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Comment by xyzzy21 | Hacker News Reader

If you charge every night, 1000 cycles is about 3 years.

Then they have to be replaced. And there STILL ISN'T any system or process for recycling lithium (lab only, nothing deployed or near to deployment for 5-10 years best case).

Part of why I used lead acid batteries for my solar storage - it's cheap, ubiquitous and environmentally far more green than lithium because of the existent network for lead and lead-acid recycling. Plus if it doesn't move (it doesn't) the much higher weight isn't a problem.

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1000 cycles in a 400 miles range electric car (Tesla sells one already, without this fancy battery) is 400,000 miles. Since this battery chemistry will enable longer range, let’s call it 500-600 miles, or 500,000 to 600,000 miles. That’s pretty high.

Also, it’s not true that lithium battery recycling is merely lab scale. Pilot plants, like those operated by Li-Cycle in Toronto, are well beyond lab scale. They’re also in the process of building commercial scale facilities as we speak, not “5-10 years best-case.”

Your argument may have been valid 5-10 years ago but isn’t today.

I'm not sure what counts as a cycle? Does say running it to 70% remaining for 10 days then recharge at night count as 10 cycles?

If so than the actual total lifetime max miles would be way shorter for most city people. Unless IDK if Tesla has a smart setting on their charger or something to maximize cycles at the risk of running out of range.

A full cycle means 0-100% (or roughly that). Charging 30% of your battery capacity counts as just 30% of a cycle in this case. And yeah, electric cars generally do daily cycling up to 80% capacity to extend capacity with 100% capacity being used for long trips.

From what I understood, a cycle doesn't equal a charging session. If you charge every night from 36% to 55% for example, it's not 1000 cycles in 3 years.

I charged my 7 years old EV a lot more than 1000 times and it still works fine.

I'd just like to clarify - a charge cycle is when 100% of charge has been depleted and recharged, be that in ten cycles of 10%, four cycles of 25%, one cycle of 100%, or anywhere in-between. So charging every night won't kill your battery in three years unless you're fully depleting the battery every single day.

But yeah, agreed that we really need to figure out sustainable battery tech, because otherwise EVs are just punting the pollution problem down the road to our kids.

> If you charge every night, 1000 cycles is about 3 years.

If you drain to 0% every day and charge back up to 100% every night it is. Another way you should think about 1000 cycles is that if you have a 300 mile range, it's 300,000 miles.

*If you charge from empty every night

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