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Re:GM, LG to Spend $2.3B on Venture to Make Electric-Car Bat... by bryanlarsen on Friday December 06, 2019 @01:00PM (#21724351)
There are battery factories in China coming online in the next couple of years that make the Gigafactory look small. I expect that batteries will follow a boom/bust cycle like DRAM does.
Re:GM, LG to Spend $2.3B on Venture to Make Electric-Car Bat... by mdorazio on Friday December 06, 2019 @01:05PM (#21724401)
Depends on the timing with respect to market demand / production volume of EVs. As battery prices come down due to increased production / economies of scale, EV demand will go up so it could be a smooth transition. It could also turn into a glut/bust scenario like you say, but I think we'll see the factories scale up production to meet demand rather than running at 100% from day 1.
Re:GM, LG to Spend $2.3B on Venture to Make Electric-Car Bat... by jandrese on Friday December 06, 2019 @01:11PM (#21724451)
The blow could be cushioned if they drop the prices enough that grid tie battery systems become economical and generate enormous orders to soak up the excess capacity.
Re:GM, LG to Spend $2.3B on Venture to Make Electric-Car Bat... by ianai on Friday December 06, 2019 @01:11PM (#21724448)
Crazy idea time, but I wonder if the scale of battery packs being increased significantly couldn’t help market penetration. It’d obviously require much cheaper and better/lighter tech, but imagine if a battery pack was more close to 1MWh than dozens of KWh and could still charge in hours. It’d make sense to walk a mall for hours once a week for apartment dwellers. I know I’d at least flesh out the purchase idea if I won the lotto.
Re:GM, LG to Spend $2.3B on Venture to Make Electric-Car Bat... by magduf on Friday December 06, 2019 @01:13PM (#21724468)
Batteries have uses other than EVs, with a big one being power storage. There's a big push to reduce fossil fuel usage and get more power from renewables (solar/wind), but these aren't constant sources of power, so massive banks of batteries would be very useful here for utility-scale use of renewables without needing nuclear or fossil fuel plants for a baseline.
Re:GM, LG to Spend $2.3B on Venture to Make Electric-Car Bat... by jersey on Friday December 06, 2019 @01:29PM (#21724636)
With V2G, EVs and power storage are one and the same.
Re:GM, LG to Spend $2.3B on Venture to Make Electric-Car Bat... by singularity2001 on Saturday December 07, 2019 @08:41AM (#21730221)
the last time I checked the CTO of Tesla said that vehicle2grid had negative return on investment but that might have been politically motivated.
Re:GM, LG to Spend $2.3B on Venture to Make Electric-Car Bat... by antisthenes on Friday December 06, 2019 @01:17PM (#21724498)
Demand for batteries far outstrips demand for DRAM.

PC & Server markets have been flat or declining for the last 5 years, so the DRAM demand is more or less constant (probably propped up by laptop sales).

Maybe they'll start following a boom/bust cycle once the market becomes mature, but considering how much we need to invest in renewables paired with energy storage, thats not going to be for at least a few decades.

Re:GM, LG to Spend $2.3B on Venture to Make Electric-Car Bat... by microcolonel on Friday December 06, 2019 @02:27PM (#21725149)
Demand alone has not made many of these industries happen in China, DRAM being a great example of that at least. Unless they have some sort of new espionage, or a miraculous groundswell of native research, I won't believe the battery claims until they're on the market.