this post was submitted on 01 Apr 2026

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144

Battery costs have declined by 99% in the last three decades, making electrified transport a reality (ourworldindata.org)

submitted 4 hours ago by Beep@lemmus.org to c/technology@lemmy.world

46 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Batteries have become much cheaper, making energy storage far more affordable.

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[–] Buffalox@lemmy.world 14 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

It's amazing how much batteries have decreased in price, we now not only have mid range cars that can be electric, the lower range sub compacts have been entering the EV market too.
Among all the shit happening today, this is actually a bright spot, making an EV more affordable to normal households.
Maybe except USA that is clearly behind now, despite Tesla was a major influence in the early days of EV.

[–] Frozentea725@feddit.uk 4 points 3 hours ago

All the shit happening may lead to an earlier transition into renewables, ironically trump to help reduce the impacts of climate change. We should name the new wind turbines in his honour. But yeah the US will be fucked, power in the new currency in electrostates and renewable is significantly cheaper

[–] SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca 31 points 4 hours ago (6 children)

And yet, EV prices stubbornly high in North America.

[–] Not_mikey@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 2 minutes ago

There are plenty of EVs below the median price Americans are paying for new cars ~$50k. People aren't buying EVs because they don't like them / the dealerships aren't pushing them, not the price as they're willing to shell out even more for a top of the line pickup.

[–] Buffalox@lemmy.world 13 points 4 hours ago (2 children)

North America has little competition because of the tariffs on everything not made in USA.
AFAIK Canada is getting out of that shadow. I read an article about a month ago, how Canadian imports were routed through USA, and that it stifled EV adoption in Canada.

[–] SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca 2 points 20 minutes ago

EV adoption was stifled by MAGA Premieres killing incentives and ripping out public chargers, while giving money to Detroit to keep building shitty trucks and muscle cars.

Meanwhile, to sell EVs in Europe, XPing is getting them made in Austria using Magna, a Canadian company. Why didn't Carney/Ford insist on this in Ontario?

BYD tried to build buses in Ontario but they were so shit they had to close the plant and pay a bunch of lawsuits. And BYD is hurting, they just laid off 100,000 worldwide.

[–] pennomi@lemmy.world -5 points 3 hours ago (4 children)

This is actually one of the very few places that US tariffs make sense. (Not from a consumer perspective of course, but from a nationalist industry protection point of view.) The rest of the tariffs the US places are silly because there isn’t much other manufacturing in the US to protect.

[–] SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca 3 points 28 minutes ago

Nope. Tariffs reduce competition and you end up with a shitty local option that just costs more and sales die anyway.

[–] ellen.kimble@piefed.social 4 points 3 hours ago

Oil dependency is a national security issue for a lot of countries, tariffs on EVs have really backfired here while also increasing climate change

[–] bluGill@fedia.io 1 points 2 hours ago

The US manufactures more than ever. There are a lot less people in manufacturing than 70 years ago, but we make just as much. I know of one factory that went from 2000 employees in 1950 to 200 today - they make more product than in 1950 despite that. Automation has made a big change in the US.

[–] Buffalox@lemmy.world -1 points 3 hours ago (2 children)

This is actually one of the very few places that US tariffs make sense.

Not really if you want fair competition.

[–] Not_mikey@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 9 minutes ago

It's not fair competition if labor standards are far lower in the country being imported from.

[–] pennomi@lemmy.world -3 points 3 hours ago (3 children)

Why would the US want fair competition?

Like I said, the consumers do not benefit from the tariffs, the nation does.

[–] tburkhol@lemmy.world 2 points 2 hours ago

Because US businesses will only compete and innovate if you force them. Leave them safe behind ramparts of protective trade policies, and they'll keep coasting on 1990s technology, as the country as a whole slowly becomes a backwater.

[–] Buffalox@lemmy.world 2 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

No the nation doesn't, it just degrades into further noncompetitiveness, and increased consumer prices.

[–] prodigalsorcerer@lemmy.ca 3 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

Short term tariffs can allow domestic manufacturing to reach the design and scale to be competitive without tariffs. This was, in theory, the idea behind the 100% tariffs on Chinese EVs. Of course, none of the American auto manufacturers are doing anything with that leeway other than continuing to be terrible.

[–] Buffalox@lemmy.world 1 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago)

You are 100% correct that this is the general idea, the problem is that USA actually had a head start with Tesla, (as painful as it is to me to admit.)
Now the lack of competition will only result in the loss of the lead USA had until just a few years ago.
Of course Nazi Musk and Nazi Trump undermine American exports, and no amount of US tariffs can compensate for that.

[–] SchmidtGenetics@lemmy.world 0 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago)

Does the nation benefit when there’s no actual benefits like health care for the citizens?

[–] avidamoeba@lemmy.ca 2 points 3 hours ago

If only prices were related to costs ... 😄

[–] BurgerBaron@piefed.social 1 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago) (1 children)

I of course looked into used EV but...there's nothing to buy used. You can only get shit with less than 80kW batteries for under $15k in Canada. Think 2006 - 2015 models with high mileage so even less range. I need something that can go 60 kilometers when it's -40'C outside. Looks like I need to eat the gas prices for another 5 years or so waiting for bigger used battery capacity to trickle down.

[–] dorkage@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

What size of car are you looking at?

Chevy Bolt has a 60kWh and will go over 200km in the winter and closer to 400km in the summer.

Lots of them around 15k CAD. Price has been creepying up in the last few weeks. I need to grab one myself.

[–] BurgerBaron@piefed.social 1 points 24 minutes ago* (last edited 12 minutes ago)

I can't be picky about make/model at all. Here's the options as of posting for my entire province:

https://www.kijiji.ca/b-cars-trucks/alberta/electric/c174l9003a166?for-sale-by=ownr&price=0__15000&view=list

These seem too small of a battery and worn so range anxiety is what I'm worried about. Perhaps foolishly you tell me lol.

I'm much less willing to deal with scum car lot dealers if I can help it, but these guys who are a 4 hour drive one way away from me are another option:

https://www.goelectricyyc.com/used/priceF/10000/priceT/20000

They do have Bolts right now but not affordable/too new for me. I'll keep an eye out.

Keep in mind battery degradation and -30% range in winter here.

Thx for helping tho

[–] doingthestuff@lemy.lol 1 points 3 hours ago

Also, have you bought 9volt batteries recently? Batteries are NOT cheaper in the real world in any use case in my experience.

[–] weimaraner_of_doom@piefed.social 2 points 4 hours ago

And the options are still not great.

[–] Gork@sopuli.xyz 6 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

But the savings haven't flowed down to us. Gotta make line go up, it seems.

[–] tal@lemmy.today 3 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago)

Lithium ion batteries are far cheaper now at a consumer level than they were thirty years back.

EDIT: I'm actually surprised that a higher proportion of laptops today don't ship with 100 Wh batteries. Go back some years, and shrinking the battery had a much larger difference in cost than it does today. The larger battery gives you longer battery longevity (makes it more reasonable to charge to 80%, say), can be used to make a laptop run more quickly, can power more devices. The only drawback is weight, and it isn't that heavy.

[–] devolution@lemmy.world 5 points 3 hours ago

Blame Shell.

[+] vk6flab@lemmy.radio -7 points 4 hours ago (2 children)

The price of the batteries was never really the issue, it was their weight versus their capacity with some consideration towards size and robustness.

As far as I can tell, today the biggest hurdle is charging.

[–] Buffalox@lemmy.world 5 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago) (2 children)

You obviously weren't buying batteries in the 70's or the 80's or the 90's.
So my guess is that you are younger than 40.

[–] ellen.kimble@piefed.social 2 points 3 hours ago

Yeah the price of batteries has collapsed within the last six months. The US lithium technology is still several generations behind what is available in China

[–] vk6flab@lemmy.radio 3 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago) (1 children)

As it happens, actually I was buying batteries in the 1970's. They were massive and lasted plenty long enough to play audio cassettes for several days.

Edit: I'd also point out that three decades is 1996, not 1976, that's five decades.

[–] Buffalox@lemmy.world 2 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago) (2 children)

Nonono that is outright false, even 6 of the big D batteries, would last only a few hours in even a small ghetto blaster of the late 70's. Radio yes, tape no. The tapes took massive amounts of power even in a small player for the time.
But apart from that all other uses of batteries were a pain, like in flashlights that weren't even very good by today's standards, or bicycle lights where batteries were a joke so we had to use dynamos.

Your memory is simply wrong. IDK if they have declined 99%, but for sure batteries today are both 10 times better and only a tenth the price compared to the 70's.
Although they are just fake numbers that seem right, it actually fits with the 99%
Althoug 3 decades only brings us back to the mid 90's, I think that at least in some cases it is true.

Batteries are way cheaper and better now, whether it's 80% or 99% IDK, but for sure iẗ́s more than 80%.

[–] vk6flab@lemmy.radio 2 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

Having had a mono radio cassette player in my bedroom in 1976, running off D-cells, that was not my experience.

The biggest drain was the volume, not the cassette player. You noticed it getting slower and slower, but the drain came from playing it loud.

My Sony Walkman a few years later ran forever on its batteries.

[–] Buffalox@lemmy.world 0 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago) (1 children)

Admittedly I never had a walkman. Maybe you were more privileged than I was, because I remember batteries as very expensive.
But a walkman was way way later than the 70's.,

[–] MnemonicBump@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

The Walkman came out in 79 and was cheap enough for a present to a teen or young adult by 82, at the latest. Hell, if you wanted to raid your parents' stuff, they may well have had a (mono) folio style cassette recorder or even a Sony TC-50 cassette recorder/player (which looks exactly* like a Walkman), made as early as 1968! They brought them to the Moon during the Apollo program. That's right, cassettes technically came BEFORE 8-Tracks.

But they were too expensive until the late 70s, and by then most people already had an 8-track collection, so it took a few more years to mass adopt.

Source: I have mono demo tapes that my dad recorded from his poor Oklahoma farm town in 1970

[–] Buffalox@lemmy.world -1 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

Oh the issue about the Walkman had nothing to do with price, I just didn't like the format.

[–] MnemonicBump@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago) (1 children)

My point wasn't really about the price, but availability. You said you remembered Walkman as "way way later than the 70s" and I was just pointing out that, technically, they were kind of around the WHOLE 70s, just not priced or marketed in a way that they would have been very common, and hence why you remember them "way way later" (probably sometime around 82-84, right?)

[–] Buffalox@lemmy.world -1 points 2 hours ago

OK for me the 80's are way later, because the two were a threshold between two eras.
So to me 78 is way way later than 82. In the sense that that was the time things began to turn to shit politically.
We actually had a very popular song here in Denmark, about how buying a walk man made things sound like new your man.
Back then USA was kind of both cool but also something that we shouldn't strive to copy.
The problem is that I had zero interest in anything like a walk man.
My interest was in big high power HiFi.

[–] bluGill@fedia.io 1 points 3 hours ago

Batteries are better, but not by that much, assuming you stick with the same technology - don't compare alkaline to lithium or something. Efficiency of electronics is much better. The improvement in flashlights is about LEDs

[–] brennesel@discuss.tchncs.de 0 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

The energy density steadily increased over time while prices decreased: This article includes some interesting background info and the following chart.

[–] Womble@piefed.world 2 points 26 minutes ago

It should be pointed out that those two changes are very much not equal. Energy density has only increased by a factor of ~5, whereas cost has fallen by a factor of ~90 (by eye).

[+] mrnobody@reddthat.com -11 points 4 hours ago (2 children)

The grid... Cannot sustain in the US.

[–] Naia@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago) (1 children)

Even if that is the case, I would argue the grid could sustain people charging EVs at various times during the day or setting up off-peak charging schedule than it can sustain all the AI slop being generated 24-7.

Yet the people I hear complaining about the theoretical load EVs could technically put onto the grid have nothing to say about the AI data centers that are actively raising energy costs and demanding more power than the local infrastructure can actually provide.

And really, it could sustain if we would have leadership that would support efforts to do so instead of trying to hinder renewables deployment in favor of more fossil fuels that are also going up in price because of their bullshit.

[–] mrnobody@reddthat.com -1 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

Data centers are absolutely consuming a bunch of power and we're paying for it, I agree!! California suffered brown outs from everyone charging during there day at work or at night. Idk of that's been corrected, but that's also why Trump relaxed coal and oil regulations so we could get enough power-though I hear some data centers are using jet engine turbines to supplement them smh.

So while batteries can be affordable, lithium is too dangerous, and the technology hasn't quite got to the point for widespread adoption, my opinion. Solid state and sodium ion are better technologies just around the corner that offer loner range, faster charging, and safer in accidents.

[–] Naia@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 14 minutes ago* (last edited 11 minutes ago)

Solid state and sodium ion are better technologies just around the corner

They've been "around the corner" for nearly a decade. While the tech is promising, it has yet to really be scaled up for mass market. Also, while I agree lithium has it's risks, but so do ICE cars and a lot of things we deal with on a day to day. Think of how many lithium batteries exist in the world and how few catastrophic failures there are.

You hear about EVs batteries catching fire because it's a new technology and corporate media is in the pocket of the fossil fuel industry. ICE cars catch fire all the time, so much so that it's rarely if ever reported on, and only local news if that. Meanwhile every EV fire is a national story because it's novel and they want to spread misinformation about the tech.

I hear some data centers are using jet engine turbines

Specifically, Twitter AI/Grok is poisoning Memphis, TN because the local infrastructure cannot supply all the power the data center there "needs" (read: wants). They are illegally running diesel generators that are only meant to be used in emergencies because they are so bad with their emissions.

The local neighborhoods have had countless health issues and people have literally died from them. Musk is killing people so his slop machine can generate child abuse material. Also, the neighborhoods in question are prominently black, which adds a whole extra dimension of racism on top of the "fuck the poor" mentality he has.

why Trump relaxed coal and oil regulations

That's not why he did that. He did that because he is bought by the same fossil fuel executives. He's done more damage to our energy infrastructure because he's killed a ton of projects to get renewables deployed.

He also has a personal grievance against wind power, or as he likes to call them "windmills", because he didn't like the few off shore ones that he could see from his golf course somewhere in the UK.

The US was poised to be the leader in renewable energy and instead the corrupt politicians, on both "sides" mind you, decided to stifle the innovation on both renewables and EVs, letting China become the current leader.

He and the rest of the fascist have hindered renewable adoption in the US because of their corruption. Rather than be energy independent we are forced to rely on fossil fuels and on top of that we actually export most of the oil we produce because "free market", as companies get more money selling it abroad than domestically.

So we import oil they make more expensive by tariffs and illegal wars while they prevent us from reducing our reliance on said oil and allow private companies to profit off of oil we produce by exporting it, so we can't even be energy independent with our own oil.

Also, they fearmonger about China "beating us in AI", when outside of Deepseek there hasn't been any big revelations from China and Deepseek was only a big thing because US companies were not innovating but brute forcing the tech. I'm sure China is still doing research on the tech, but they likely understand the limitations of it and don't have the private investors inflating a bubble hoping/wishing it can replace workers.

So to recap, we are wasting tons of resources on "AI" because companies want to try and replace workers and they use fearmongering about China to excuse the waste while they ignore the fact that China is kicking our ass when it comes to EVs and renewable energy.

[–] CapuccinoCoretto@lemmy.world 9 points 4 hours ago

The grid could under real leadership. Your vampire squid parasitic infection is the problem here.