I have little doubt about car batteries already lasting 200,000...

I have little doubt about car batteries already lasting 200,000 km.

The point at which a manufacturer is willing to guarantee to will always greatly lag the average reality, as that needs to cover people mostly using rapid chargers and other battery unfriendly behaviours, plus that guarantee is only something like 70% (or perhaps 80%) battery capacity. I’ve recently seen 150,000 km for 70% guaranteed. Plenty of people quite happy to continue using the EV with diminishing charge capacity and range well beyond that, perhaps for twice the guarantee point. I understand many of the older Nissan Leafs are still being used with as little as 20% remaining capacity.

Cars are essentially a problem solved. Just need to let the learning and cost curves do their bit as battery technology and economics advances, but you are still going to be in the ballpark of $100/kWh storage.

While you can also solve daily solar and load issues at that ballpark cost, you can’t seasonal ones, where you need costs much closer to $1/kWh, something inconceivable with batteries.

There’s probably a reason plants invented oils and sugars and not batteries, and god gave some countries hydro capacity.

EL