The developments are not incremental. There are a number of new battery technologies on the horizontal that will offer 5 times the capacity at up to 1/5th of the cost of current batteries. Plus the current ones are still progressing with new manufacturing techniques and tweaks to make them more energy dense and cheaper. They are progressing at a far more rapid rate than the Internal Combustion Engine... That has barely improved in decades!

If 'prices are coming down' (and they certainly seem to be) does that not suggest that supply is going up and the price has to drop to meet the demand?

I'd not worry about supply until I saw price rises. Although I'd love to know what is holding Hyundai up from flooding the market with Ioniq Electric!

+Ian Kew selling any ioniqs would be a start! I see loads of EVs every day and have not seen a single ioniq regardless of the model!

+Lee Fear Cites please. There are a number of new battery technologies on the horizontal that will offer 5 times the capacity at up to 1/5th of the cost of current batteries. means nothing without some detail.

What we have seen is the progression from LiMn to LiFePo to LiNMC to LiNCA. While that incremental improvement has been going on for the last 20 years, there's been a constant stream of breathless hype about the next big thing in batteries that never actually comes to anything.

So I'll stay with the OP analysis. Mainstream dev has doubled capacity, halved the price and reduced weight and volume a bit for the same lifespan. But we're hitting limits with the improvements getting harder to find. And the next doubling still seems to be stuck in the lab with commercial development still 20 years out.

+Julian Bond not at all. What makes you think the current technology is at a standstill? The leaf got a new battery pack just over a year ago that significantly increased the capacity in the same cell size. New manufacturing techniques are likely to significantly increase this capacity further. Key issues with lithium sulphur batteries have recently been solved (namely the stability of the cathode) which now means they are exhibiting the sort of lifetime we expect from the lithium ion batteries but with significantly higher capacity.

Yes they are still 5 to 10 years from mass manufacture but thennthere is still a lot to come from the current tech. Look at how much the internal combustion engine improved over its history (ie not a lot).

Lithium air batteries are also in development. One research team has managed to produce onebthat has 15 times the energy density of current lithium ion batteries! That would give my leaf a range of 1800 miles! It would give a tesla a range of 4500 miles!

The main thing in the short term is the cost and that has been decreasing rapidly and will continue to do so. Nissan predict EVs will be cheaper to produce than ice cars by 2020 and that is mostly due to the price of batteries coming down.

You have to realise that battery tech has not been massivley researched until relatively recently so it is playing catch-up and these things take time to develop.

How about some actual links.

And particularly to how energy density is actually improving. At the moment we seem to be stuck at around 250 Wh/kg. Pushing that up much without radically changing the chemistry means experimental anodes. 350 looks possible. 500 probably isn't.

+Julian Bond Google is your friend. It is not difficult to find...

+Lee Fear for something that is 'not difficult to find' why are incapable of doing it?

+Ian Kew I am perfectly capable. But would rather others were not lazy. If the info was hard to find then I would have no issues posting links but people need to stop being lazy.

Damn, I hate that argument. The lazy accusing people of being lazy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium%E2%80%93sulfur_battery
Lithium–sulfur: As of early 2014, none were commercially available. _
https://oxisenergy.com/technology/
__Lithium Sulfur cells are the next generation of battery technology, surpassing Li-ion which is * *_reaching the limit of its potential*_ *._

It's a bit hard to find but it looks like the battery upgrade in the Leaf was from the obsolete LiMN chemistry to the more recent LiNMC. That's also now been superceeded by LiNCA.

+Julian Bond reaching limit. Not at limit.... There is a big difference.

Also that lithium sulphur article is from 2014!

True. And 3 years later I'm unable to find any that ARE commercially available. Lots of breathless hype articles in places like Gizmag or SciAm about research developments and promises of the future but nothing real outside the lab. Same for Li-Air.

+Julian Bond you seem to fundamentally misunderstand how scientific research happens... This year they cracked the biggest issue that the cathode failed after a few charges. They can now charge them the same as lithium ion...

How long do you think a car takes to design and build? Even with known technology?

+Lee Fear So where are these new batteries coming from? And where are the 'easy to find' pieces on google to prove your assertion then?

+Ian Kew that would not be proving anything would it? That would just prove I can post a link I know exists... Just type lithium sulphur battery in to Google....

+Lee Fear And you seem to fundamentally misunderstand the difference between commercial vehicle engineering and scientific research. Or the relationship between production engineering and fundamental physical and chemical constraints.

Tired of this game. KthxBai!