The price of lithium ion batteries is likely to spike in the near future as demand is far outstripping production. While we are using them in ultramobile laptops, there is another quickly growing industry which consumes these same cylindrical lithium polymer based batteries, the electric car industry. The demand has grown enough that suppliers are about to demand a noticeable raise in prices and as there does not seem to be any production increase they are likely to get it. This will result in a small increase in price in ultraportables and a larger one in electric cars. There is a concern that DigiTimes did not raise in their post; that this level of imbalance in supply and demand can lead to knock-offs and lower quality suppliers being considered as a source simply to ensure that a product is available.
That could be somewhat of a concern; these batteries often hold a larger charge and are usually found in greater numbers than the ones currently in the news.
"In addition to the 18650 cylinder battery, the lithium polymer battery, which is commonly used in ultra-thin notebook models, is also suffering from shortages as many vendors including Apple, Acer and Asustek Computer, have all scheduled to released new ultra-thin notebooks models in the near future."
Here is some more Tech News from around the web:
- Microsoft releases Server 2016, complete with commercial Docker engine @ The Register
- Microsoft inserts 'new kind of computer … into our cloud' for speedier Azure services @ The Register
- Linux and Open Source Hardware for IoT @ Linux.com
- Cadence, TSMC advance 7nm FinFET designs for mobile and HPC platforms @ DigiTimes
- ZX Spectrum Vega+ defies naysayers with confirmed launch date @ The Inquirer
- Patch AGAIN: OpenSSL security fixes now need their own security fixes @ The Register
Both 18650 Li-Ion and LiPO
Both 18650 Li-Ion and LiPO batteries are also used in almost all personal vaporizers that are not sold by big tobacco. 18650s are also common in flashlights. LiPOs have been used in remote controlled cars and drones for quite some time. Nice to see the article here, just watch out for poor quality manufacturers, especially once the prices become more lucrative.
Expensive 18650s and cheap
Expensive 18650s and cheap rewrapped counterfeit batteries have been a pretty major issue in the vaping world for 5+ years. Sony VTC4s and VTC5s were the top rated for a long time, and were counterfeited by chinese sources and many people saw them venting because they were pushing them further that the cheap pieces of shit were able to handle.
It was bad enough at one point that people would find older stock of power tool battery packs and rip the 18650 cells out of them and resell them as single batteries.
Sony, Samsung, LG, and more all have factories making these kinds of batteries, so silly that none of them would increase production with rapidly increasing demand with electric cars.
Then again, Tesla didn’t build a whole new factory to make batteries for no reason. They must have figured out a while ago that they weren’t going to be able to buy enough batteries for cheap enough from the people already making them.