"Shai Agassi, the founder and former CEO of Better Place, also touted the importance of the rate of battery innovation during his talk at the Cleantech Investor Summit. He said the energy density of batteries goes up 15 percent every 18 months; the cost per kilowatt hour goes down 15 percent every 18 months; the life cycles of the batteries (how many times it can charge and recharge) goes up 15 percent every 18 months; and the cost per lifecycle-mile does down 50 percent every 18 months. “If you don’t like the margins in this [electric car] business just wait 12 months,” said Agassi."
I had no idea this was true. If so, that's very significant.
It would be amazing. But it smells very wrong. I suspect any improvements in battery economics is coming from better ~engineering~ manufacturing processes which has quickly eaten up low-hanging fruit, not from anything we expect to repeat.
It is true. And the trend has been obvious for longer than most people realize.
Go read chapter 9 of The Innovator's Dilemma, first published in 2000. This chapter is based on an analysis he did of electric cars. Given the rate of battery improvement he thought that a mass market affordable electric car would be viable for the mass market somewhere around 2020.
At current trends, that's not too far off from when Tesla can be expected to try to make a mass market electric car aimed at ordinary people.
I'd say the barrier to mass-market electric cars isn't battery size, the Model S can already go over 300 KMs on a single charge, which is very reasonable. The lack of quick charging infrastructure is much more troubling. Without quick charging, it takes many hours to charge the battery, making long-distance driving infeasible. Quick-chargers also require a rather large supply of power, far more then most homes, or even petrol stations would probably have.
We also have a petrol station on nearly every street corner, but it will take a long while for quick chargers to approach anywhere near this. There is also already a split on adapter standards, which will take time to settle down.
I don't think that will be much of a problem by 2020, either. Musk plans to cover the country with his solar-powered free chargers within 5 years, and he's already said they (now) charge half the battery in 30 minutes. That's not too bad, but by 2020 I think we'll see faster chargers, too. There are already much faster chargers that exist today, but perhaps they aren't that cheap.
I had no idea this was true. If so, that's very significant.