> They always assume that the technology will never get better, that industrial economies of scale don't exist
The technology hadn't improved not much more than a quarter's worth so far in my lifetime as far as EV is concerned.
Wh/kg figures hasn't changed, even fusion seems closer than solid state batteries, mileage figures for EVs is same 4mi/kWh, battery recycling still hasn't been figured out. They can't even recover Lithium out of Lithium ion batteries. wtf.
Meanwhile, computers had gotten like, up to petaflops per nation to per building to per node. Wireless Internet went from kilobits to gigabits. Everyone wears UNIX or Linux watches.
IMO, optimistic heuristics floating around EV is too shallow. The model just doesn't have enough parameters that it's expecting growth where it should not and vice versa. It just needs way more grounding to be meaningful.
> The technology hadn't improved not much more than a quarter's worth so far in my lifetime as far as EV is concerned.
Average EV range has increased 2.7 fold in the years 2010 to 2021[1] and has continued to increase - by 40% since then. Neary a 4-fold improvement in 15 years.
Charging tech has improved from the initial Level 1 (1kW) and Level 2 (13kW) technology to fast charging (150kW) or 350kW (current fastest commonly available) while BYD is promising 1MW charging soon. A 350 fold increase with more to come.
Prices for EV batteries exceeded $1000 per kWh in 2010, down to $111 per kWh in 2025 - a 90% drop.
The technology has improved dramatically.
[1] https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/evolution-of-...
> Average EV range has increased 2.7 fold
Don't dodge the question like that. I said efficiency hasn't improved. You basically said, the car got 2.7 fold bigger.
Consider that Gen1 Nissan Leaf already had 24kWh battery and 200km(125mi) rated range. Today's EV with 100kWh battery packs has at most 500mi - literally zero improvement.
CHAdeMO supported up to 62.5kW since 2009 or so. It can do 400kW now, that's still not even 10x improvement.
Battery cost did marginally decrease. Currency inflated a bit over time. Battery capacity increased accordingly from those. And you spun that into a "350 fold increase".
Shame on you.
> Don't dodge the question like that. I said efficiency hasn't improved.
That's not what you said and to avoid confusion, as usual, I provided an exact quote of what you claimed before providing my response.
To repeat, your actual exact words:
> The technology hadn't improved not much more than a quarter's worth so far in my lifetime as far as EV is concerned.
Your attempt to twist away from your original claim while suggesting that I've acted in a shameful manner does not suggest that you're making any attempt to engage honestly or with good faith.
Computers have psyched us out. There is no other technology in human history that has ever seen a capability growth curve like Moore's Law. Even aviation, which went from biplanes to moon landings in 50 years, doesn't compare.
Still, there has been huge improvement in batteries. The main improvement has not been in energy density but in cost. Find some graphs of battery cost per kWh of storage. Storage cost has dropped by almost 10X in the last 15-20 years. Reliability and rapid recharge capability have also increased a lot.
Still, for medium to long haul aviation we probably would need at least a 3-4X improvement in energy density per unit volume and mass, and I don't see that happening soon. It's likely that long range aviation is stuck with liquid fuels for the foreseeable future. But as I said it's only 7% of oil consumption. We should just let aviation keep going as-is and cut fossil fuel use in terrestrial transport and power generation.
Part of why we're not recycling batteries much is that lithium isn't expensive enough to make the investment in it profitable. The major cost in batteries is the manufacturing process, not the lithium itself. If lithium prices go up there'd be an incentive to figure out recycling.
Cost doesn't matter when something is just too darn heavy to be viable aviation fuel. Can't fly rockets on sails just because it's efficient.
> Wh/kg figures hasn't changed
Maybe I misunderstand you, but taken at face value, this assertion is incorrect.
Battery density (Wh/kg) has more than quadrupled since the 90s. See e.g. https://rmi.org/the-rise-of-batteries-in-six-charts-and-not-...
Price is also dropping fast!
The learning rate for Li-ion batteries right now, is around a 35% price reduction for every doubling in installed capacity.