ProgCast – December 2011

Recent Lithium Ion Battery Developments & Electric Car Market Forecasts

Researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) are investigating ways to improve rechargeable battery capacity. An innovative "semi-solid flow cell" architecture is the basis for a battery that would weigh half as much as current models at half the cost.[1]

How could such a battery impact the emergent electric car market? With so little "hard" data, several assumptions can be made and applied to extrapolate a market forecast:

Growth trends for other technologies provide reasonable models for battery and electric car development.
Recently generated projections for battery prices and other market factors are relatively "accurate" and can be used for extrapolation.
Two years is a reasonable time frame to move the MIT (and/or other) batteries from research and development to commercialization.

Potential Battery Capacity Impacts On Electricity Storage Costs (2010 - 2013)
[Battery Price Per Kilowatt Hour]

Year	*"Bottled Lightening" Estimates* [3]	"Experts" Estimates [2] **	*"JOLT!" Estimates* [2] **	"MIT Battery" Extrapolations
2010	$600 *	$500	$500	--
2011	--	$450	$450	--
2012	--	$405	$400	--
2013	--	$375	$338	$300 ***

            *      Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI)
            **    Estimated from bar graph presentation
            *** Applied to EPRI 2010 estimate
Source: Extrapolated by Feed-back.com from sources cited below

Short-term battery price prospects appear to be fairly consistent. By 2030, however, "expert" and "JOLT!" price forecasts diverge significantly from one another: $200 per kilowatt hour ("experts") versus $50 per kilowatt hour (JOLT!).

Over time, we are sure to see rechargeable batteries become smaller, more efficient, and less expensive, and only time will tell whose forecasts prove correct

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[1]   "Smaller & More Powerful Batteries: This Could Be Big," Yahoo News Blog, December 1, 2011 (www.yahoo.com/blogs).
[2]   JOLT! The Impending Dominance of the Electric Car and Why America Must Take Charge, James Billmaier, 2010.
[3]   Bottled Lightening, Seth Fletcher, 2011.