Source: Fully Recharged – by Bill McKibben – The Crucial Years
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last month, a Chinese automaker—he’s sometimes called Asia’s Elon Musk, though that seems like an undeserved insult—drove his company’s flagship model 600 miles on a single charge, besting Tesla’s 405-mile Model S range.
And the point of the RMI report is that this kind of progress is only going to continue, because
Rising energy density keeps unlocking new uses while declining costs enhance affordability and accelerate market uptake. This uptake, in turn, drives further cost reductions and continuous innovation — a cycle of self-perpetuating progress. The result is a domino effect, whereby batteries enter new markets, from country to country and from one sector to the next. Geopolitical tension has brought new players into the markets, speeding up the race to the top.
The pace of change keeps confounding experts, who consistently underestimate the potential and exponential growth of batteries. Defying past predictions, batteries now play a key role in the energy transition and their continued rapid growth signals a seismic shift in the energy system to come.
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