Battery prices are continuing to drop, but not as quickly as in past years.

A lithium-ion battery pack cost $132 per kilowatt-hour on average in 2021, according to research from BloombergNEF. This figure includes batteries used for stationary storage as well as all sorts of EVs.

• The price this year is 6% lower than the $140/kWh average-battery-pack cost in 2020, but BloombergNEF had originally projected a 9% decrease in 2021.

Why it matters: When it comes to electrifying transportation, battery price is a closely watched metric. Batteries make up at least 30% of the total cost of an EV, and the industry is aiming to hit $100/kWh in the effort to reach price parity with internal combustion engine vehicles.

The cost of batteries has dropped precipitously over the last decade—down from $1,220/kWh in 2010—but the rate of decline is slowing. In part, that’s because the raw materials used to make batteries, particularly lithium, are getting much more expensive.

• The rising price of materials like lithium, cobalt, and nickel could actually reverse the downward trend in battery prices.
• BYD, the second-largest battery maker in China, announced a 20% price increase for its batteries in November, citing the limited supply of raw materials.

The price of white gold

While lithium is a relatively abundant mineral, a lack of mining and refining capacity globally means that producers are already facing a lithium shortage.

• “This year was the year where supply got tight and then [lithium] has just fallen into shortage in the last few months,” Simon Moores, CEO of Benchmark Mineral Intelligence told Emerging Tech Brew.
• The result has been that the price of battery-grade lithium carbonate in November 2021 was more than five times that of November 2020.

Because of this mineral crunch, next year could be the first time battery prices rise since BloombergNEF began tracking them in 2012—analysts expect prices to be $3/kWh higher than 2021, though adjusting for inflation may see prices continue to fall in real dollars.

But, but, but…While the lithium supply could slow the decline in battery prices over the next few years, the long-term outlook is still positive. Experts say that by 2030, batteries will cost about half of the $140/kWh average price in 2020.

Increasing lithium extraction and refinement, streamlining manufacturing processes, and bringing more efficient next-generation battery chemistries to market will all contribute to making batteries more affordable in the long-run.

Click here to read the full story.—GD

Last week at the Amazon Web Services annual re:Invent conference, it announced the rollout of two new custom computing chips—and, according to AWS, they’re cheaper, better, faster, stronger.

Quick recap: AWS, Amazon’s hyper-successful cloud computing unit—responsible for two-thirds of the company’s operating income last year—spends the big bucks on data-center chips capable of handling all sorts of machine learning. Then, it rents out that compute to its clients.

• AWS has been working on bringing that chip manufacturing “in-house” since 2015, when it purchased an Israeli semiconductor startup for a rumored ~$350 million. On Tuesday, it announced the chip’s newest generation.

The new goods

First up is the Gravitron 3, an Arm–based chip that AWS says is 25% faster for general workloads than the previous version, and 3x faster for typical machine learning tasks—plus, the company claims it saves 60% of the energy. Its chief competitors: chips from Intel and AMD.

Then there’s Trn1, a new AWS “instance”—i.e., a virtual server that allows people to connect and run applications using Amazon’s cloud infrastructure. With bandwidth up to 800 gigabytes/second, according to Amazon, it’s 2x faster than what’s currently available.

• That’s partly because Trn1 is powered by Trainium, the buzzy chip AWS debuted last year to—as its name suggests—supercharge the training of deep learning models.
• AWS says Trn1 is especially created for AI tasks like image recognition, forecasting, fraud detection, and natural language processing. And that it’ll train models for ~40% less $$ than Nvidia’s leading chip.

But, but, but: Despite the cost and performance comparisons AWS is floating, it still has to maintain a healthy working relationship with key competitors like Nvidia, which AWS is currently working with to bring Android game streaming to mobile devices.

So AWS is treading lightly: Execs told Reuters that the new chip rollouts are all in the name of healthy market competition and bringing performance costs down.

Click here to view this story on-site.—HF

In our last reader poll, we asked if you all thought virtual fitting room technology would catch on in a meaningful way, and if you’d ever used it. We got 519 respondents to this one.

The results are in: More than one-third (35%) of you say you’ve used virtual try-on tech, which is a lot higher than the typical US adult, per a representative survey we did with Harris Poll in June. In that poll, just 10% of US adults said they’d tried out the tech.

• Separately, 69% of you feel the tech will eventually catch on, while just 12% think it won’t. The remaining 19% of you refused to speculate and answered: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

Zoom out: Those who are building the tech are, unsurprisingly, adamant that it is the missing link needed to make e-commerce a superior experience to in-store shopping. You can read all about it here.

Click here to take this week’s poll, about foldable phones.—DM

Stat: There were 2,317 papers accepted into the Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS) conference this year, up from 1,892 last year and just 567 in 2016. Much like the AI field itself, the AI conference has seen exponential growth of late.

Quote: “Life’s short so challenge the world’s most powerful tech company and fly a pirate flag above your headquarters.”—Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney, possibly in reference to its ongoing legal battle with Apple

Read: Why we need to research the consequences of geoengineering.

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All week: Speaking of NeurIPS, it kicks off today and wraps up 12/14. It’s the 35th instance of the AI conference, and we’re paying attention to keynote speeches on everything from machine learning and quantum computing to AI ethics.

Tuesday: Morgan Stanely will host the fourth-annual Space Summit, at the tail end of what’s been a banner year for commercial space projects.

Wednesday: UiPath earnings. The robotic-process-automation giant went public in April, and we’re looking to its performance as a bellwether for demand for automating knowledge work.

Last week, the US made its position on regulating autonomous weapons systems abundantly clear: Speaking at the United Nations, an official reportedly balked at the prospect of regulating the tech via a binding agreement.

Instead, the US proposed a nonbinding code of conduct.

• Prominent activists, several countries, and UN head António Guterres have all advocated for an outright ban of the tech.
• The UN has been debating the topic since 2017.

Catch up on the top Emerging Tech Brew stories from the past few editions:

• A primer on digital twin technology
• Fleets of electric buses, trucks, vans, and cars might soon help bolster the grid
• Tech is improving at an exponential rate. Here’s what that means for society