I don’t know anything about your powerwall quote, but if you’d wanted something 4 or 5 times as big you could have bought a whole EV at half the $/kWhr cost, and used it for other things like your shopping as well!! And in China they are now apparently getting EV price parity with ICEs. I believe batteries are now near the USD 100/ kWhr at the factory.
I’d dispute the battery replacement thing too, plenty of old Nissan Leafs on NZ roads, some down to 20% (of an originally quite small) battery capacity - they just end up in low mileage urban use, the school run, shopping etc. With more recent models you are typically getting a 160,000 km guarantee for 70 or 80% battery capacity, with the reality being something more like 10% loss is expected over that period. People don’t expect to replace EV batteries (except from serious damage), they just go into less demanding duties.
Hard to know how battery chemistry is going to advance, but nickel isn’t going to be the answer for the masses (as the Chinese were quick to decide) but I suspect copper is pretty indispensible. I was a nickel bull, but remain a copper bull.
RXM Price at posting:
24.5¢ Sentiment: Buy Disclosure: Held
