a million mile battery.
>One could equally argue that the fact we don't have a million mile battery already suggests that there may be intractible problems to solve.
That would be a good argument if batteries had been stuck for decades at a much lower limit. But the fact is their lifetime has been steadily increasing, and will reach a million miles within a few years at most.
I'm confused by this. A million mile battery would make ICEs obsolete today. It would be more cost effective to spend $50k on a Tesla Model 3 than to buy 5 Hyundai i10 and driving those to dust.
A 1 million mile battery is kinda like fusion. Once it happens there is no going back so I don't think that failing to solve this problem is a blow to EVs.
Musk says modern Tesla's are designed to last a million miles because he wants them all to become taxi's. Full self driving taxi's that return more then they cost to the owner after Tesla takes it's take from the taxi earnings.
I don't know whether to believe this, but he has the motive, opportunity, and is definitely present at the crime scene.
I just ran numbers for Tesla Cybertruck. Depending on gas vs electricity prices, a "Tri FSD" CT, built to million-mile specifications, will pay for itself on gas savings by 0.5-1.5M miles.
I think "free truck" operated to design specifications constitutes cost effective.
You have to factor in the time value of money though. Car purchase price is an immediate cost while gas and electricity are costs over the life of the vehicle. Your average personal cars only gets driven about 15,000 miles a year and thus those gas and electric costs would be spread out over decades to reach a million miles. Probably still cost effective considering the average truck isn't that much cheaper though.
No one is actively trying to build nuclear cars however. Additionally, no one has a prototype nuclear car, because that is a stupid and very dangerous idea.
There is a prototype cybertruck, and Tesla is about to announce the ___location for the factory to build them. It will be either Tulsa, OK or just outside of Austin, TX.
Maybe because the cost of devices have skyrocketed and the battery dont last any longer... And in addition to that, you can no longer replace batteries.