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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 9th, 2023

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  • User replaceable batteries would be actual cheap, would be nice. But iPhone 15 pro battery replacement at Apple is $100, and I’d expect that to be one of the more expensive battery replacements. Many phones will be cheaper, third parties will be cheaper. While I’d rather do it myself, it’s really not that much for once every three years to keep it above 80% health, and 9% of phone replacement cost.

    the argument of “why would you try to save your battery by not using it when it has the same net effect of less battery?” is pretty short-sighted.

    The argument is

    • why try to save your phone battery when it’s critical to last the day and eventual replacement is cheap?
    • it’s much more important to save your car battery because you won’t miss reduced range on normal days, you want max range available for road trips, and replacing the battery is very expensive

  • Definitely incredible but I still feel like people’s excitement is misdirected.

    • they’re less energy dense so not likely to be on phones or many cars
    • for cars the extra life is marginal when existing batteries already last more than the life of a typical vehicle
    • much cheaper will make a huge difference in low end cars.
    • but storage is the killer app! I don’t care about energy density but they’re much cheaper and will last much longer. Huge win!

    Imagine if home battery systems cost half as much but last four times as long! Or grid storage! This is huge!


  • I don’t see this as a valid comparison.

    • replacement phone batteries are really not that expensive. Don’t overthink it. Is it really a problem you might spend $50-$100 in three years to replace the battery?
    • car batteries are not just much more expensive but they’re also overkill. Charging to 80% is more than enough for almost everyone’s daily driving on most vehicles, so why charge more?

  • Most of these infamous early failure modes that people are afraid of are entirely possible to repair at home for a DIY guy. On a BEV I’m shit out of luck

    In a BEV many of those failure modes don’t exist. It’s quite possible we’ll see them last much longer with essentially no issues

    BEVs use conventional suspensions and brake systems, so failure there are likely just as repairable DIY


  • The batteries have gotten better over time, but they can still fail fairly early

    Aside from the OG Nissan Leaf with passive cooling, this really seems like more of a scare tactic than an actual issue.

    I don’t know about all EVs, but assuming they’re similar to mine:

    • battery warranteed for 8 years, 120,000 miles
    • solid history of batteries lasting 250,000 miles or more
    • aside from accident or manufacturing defect, batteries rarely actually fail. The above are defined for battery health being above 80%

    I’m sure it happens that a few people need to replace the battery but they tend to last beyond the full expected lifetime of most cars and the usual failure mode is to continue working with less range