But cycle life is a central parameter for the cost of a battery, the longer it lasts the more rarely you have to replace it. In the longer term, a battery that lasts twice as long can be practically half as expensive.
No? Even if the new battery is 3x more expensive to build, and has 50 % of the capacity of a Li-ion battery, it can still have an advantage in large scale storage if it lasts for 10x as many cycles without degrading. At the end of the day, it’s a combination of parameters that determine which is the best for a given application, and high resistance to degradation can outweigh other parameters in many scenarios.
But cycle life is a central parameter for the cost of a battery, the longer it lasts the more rarely you have to replace it. In the longer term, a battery that lasts twice as long can be practically half as expensive.
Assuming the manufacturing costs (materials + utilities + other fees + labor + profit extraction) for the two types of batteries are equal, yes.
No? Even if the new battery is 3x more expensive to build, and has 50 % of the capacity of a Li-ion battery, it can still have an advantage in large scale storage if it lasts for 10x as many cycles without degrading. At the end of the day, it’s a combination of parameters that determine which is the best for a given application, and high resistance to degradation can outweigh other parameters in many scenarios.