Lithium ion battery capacity is set to grow four fold by the end of the decade according to Benchmark Mineral’s Chief Operating Officer Andrew Miller at the Battery Gigafactories Asia Pacific 2023 conference in Tokyo. Global lithium battery capacity is set to grow to 4 terawatt hours (TWh) in 2030 after surpassing the 1 TWh mark this year. The world is making about 13 million fully battery electric vehicles in 2023 and 2 million hybrid electric vehicles in 2023. A 400% increase in lithium battery supply and a 25% increase in battery and other efficiencies would result in about 60-76 million fully battery electric vehicles in 2030. There could also be sodium ion, solid state and other non-lithium ion batteries.
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The government does not have to mandate the end of ICE vehicles. Market forces will do that all by itself.
Ugh, you’re one of those. Market forces already did. Any outrage you have on the issue is outdated. Even before the EU set its mandate, many European car manufacturers, and by extension, every manufacturer on planet because of parts and platform sharing, already made the decision to go electric. Any legislation that came after that was just fluff and rubber stamping.
I was boggled there that batteries would make it from ~250 wh/kg to ~1000 wh/hg in a decade. But no, not that capacity.
When will a Toyota Corolla / Honda Civic like EV be available with 500 miles of real world range for $25k and when will there be any and many fast chargers in the rural areas I live in and frequent? That is when I will voluntarily purchase an EV. I suspect I will be forced to buy by the government making ICE illegal before those conditions happen. I am PRO EV by the way but it doesn’t make sense for all use cases.
Don’t think you need 500 mile range, though would like to see cheaper cars become available. I agree though that EV or ICE mandates are unnecessary and harmful and skew the market in a way that harms consumers. I live in a large metro area and I have a Tesla and a gas truck. The Tesla can go just about anywhere with their great supercharger network, but there are still places in West Texas or Oklahoma that I want my gas truck.
A 500 mile range with the heater or air conditioner on quickly becomes a 250 mile range. I think the 500 mile range target is a good starting point. That, combined with additional safety; spontaneously combusting vehicles don’t have a bright future.
Get past these things, then you worry about charging infrastructure and generating capacity. I do think the electric future is doable, but it’s going to take a decade or two to make it a viable reality. It just won’t happen overnight.
I want a small plug-in-hybrid for a low price. That would get me around Calgary on the battery, but if I want to go somewhere several hundred km away I don’t have to worry about range and if I need to drive in *cold* weather I don’t have to worry about cold affecting the battery performance or not getting heat to me.