Detroit Free Press: Lithium Ion batteries will not get cheap--wait for Li/air or Li/S?

Some key things from the article

That actually is huge growth. If US market just stagnates here in the next 7 years JD powers is expecting a 125% increase in hybrids and plug-in sales. For lithium batteries the growth will be much faster than that, as we will pass the inversion point where it will cost toyota less for lithium batteries in its hybrids than nimh. Lithium automotive battery costs are dropping about 7%/year which will amount to costs only being about 63% in 2019 versus 2012. That is huge on a car like the tesla S.

The plant never went into production. Its indicative of nothing but LG chem''s desire to keep the korean plant rolling. There is plenty of demand in the US for that plant, but not demand in the rest of the world for the LG Chem capacity in Korea.

 

I think hybrids will grow their market share and EVs will grow even faster. I am making a wild guess that by 2020 hybrids will have a 7% market share themselves, while plug ins will have a 7% share as well.

While hybrids do great on efficiency (with Prius at the lead), EVs can appeal to a much larger market. Including people that crave performance.

 

The question brought up in the article, seemed to be that there was not enough lithium batteries produced to stimulate R&D. 7% is plenty. 20K tesla S's a year alone is probably is probably 1200 megawatt hours of batteries alone. If the gen V prius converts over think of the numbers.

We should be realistic in the assumptions of growth though. The DOE put out the crazy optimistic 1 Million plug-ins in 2015, instead of a more realistic and doable 1 Million in 2017, then funded battery plants at the fake numbers.

The top two plug ins in the US last month were the 38 mile aer volt and 208+ mile aer 60kwh+ tesla S. I hate all the zero talk as its counter productive. From a mix point of views we should think of the plug-ins we are selling. Even the prius phv, the lowest utilization plug-in uses its battery to greatly decrease gallons per year. The next geneation with a bigger pack will use even less.

The car market does not change over night. 35 K miles is a lot on two cars, and I would think that an efficient phev instead of bev would be the ticket. Current choices probably are not good for you or your wife. We need another generation of these plug-ins. The major trick will be the 2025 cafe standards. If these hold, and gas prices go up as expected, that 3rd generation of plug-ins should take off. If gasoline stays around $4/gallon adjusted for inflation, then maybe it doesn't matter that much. A key driver will be lowered costs of plug-ins. If we really get down to $300/kwh, then selling a 7 kwh (20 mile aer) plug in should only cost a manufacturer about $2000 more than a hybrid. If making it a hybrid costs $2K, but a plug-in hybrid costs $4K, even after profit margin many are going to aim for that plug-in.

I don't see the motivation for a rapid increase in non plug-in hybrids. From 2007 to 2012 they seemed to stagnate most years. Now we have an influx of new models, and their market share increase has been mainly felt. The only thing to greatly boost them would be high gas prices. Plug-ins on the other hand are in their infancy. There can continue to be rapid growth from these levels. It would be great if combined they hit 14%, but that seems very optimistic.

 

Something drastic has to happen for plugin sales to go up to 7% and for hybrid sales not to go above 7%.

Right now we are seing 30% YoY increase and we should see more once more manufacturers start making them.

By 2019 I expect at least 2 new generations of Toyota hybrids well. 2014 and 2019 Prius.

Which means that Toyota alone would get at least 5% marketshare for their own hybrids, and I would expect that by then, Toyota's slice of the ev/hybrid pie goes down to 40%, maybe even 30% if everyone is on board.

So for it to be 7.7% in 2019, it means hybrids and ev's have failed... what do they think will pickup the slack? What do they think of oil prices?