Yeah yeah.
BOM of modern phones is typically around 1/3 or less of the sale price.
"economies of scale" regardless, they could have put working solid state batteries in every flagship three years ago and still made 50-70% profit margins, but then why would you upgrade?
The batteries are the only consumable parts left on modern electronics (besides maybe the OLED screen, but that's a five+ year issue that's been steadily improving for years), and soon to be the reason why EV's need replacing every 5-10 years. They don't have the mechanical wear/tear of ICE cars but manufacturers need to find ways to get consumers to replace their hardware every few years.
Nevertheless, companies like Tesla build huge factories to pump out inherently flawed EV batteries that have a limited usability life, and whose short range will only get ever shorter with time and temperature.
Look up the cost of non warranty battery replacements for EVs, and tell me this isn't the next cash cow for manufacturers.
What's more, since parts these days are typically serialized and coded to work with paired computers, you won't be able to do these repairs yourself.
I.e. swapping components from identical brand new iPhones or other smartphones, will lead to them becoming dysfunctional or completely non functional.
I guarantee you, when solid state/ceramic batteries come to market in volume, they will either be: ultra premium low volume in cars such as the Lucid Air, or gimped in some way to force maintenance/replacement after a set period of time, or be cost cut in capacity compared to their conventional alternatives, so the advantages are limited to safety, and small solid state cells are used in place of larger conventional arrays, rendering the increased longevity and density irrelevant due to increased load per cell.
Good engineering solutions don't make it into the final product unless they are long term profitable for the manufacturer. Nor do patents held for years typically lead to a product, because they only do so if they lead to profit, and better, longer lasting products aren't profitable. Circular economy "recycle" mentality is the latest way to encourage replacing things every 2-3 years.
EU and other governments had to mandate that car parts be available for a certain amount of years, I think seven, because manufacturers would stop selling certain parts, to force people to buy new cars, aftermarket parts wouldn't work unless you reprogrammed the ECU.
My bet is on the microcontroller for the battery failing after x number of years, and being impossible to replace by anyone other than the manufacturer, for "security" reasons. This is already the case with batteries from Apple (if you replace with a non paired, non Apple battery, your phone will lose functionality), and the rest of the industry tends to follow them.
