Battery Prices and Lithium Futures

Dean Sigler Electric Powerplants, Sustainable Aviation Leave a Comment

EV World has a weekly email update to which your editor subscribes.  Because they provide a collection of articles and opinions from different sources, one often comes away questioning trends and even facts – or sometimes the meaning of it all. This week, an article referenced from Green Car Reports says that EV batteries may already have fallen to $250 per kilowatt hour.  This would be a godsend for sales of battery-powered cars, because sticker prices would drop sharply.   The article quotes Wolfgang Bernhart, a partner at Rolan Berger Strategy Consultants, that battery prices are already much lower than previous predictions would have indicated, possibly as low as $250 per kilowatt hour.  His analysis credited economies of scale for this drop, which is based on 2015 demand. This paradoxical approach notes that battery manufacturers must begin planning production now for 2015 EVs, with prices quoted to those manufacturers based on that future demand.  Such prices would be an optimistic five …