It is worth noting that this is an ad. It is a law firm that is advertising their expertise in this field. And the product that they want people to buy is revealed in this passage:
Freedom-to-operate (FTO) analysis therefore remains critical for market entrants. Whilst the primary patents have expired, a dense web of secondary patents, covering additives, coatings, and production methods, still poses infringement risks.
Of course Shoosmiths would be happy to do a FTO analysis for your potential product...for a fee.
That doesn't mean that it doesn't contain quality information. Law firms tend to make this kind of ad informative. But it does mean that there is an agenda.
> That doesn't mean that it doesn't contain quality information. Law firms tend to make this kind of ad informative. But it does mean that there is an agenda.
This is the best thing to do for SEO, write good and authoritative content. Which is ironic because the field of SEO started off as gaming the systems with things like hidden keywords.
It may be an ad but it has every reason to be perfectly accurate. The law firm is not selling LFP batteries.
Edit: for example, if somebody was selling their AWS course by providing detailed information on some aspect of AWS, that wouldn't be a reason to doubt the information itself. It serves as a sample.
If you make technology that spies really want the government will claim eminent domain and take your patent from you, with "fair" compensation, of course.
It's funny that never happens for things that actually matter.
Lithium iron phosphate batteries are very practical. Chinese BYD has developed blade batteries using this type of battery and has become the global sales leader in new energy vehicles. However, this battery faces range limitations and the issue of how to improve charging speed. Solid-state batteries should be the next big thing, but mass production may not be feasible yet. At least, it might take 3 more years for commercialization, and that's still an optimistic prediction.
> Lithium iron phosphate batteries are very practical
Unless you want to charge in negative temperatures
> However, this battery faces range limitations
Yes they are less dense but plentiful for typical passenger car (and not so much for full sized trucks or even "mid-sized" US SUVs).
> the issue of how to improve charging speed
I think CATL demonstrated 1MW charging on these already. Definitely shipping 500kW charging (tho best measure is still average km/hr).
> Solid-state batteries should be the next big thing
Sodium will (great cold weather performance and even better charge rates), but it's less (vol) dense and prices won't reach LFPs for another 10-15 years (unless you believe hype, not actual analysts).
The small handful of sodium batteries that are currently available retail all seem to have rather bad roundtrip efficiency compared to LFP and voltage drop starting at a high state of charge.
Also LFP prices dropped enough that shipping cost from China became a significant part of the price. This will be even more of a factor should the less energy dense sodium batteries ever reach the promised $30/kWh.
I think CATL is promoting a hybrid pack of LFP and Sodium that would give you the cheapness and density of LFP, but with maybe 30% Sodium that you could use for a quick partial charge, and could also be used when the car is cold-soaked. Once you drive for a while, the whole pack gets warmed up and you can use the LFP.
If it's suitable for sedans it's actually more suitable for SUVs. SUVs require less power per cubic feet of space. So there is more space available for them, even if they take more energy overall
I am not sure honestly about the negative temperature. Sure it can be a problem in extreme colds but most of the world does not live in those climates.
I think it is fairly likely that sodium catches LFP in the ~5 year timeframe since sodium has a lot more promise for grid scale storage since it has no expensive materials.
Lithium’s curve is nearly flat, which allows for a pretty easy consistent power production (albeit nearly impossible to tell state of charge!) since you only need to target a pretty narrow voltage band.
Overall, that means sodium-ion has to be even cheaper to be competitive, and it makes even less sense in areas where power density matters like electric cars, as you’ll end up with far less power and/or needing much heavier motors and more expensive electronics to compensate when on the lower end of charge.
I don’t want to think of what it would cost to do a 100kw buck-boost power supply that can handle +- 25% (or more!) voltage differences. In reality, I don’t think anyone would try.
I wouldn't equate solid state batteries with fusion power. Solid state batteries do exist and work well, they are just very expensive. Meanwhile fusion power is still entirely within the experimental stage and there are no fusion plant prototypes that can produce power at any price.
It’s always 20 years away until it isn’t. Self driving cars are…I guess they are here already. AGI? Well, we have to move the goal post on that constantly.
Solid state batteries seem to work, but the price of prototypes is very high. Samsung says they will soon be shipping earbuds and watches with solid state batteries, but the cost is too high even for phones. Xaomi showed an $800 phone battery.
Mercedes has one prototype car with solid state batteries. Honda has one motorcycle. EHang has one flying car. Nobody seems to be past one-off demos.
I still find it borderline criminal that a few nations continue to be ruled by the hegemony of the automobile market. EVs have a place in the world. But there should be ten times fewer of them, because we should have cheap and plentiful public transit for most of our transportation needs. How long will we simply sit and wait for that future, complacent and docile? When will we do what's necessary to progress our society? (if we ever do)
> How long will we simply sit and wait for that future, complacent and docile?
The people who don't want to sit and wait have bought personal vehicles. Mass transit can be great, but when it isn't, there's no sense of agency. At least with a personal vehicle, if it's not working, I can try to fix it or get it to someone who is more likely to be able to fix it.
When transit isn't running, I just have to wait. If it can't get me to where I want to go in a reasonable time, sucks to be me. If my stop is removed from service, I guess I better move.
In the last year, the number of times my car owning friends have not been able to make it to an event because their car is broken is surprisingly high. While I have never not been able to get somewhere because public transport is not working. If the train is down I can take the tram, if somehow both of them are down there will be replacement busses scheduled.
And if somehow everything stops working I can book an uber which is still massively cheaper than owning a car.
Public transport is only efficient at scale, requires up front investment, and carries lots of assumptions about population density and other aspects remaining static. Then it doesn't work for whole categories of people (families with small kids, etc) especially because it fundamentally just can't do the "last mile", pretty much ever.
Don't get me wrong, I think it's great for mass transit, but I can't wait to see the future with autonomous vehicles arrive, especially if they can cooperate in centralised networks to optimise traffic flows. I'd love to step off the train into a capsule that then whisks me home.
> Then it doesn't work for whole categories of people (families with small kids, etc) especially because it fundamentally just can't do the "last mile", pretty much ever.
That's bullshit. My whole childhood I went everywhere by train and bus. You can walk the last mile if the bus stop isn't close enough to where you need to go.
I know some (embarrassingly rich) countries are incapable of designing a halfway decent public transit system, but the problem isn't with public transit itself.
I take my small kids on public transit often. Why can't kids ride a bus or a train? Don't we even have special forms of mass transit for little kids (school busses?)
How are cars better with little kids? If I'm in the car with my kids and one kid suddenly really wants a snack, there's nothing I can do. They're strapped in the back, I'm in the front driving. On the train, I just grab a snack from my bag and give them a bite. Or if they're bored I can play with them, etc.
> it fundamentally just can't do the "last mile", pretty much ever.
I live in a suburb in North Texas. I walk out my door with the stroller and my kids. There's a bus stop super close by that can easily load a stroller (all busses are wheelchair accessible). I take that to the train station or the bus goes to the library or several other parks and rec centers. The train stops a very short walk to several museums, the convention center, the airport, the zoo has its own train station, the hockey/basketball arena has its own stop, etc. And this is all in an area where the mass transit isn't even that great.
The transit doesn't go everywhere we want to go. I agree that's the biggest pain point. But I truly don't understand the logic that it's bad for kids. My kids ride often, and they love it. What kid hates trains?
If it's just the free market then why do we need to regulate single family zoning across the United States? And why can't the suburbs pay for their own infrastructure?
A lot of people prefer living in financially affordable environments, and in a functioning market, dense towns/cities will always be more affordable unless you literally work on a farm.
Everyone prefers to live in a giant sprawling mansion (with personal private forest) in the middle of the CBD. But preference is useless data unless it includes their pricetag preference too.
Speaking as a big fan and avid user of public transit, I say: not gonna happen in many places.
Public transit works in densely populated areas, like in NYC where I live. Digging and operating a tunnel costs a lot, and only pays for itself if you can run many trains with many passengers, who live close enough to their nearest station. Buses are less expensive (though still are expensive), and require a driver per 50-100 passengers, not per 2000.
As long as many people prefer to live in suburbia (which may technically be considered a part of a city, like in Houston), they are going to use cars (or technically trucks), because it's the most economical way to get around. As long as the destination of their travel is not an utterly dense area that does not require a car (like commuting from NJ to lower Manhattan), people won't leave their cars mid-way and change for a train or a bus.
It's not the car lobby. It's people wanting to live quite separately from their neighbors, in detached houses that they fully own. Or maybe cities that enforce low density for a number of reasons (mostly NIMBYs who want to keep the price of their house and land high).
Suburbs are dense enough to support transit as proven in a small number of cities around the world (mostly not English speaking). However suburbs can only support great transit, since anything less and driving is enough better as to be worth it.
NYC has a real cost problem. Digging a tunnel costs a lot - not anywhere near what it costs in NYC. You can also build bridges over the top for a lot less than digging a tunnel. Modern subways should be 100% automated saving the cost of a driver. (I keep hoping we see self driving buses since drivers are the large share of the costs)
BloombergNEF has over the years proven to have pretty solid forecasts. The current one about NEVs [1] has a few interesting points. Adoption of EVs is slowing down in the US due to policy changes but going to explode in countries like Vietnam because they are cheeper to buy an run. It is not BMWs and Mercs but Chinese brands.
In Europe and the US the Chinese EVs are kept outside with the help of tariffs but that is just closing the eyes to avoid facing the inevitability. Battery technology, production and raw materials is all China.
Last not least Europe is driving up KWh costs by an ideologically driven push for renewables which also doesn't help.
Renewables (especially wind) are now just about the cheapest way to generate electricity, and new battery technologies do much to help with their intermittency, so where’s the problem?
(Plus, the ‘ideology’ in question would seem to be: it’s bad to fry the planet, and also bad to run even a small risk of radioactively contaminating one’s landmass, and IMHO neither of these positions deserves to be called an ideology).
> Renewables (especially wind) are now just about the cheapest way to generate electricity, and new battery technologies do much to help with their intermittency, so where’s the problem?
The basics of economics are:
- market price is a function of supply and demand
- storage costs money
- distribution costs money.
- perishable goods a finicky in highly volatile markets
- CAPEX costs money
- businesses will try to maximise the difference between price and costs
Yet you know all this as you are a professor of economics in the UK. So how comes that the UK has the highest industry KWh prices in Europe? There must be an absolutely fantastic opportunity to make money and investors should be like vultures grabbing new projects for renewables.
Just the other day I read news that in Germany perfectly well functioning wind turbines are being turned down because they have reached the end of the phase of guaranteed KWh prices. So are the owners crazy and throwing money away? No, they simply do the business calculations and if the math doesn't play out, they simply remove them and build new ones with new subsidies.
The latest auction from the German gov for a new field in the baltic sea didn't even find one bidder.
China is doing lots of renewables but they calculate it down to the penny.
So yes, as you say "Renewables (especially wind) are now just about the cheapest way to generate electricity". To generate yes. But you need lots of CAPEX to store it and to distribute it. And you can not work with a 95%ile. You need 100% in any developed economy.
Despite marginal cost pricing it not interesting for investors without subsidies.
Chiming in as Australian with no context on European situation. AFAICT the key drivers of cost inflation are to do with reconfiguring the electric grid to transfer power efficiently and reliably from plants that produce renewable energy. However, the grid is set up to do so from non-renewable sources. And you want to do it while smoothly operating the network. This is extremely hard. Doing so quickly therefore elevates prices. That’s the rationale I could imagine being the case in EU markets.
more like "it's bad to fry the planet so we will destroy our economy for 0.001% impact while the real impacters continue to advance and leave us in the dust"
It's not just Vietnam. It's almost any country anywhere in the world that is seeing healthy growth in EVs. Especially the ones that barely have a road network or a petrol distribution network.
This is an effect that is still underappreciated in western markets but developing markets embracing renewables and EVs means they are enabling some serious economic growth. They are eliminating chunks of fossil fuel imports from their balance sheet while enabling economic activity in areas that have poor grid coverage and limited access to fuel.
Pakistan is a good example. They have a very under developed grid. Solar and battery storage are enabling the locals to work around that and they have installed a lot of that in recent years. This is enabling local businesses that previously had very poor access to reliably power to now have reliable power and grow. The Pakistan government is also putting in place incentives to stimulate EV imports.
Ethiopia is going a lot further and has actually banned ICE car imports last year. They want to reduce the amount of fossil fuel imports on their balance sheets.
So you buy a battery for your tiny grid island and pay a little more so that you can also use for a drive? Or perhaps not even more, because the standalone battery is less mass market item.
Truly an interesting change, considering how much of the ICE market used to be hand-me-downs from more industrialized countries. I guess proximity to those is now a hindrance to the renewable revolution, because places with less access to hand-me-downs have a market (and mindset!) for low-priced new cars that never existed in places flooded with second hand cars? Will the upmarket-first kind of BEV ever work in that way?
> Ethiopia is going a lot further and has actually banned ICE car imports last year. They want to reduce the amount of fossil fuel imports on their balance sheets.
My understanding is that they are more concerned about oil shipping as they are landlocked and the situation in the gulf of aden is less than ideal.
Electricity costs in the UK (which I believe is still in Europe) are cheaper now than they've ever been if you have the right tariff and that's all due to renewables. Granted, that's primarily at night, but for EVs that's perfect.
One can get a tariff at <7p/kWh for 6 hours in the night. That's cheaper than gas (actual gas, not gasoline).
If that’s Octopus Intelligent Go, then it will also give you the 7p rate outside the normal nighttime slot if the car is charging and their algo calculates they can do it.
Renewables definitely help and I think the UK is doing quite well there but it's a little disingenuous to not even mention the price cap that the government has imposed!
It is not an ideological push, but one driven by the necessity to fight climate change.
Maybe it is ideology to emphasize renewables over nuclear. But all over the world the energy transition seems to involve primarily renewables and only maybe a dash of nuclear.
For many years (20+?) Vietnam has had huge import tariffs on US/German/etc cars. It varies by origin country and engine displacement, but it's around 75% to 175%. Some trade agreements with other Asian countries result in much more reasonable tariffs for Asian brands, but some rich Vietnamese people have bought BMW or Merc with 150%+ tariff/tax. (I found it a bit mind-blowing.) So, it's pretty obvious why Asian made EVs are expected to "explode" in popularity over there. (I'm pretty sure the trend is already well underway, I know a retired guy there who replaced a Merc with a hybrid Mitsubishi (?) last year.)
But this is 2022? By now the dust must have settled. Anyone that wanted to copy and use likely planned out before they expired and got moving once it did?
Who owned these key LFP patents? It was not clearly laid out in the article which countries owned them, let alone which companies.
If they were owned by Chinese companies, then is there some faint hope that Western companies can finally start making EVs that are no longer embarrassingly inferior to their Chinese counterparts?
A foundational research team in a Canadian university in Quebec, if I recall correctly. They licenced these patents to the Chinese companies royalty free when used the Chinese domestic market. The Chinese spent the time developing LFP to where it's now a bleeding edge of batteries, while practically no-one else was interested.
In a retaliatory fight over the EVs, in October 2025, the CCP issued a ban on transfer of advanced technology for LFP batteries, and battery manufacturing equipment.
I really wish we could get Chinese EVs in the US. They’re very aesthetically appealing, have great performance and specs, and cost only $20-30k. I think there should be a modest tariff on them that doesn’t kill US manufacturers but makes it so they have to actually compete.
They have the same problem the U.S. EV's have: sketchy spyware software. Make everyone honest and open up the code / let people write their own code, and then let the true market rule.
U.S. don't want the Chinese cars collecting data, but they're content with U.S. ones doing it.
There was some kind of patent shenanigans about a decade ago around LFP.
I'm not sure if China invalidated dodgy patents or threatened to and got a good deal (or some combination) but I think LFP in China escaped a lot of patent fees as long as they were sold in China. This probably partly explains the regional nature of LFP success so further expiries might help the rest of the world catch up on LFP prices and adoption.
> EU regulations requiring lithium-ion batteries to contain at least 6% recycled lithium by 2031, rising to 12% by 2036.
Seriously?
The EU should aim for massive growth in battery deployment in transportation and grid storage. If they hope for, say, 10x growth in deployed battery capacity within a time frame comparable to the lifespan of a battery, then even a 100% recycling rate would not produce enough lithium.
I suppose people could recycle batteries just to produce new batteries and acquire recycling credits, but this is absurd.
It will probably amount to recycling credit schemes I am sure. But that would definitely boost lithium recycling efforts.
From memory over 1million disposable vapes are thrown away each day, from 500 of the bigger cell vapes a Youtuber was able build a home battery to power his house. I don't think 100% recycled makes sense but there sure is a lot of lithium getting thrown into the bin. Incentives to recapture that are good.
That's 730k households in a year. Cool but since these batteries will probably die within a year, then you are only able to cover 1.5 million people or so. I am not against it, but 1.5m in 8b is a drop in the ocean.
this would be a tragedy if it leads to recycling batteries that could be repurposed, say 100kwh car batteries with decreased range that could have become 60kwh residential batteries.
I say as an electrician that car batteries have limited use. Chinese residential batteries can be installed by me alone. Even 40-60 kWh modular ones. Car battery needs forklift and every model has different interface. Economically sourcing used cells to build batteries also makes no sense. So either recycling or repair to continue using it as car battery.
Imagine a world without patents and tariffs. Imagine a world where companies can freely compete (no patents) and, most importantly, *have* to (no tariffs).
What? Patents have been a non-issue for LFP batteries, and the original LFP patents are almost useless today. All the new advances that made LFPs competitive are still well-protected by patents, for at least another decade.
Sorry we handicapped ourselves and are now complaining about a competitor? Seems silly. The west made this tech unusable. I was building ebikes in 2006/7 and A123 was entirely unavailable unless you went and salvaged power tool packs.
They never became available at a competitive price, and then China bought the rights....
Now I can buy them in bulk as a consumer for 1/15th the price.
Our system is not meant for innovation by small players or consumers. We want tech easily locked away behind a contract.
The total lithium battery patent licensing market is estimated at less than 600 million USD a year. This is approximately nothing, given that the overall battery market is estimated at about $200B.
The pace of innovation is furious, and companies are treating patents more as a way to ensure MAD (Mutual Assured Destruction) rather than as a tool to get income.
I think we'll start seeing the first large lawsuits once the losers start realizing that they lost the innovation race.
It is worth noting that this is an ad. It is a law firm that is advertising their expertise in this field. And the product that they want people to buy is revealed in this passage:
Freedom-to-operate (FTO) analysis therefore remains critical for market entrants. Whilst the primary patents have expired, a dense web of secondary patents, covering additives, coatings, and production methods, still poses infringement risks.
Of course Shoosmiths would be happy to do a FTO analysis for your potential product...for a fee.
That doesn't mean that it doesn't contain quality information. Law firms tend to make this kind of ad informative. But it does mean that there is an agenda.
> That doesn't mean that it doesn't contain quality information. Law firms tend to make this kind of ad informative. But it does mean that there is an agenda.
This is the best thing to do for SEO, write good and authoritative content. Which is ironic because the field of SEO started off as gaming the systems with things like hidden keywords.
It may be an ad but it has every reason to be perfectly accurate. The law firm is not selling LFP batteries.
Edit: for example, if somebody was selling their AWS course by providing detailed information on some aspect of AWS, that wouldn't be a reason to doubt the information itself. It serves as a sample.
It has plenty of reasons to be inaccurate. They may be exaggerating the promise of LFP or overplaying how many secondary parents there are.
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I mean one would take the ad with a grain of salt
If it gets people to pull the trigger on engaging with the firm - it’s likely to embellish how massive the changes are of these patent lapses
If you make technology that spies really want the government will claim eminent domain and take your patent from you, with "fair" compensation, of course.
It's funny that never happens for things that actually matter.
Lithium iron phosphate batteries are very practical. Chinese BYD has developed blade batteries using this type of battery and has become the global sales leader in new energy vehicles. However, this battery faces range limitations and the issue of how to improve charging speed. Solid-state batteries should be the next big thing, but mass production may not be feasible yet. At least, it might take 3 more years for commercialization, and that's still an optimistic prediction.
> Lithium iron phosphate batteries are very practical
Unless you want to charge in negative temperatures
> However, this battery faces range limitations
Yes they are less dense but plentiful for typical passenger car (and not so much for full sized trucks or even "mid-sized" US SUVs).
> the issue of how to improve charging speed
I think CATL demonstrated 1MW charging on these already. Definitely shipping 500kW charging (tho best measure is still average km/hr).
> Solid-state batteries should be the next big thing
Sodium will (great cold weather performance and even better charge rates), but it's less (vol) dense and prices won't reach LFPs for another 10-15 years (unless you believe hype, not actual analysts).
> Unless you want to charge in negative temperatures
LFP charging in cold has pretty much been solved by adding a heater to battery pack.
> (Sodium-ion) prices won't reach LFPs for another 10-15 years (unless you believe hype, not actual analysts).
Given CATL is scaling sodium-ion production to to GWh scale next year, it sounds like they are betting for a much shorter timeframe.
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The small handful of sodium batteries that are currently available retail all seem to have rather bad roundtrip efficiency compared to LFP and voltage drop starting at a high state of charge.
Also LFP prices dropped enough that shipping cost from China became a significant part of the price. This will be even more of a factor should the less energy dense sodium batteries ever reach the promised $30/kWh.
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> Unless you want to charge in negative temperatures
I do all of my charging way above 0K. :-P
I think CATL is promoting a hybrid pack of LFP and Sodium that would give you the cheapness and density of LFP, but with maybe 30% Sodium that you could use for a quick partial charge, and could also be used when the car is cold-soaked. Once you drive for a while, the whole pack gets warmed up and you can use the LFP.
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If it's suitable for sedans it's actually more suitable for SUVs. SUVs require less power per cubic feet of space. So there is more space available for them, even if they take more energy overall
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I am not sure honestly about the negative temperature. Sure it can be a problem in extreme colds but most of the world does not live in those climates.
> Unless you want to charge in negative temperatures
Doesn’t the thermal management system of the battery packs handle this?
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I think it is fairly likely that sodium catches LFP in the ~5 year timeframe since sodium has a lot more promise for grid scale storage since it has no expensive materials.
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The issue I’ve heard with sodium-ion is that the voltage curves make the power electronics much more expensive for a given efficiency/power level.
[https://www.eevblog.com/forum/projects/sodium-ion-battery-ev...]
Lithium’s curve is nearly flat, which allows for a pretty easy consistent power production (albeit nearly impossible to tell state of charge!) since you only need to target a pretty narrow voltage band.
Overall, that means sodium-ion has to be even cheaper to be competitive, and it makes even less sense in areas where power density matters like electric cars, as you’ll end up with far less power and/or needing much heavier motors and more expensive electronics to compensate when on the lower end of charge.
I don’t want to think of what it would cost to do a 100kw buck-boost power supply that can handle +- 25% (or more!) voltage differences. In reality, I don’t think anyone would try.
Solid state batteries and fusion power, always 3 years away.
I wouldn't equate solid state batteries with fusion power. Solid state batteries do exist and work well, they are just very expensive. Meanwhile fusion power is still entirely within the experimental stage and there are no fusion plant prototypes that can produce power at any price.
It’s always 20 years away until it isn’t. Self driving cars are…I guess they are here already. AGI? Well, we have to move the goal post on that constantly.
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Solid state batteries seem to work, but the price of prototypes is very high. Samsung says they will soon be shipping earbuds and watches with solid state batteries, but the cost is too high even for phones. Xaomi showed an $800 phone battery. Mercedes has one prototype car with solid state batteries. Honda has one motorcycle. EHang has one flying car. Nobody seems to be past one-off demos.
Solid state batteries and fusion might in the end suffer from a similar economical problem. That they turn out to simply be too expensive.
Does look as if ssb are close.. Esp Japanese ones.
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I still find it borderline criminal that a few nations continue to be ruled by the hegemony of the automobile market. EVs have a place in the world. But there should be ten times fewer of them, because we should have cheap and plentiful public transit for most of our transportation needs. How long will we simply sit and wait for that future, complacent and docile? When will we do what's necessary to progress our society? (if we ever do)
> How long will we simply sit and wait for that future, complacent and docile?
The people who don't want to sit and wait have bought personal vehicles. Mass transit can be great, but when it isn't, there's no sense of agency. At least with a personal vehicle, if it's not working, I can try to fix it or get it to someone who is more likely to be able to fix it.
When transit isn't running, I just have to wait. If it can't get me to where I want to go in a reasonable time, sucks to be me. If my stop is removed from service, I guess I better move.
In the last year, the number of times my car owning friends have not been able to make it to an event because their car is broken is surprisingly high. While I have never not been able to get somewhere because public transport is not working. If the train is down I can take the tram, if somehow both of them are down there will be replacement busses scheduled.
And if somehow everything stops working I can book an uber which is still massively cheaper than owning a car.
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Public transport is only efficient at scale, requires up front investment, and carries lots of assumptions about population density and other aspects remaining static. Then it doesn't work for whole categories of people (families with small kids, etc) especially because it fundamentally just can't do the "last mile", pretty much ever.
Don't get me wrong, I think it's great for mass transit, but I can't wait to see the future with autonomous vehicles arrive, especially if they can cooperate in centralised networks to optimise traffic flows. I'd love to step off the train into a capsule that then whisks me home.
> Then it doesn't work for whole categories of people (families with small kids, etc) especially because it fundamentally just can't do the "last mile", pretty much ever.
That's bullshit. My whole childhood I went everywhere by train and bus. You can walk the last mile if the bus stop isn't close enough to where you need to go.
I know some (embarrassingly rich) countries are incapable of designing a halfway decent public transit system, but the problem isn't with public transit itself.
I take my small kids on public transit often. Why can't kids ride a bus or a train? Don't we even have special forms of mass transit for little kids (school busses?)
How are cars better with little kids? If I'm in the car with my kids and one kid suddenly really wants a snack, there's nothing I can do. They're strapped in the back, I'm in the front driving. On the train, I just grab a snack from my bag and give them a bite. Or if they're bored I can play with them, etc.
> it fundamentally just can't do the "last mile", pretty much ever.
I live in a suburb in North Texas. I walk out my door with the stroller and my kids. There's a bus stop super close by that can easily load a stroller (all busses are wheelchair accessible). I take that to the train station or the bus goes to the library or several other parks and rec centers. The train stops a very short walk to several museums, the convention center, the airport, the zoo has its own train station, the hockey/basketball arena has its own stop, etc. And this is all in an area where the mass transit isn't even that great.
The transit doesn't go everywhere we want to go. I agree that's the biggest pain point. But I truly don't understand the logic that it's bad for kids. My kids ride often, and they love it. What kid hates trains?
A lot of people prefer living in less dense environments and personal vehicles will always be more efficient there than public transport
If it's just the free market then why do we need to regulate single family zoning across the United States? And why can't the suburbs pay for their own infrastructure?
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A lot of people prefer living in financially affordable environments, and in a functioning market, dense towns/cities will always be more affordable unless you literally work on a farm.
Everyone prefers to live in a giant sprawling mansion (with personal private forest) in the middle of the CBD. But preference is useless data unless it includes their pricetag preference too.
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Speaking as a big fan and avid user of public transit, I say: not gonna happen in many places.
Public transit works in densely populated areas, like in NYC where I live. Digging and operating a tunnel costs a lot, and only pays for itself if you can run many trains with many passengers, who live close enough to their nearest station. Buses are less expensive (though still are expensive), and require a driver per 50-100 passengers, not per 2000.
As long as many people prefer to live in suburbia (which may technically be considered a part of a city, like in Houston), they are going to use cars (or technically trucks), because it's the most economical way to get around. As long as the destination of their travel is not an utterly dense area that does not require a car (like commuting from NJ to lower Manhattan), people won't leave their cars mid-way and change for a train or a bus.
It's not the car lobby. It's people wanting to live quite separately from their neighbors, in detached houses that they fully own. Or maybe cities that enforce low density for a number of reasons (mostly NIMBYs who want to keep the price of their house and land high).
Suburbs are dense enough to support transit as proven in a small number of cities around the world (mostly not English speaking). However suburbs can only support great transit, since anything less and driving is enough better as to be worth it.
NYC has a real cost problem. Digging a tunnel costs a lot - not anywhere near what it costs in NYC. You can also build bridges over the top for a lot less than digging a tunnel. Modern subways should be 100% automated saving the cost of a driver. (I keep hoping we see self driving buses since drivers are the large share of the costs)
Likely once sufficient numbers of boomers die off - and their property inheriting children don’t take up their parent’s views
BloombergNEF has over the years proven to have pretty solid forecasts. The current one about NEVs [1] has a few interesting points. Adoption of EVs is slowing down in the US due to policy changes but going to explode in countries like Vietnam because they are cheeper to buy an run. It is not BMWs and Mercs but Chinese brands.
In Europe and the US the Chinese EVs are kept outside with the help of tariffs but that is just closing the eyes to avoid facing the inevitability. Battery technology, production and raw materials is all China.
Last not least Europe is driving up KWh costs by an ideologically driven push for renewables which also doesn't help.
[1] https://about.bnef.com/insights/clean-transport/electric-veh...
> an ideologically driven push for renewables
Renewables (especially wind) are now just about the cheapest way to generate electricity, and new battery technologies do much to help with their intermittency, so where’s the problem?
(Plus, the ‘ideology’ in question would seem to be: it’s bad to fry the planet, and also bad to run even a small risk of radioactively contaminating one’s landmass, and IMHO neither of these positions deserves to be called an ideology).
Also, to add to the “ideology”: it is bad to rely on other countries for fossil or uranium fuels.
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>> an ideologically driven push for renewables
> Renewables (especially wind) are now just about the cheapest way to generate electricity, and new battery technologies do much to help with their intermittency, so where’s the problem?
The basics of economics are:
Yet you know all this as you are a professor of economics in the UK. So how comes that the UK has the highest industry KWh prices in Europe? There must be an absolutely fantastic opportunity to make money and investors should be like vultures grabbing new projects for renewables.
Just the other day I read news that in Germany perfectly well functioning wind turbines are being turned down because they have reached the end of the phase of guaranteed KWh prices. So are the owners crazy and throwing money away? No, they simply do the business calculations and if the math doesn't play out, they simply remove them and build new ones with new subsidies.
The latest auction from the German gov for a new field in the baltic sea didn't even find one bidder.
China is doing lots of renewables but they calculate it down to the penny.
So yes, as you say "Renewables (especially wind) are now just about the cheapest way to generate electricity". To generate yes. But you need lots of CAPEX to store it and to distribute it. And you can not work with a 95%ile. You need 100% in any developed economy.
Despite marginal cost pricing it not interesting for investors without subsidies.
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>Renewables (especially wind) are now just about the cheapest way to generate electricity
Only if you don't include the huge cost of storage for when it isn't windy.
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Chiming in as Australian with no context on European situation. AFAICT the key drivers of cost inflation are to do with reconfiguring the electric grid to transfer power efficiently and reliably from plants that produce renewable energy. However, the grid is set up to do so from non-renewable sources. And you want to do it while smoothly operating the network. This is extremely hard. Doing so quickly therefore elevates prices. That’s the rationale I could imagine being the case in EU markets.
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more like "it's bad to fry the planet so we will destroy our economy for 0.001% impact while the real impacters continue to advance and leave us in the dust"
It's not just Vietnam. It's almost any country anywhere in the world that is seeing healthy growth in EVs. Especially the ones that barely have a road network or a petrol distribution network.
This is an effect that is still underappreciated in western markets but developing markets embracing renewables and EVs means they are enabling some serious economic growth. They are eliminating chunks of fossil fuel imports from their balance sheet while enabling economic activity in areas that have poor grid coverage and limited access to fuel.
Pakistan is a good example. They have a very under developed grid. Solar and battery storage are enabling the locals to work around that and they have installed a lot of that in recent years. This is enabling local businesses that previously had very poor access to reliably power to now have reliable power and grow. The Pakistan government is also putting in place incentives to stimulate EV imports.
Ethiopia is going a lot further and has actually banned ICE car imports last year. They want to reduce the amount of fossil fuel imports on their balance sheets.
So you buy a battery for your tiny grid island and pay a little more so that you can also use for a drive? Or perhaps not even more, because the standalone battery is less mass market item.
Truly an interesting change, considering how much of the ICE market used to be hand-me-downs from more industrialized countries. I guess proximity to those is now a hindrance to the renewable revolution, because places with less access to hand-me-downs have a market (and mindset!) for low-priced new cars that never existed in places flooded with second hand cars? Will the upmarket-first kind of BEV ever work in that way?
> Ethiopia is going a lot further and has actually banned ICE car imports last year. They want to reduce the amount of fossil fuel imports on their balance sheets.
My understanding is that they are more concerned about oil shipping as they are landlocked and the situation in the gulf of aden is less than ideal.
Electricity costs in the UK (which I believe is still in Europe) are cheaper now than they've ever been if you have the right tariff and that's all due to renewables. Granted, that's primarily at night, but for EVs that's perfect.
One can get a tariff at <7p/kWh for 6 hours in the night. That's cheaper than gas (actual gas, not gasoline).
If that’s Octopus Intelligent Go, then it will also give you the 7p rate outside the normal nighttime slot if the car is charging and their algo calculates they can do it.
Renewables definitely help and I think the UK is doing quite well there but it's a little disingenuous to not even mention the price cap that the government has imposed!
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> an ideologically driven push for renewables
It is not an ideological push, but one driven by the necessity to fight climate change.
Maybe it is ideology to emphasize renewables over nuclear. But all over the world the energy transition seems to involve primarily renewables and only maybe a dash of nuclear.
For many years (20+?) Vietnam has had huge import tariffs on US/German/etc cars. It varies by origin country and engine displacement, but it's around 75% to 175%. Some trade agreements with other Asian countries result in much more reasonable tariffs for Asian brands, but some rich Vietnamese people have bought BMW or Merc with 150%+ tariff/tax. (I found it a bit mind-blowing.) So, it's pretty obvious why Asian made EVs are expected to "explode" in popularity over there. (I'm pretty sure the trend is already well underway, I know a retired guy there who replaced a Merc with a hybrid Mitsubishi (?) last year.)
Your reliable BloombergNEF says that onshore wind became the cheapest source of unsubsidized new electricity in Germany and UK in 2015, a decade ago.
Coincidentally that's roughly when the UK government banned the building of onshore wind across England, which was only recently revrsed.
Now that sounds like an Ideologically driven attempt to raise electricity prices.
The European tarriffs on Chinese EVs typically amount to 20%, which doesn't keep them out but does somewhat slow their adoption.
Would we price out cheap Vietnamese EVs (say) in the same way?
The US would just ban them with some regulation like we do with most foreign competitors
But this is 2022? By now the dust must have settled. Anyone that wanted to copy and use likely planned out before they expired and got moving once it did?
Exactly, this is a 3 year old post. That's why you started seeing LFP battery banks showing up on Amazon a few years ago.
Who owned these key LFP patents? It was not clearly laid out in the article which countries owned them, let alone which companies.
If they were owned by Chinese companies, then is there some faint hope that Western companies can finally start making EVs that are no longer embarrassingly inferior to their Chinese counterparts?
A foundational research team in a Canadian university in Quebec, if I recall correctly. They licenced these patents to the Chinese companies royalty free when used the Chinese domestic market. The Chinese spent the time developing LFP to where it's now a bleeding edge of batteries, while practically no-one else was interested.
In a retaliatory fight over the EVs, in October 2025, the CCP issued a ban on transfer of advanced technology for LFP batteries, and battery manufacturing equipment.
I really wish we could get Chinese EVs in the US. They’re very aesthetically appealing, have great performance and specs, and cost only $20-30k. I think there should be a modest tariff on them that doesn’t kill US manufacturers but makes it so they have to actually compete.
They have the same problem the U.S. EV's have: sketchy spyware software. Make everyone honest and open up the code / let people write their own code, and then let the true market rule.
U.S. don't want the Chinese cars collecting data, but they're content with U.S. ones doing it.
There was some kind of patent shenanigans about a decade ago around LFP.
I'm not sure if China invalidated dodgy patents or threatened to and got a good deal (or some combination) but I think LFP in China escaped a lot of patent fees as long as they were sold in China. This probably partly explains the regional nature of LFP success so further expiries might help the rest of the world catch up on LFP prices and adoption.
> EU regulations requiring lithium-ion batteries to contain at least 6% recycled lithium by 2031, rising to 12% by 2036.
Seriously?
The EU should aim for massive growth in battery deployment in transportation and grid storage. If they hope for, say, 10x growth in deployed battery capacity within a time frame comparable to the lifespan of a battery, then even a 100% recycling rate would not produce enough lithium.
I suppose people could recycle batteries just to produce new batteries and acquire recycling credits, but this is absurd.
It will probably amount to recycling credit schemes I am sure. But that would definitely boost lithium recycling efforts.
From memory over 1million disposable vapes are thrown away each day, from 500 of the bigger cell vapes a Youtuber was able build a home battery to power his house. I don't think 100% recycled makes sense but there sure is a lot of lithium getting thrown into the bin. Incentives to recapture that are good.
500? thats just 5x10x10, even the bigger cell vapes would result in a tiny battery to power a house...
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That's 730k households in a year. Cool but since these batteries will probably die within a year, then you are only able to cover 1.5 million people or so. I am not against it, but 1.5m in 8b is a drop in the ocean.
> recycled lithium
this would be a tragedy if it leads to recycling batteries that could be repurposed, say 100kwh car batteries with decreased range that could have become 60kwh residential batteries.
I say as an electrician that car batteries have limited use. Chinese residential batteries can be installed by me alone. Even 40-60 kWh modular ones. Car battery needs forklift and every model has different interface. Economically sourcing used cells to build batteries also makes no sense. So either recycling or repair to continue using it as car battery.
This could open the door to cheaper EV batteries and more players entering the market. Should make things move faster.
Imagine a world without patents and tariffs. Imagine a world where companies can freely compete (no patents) and, most importantly, *have* to (no tariffs).
What? Patents have been a non-issue for LFP batteries, and the original LFP patents are almost useless today. All the new advances that made LFPs competitive are still well-protected by patents, for at least another decade.
What makes you say they've been a non-issue?
As far as I'm aware they've been an issue (outside of China) for the last 20 years.
Sorry we handicapped ourselves and are now complaining about a competitor? Seems silly. The west made this tech unusable. I was building ebikes in 2006/7 and A123 was entirely unavailable unless you went and salvaged power tool packs.
They never became available at a competitive price, and then China bought the rights....
Now I can buy them in bulk as a consumer for 1/15th the price.
Our system is not meant for innovation by small players or consumers. We want tech easily locked away behind a contract.
The total lithium battery patent licensing market is estimated at less than 600 million USD a year. This is approximately nothing, given that the overall battery market is estimated at about $200B.
The pace of innovation is furious, and companies are treating patents more as a way to ensure MAD (Mutual Assured Destruction) rather than as a tool to get income.
I think we'll start seeing the first large lawsuits once the losers start realizing that they lost the innovation race.
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So, mass switch-over to electric cars is delayed for a decade or two.