What’s going on with lithium-ion battery prices?
In short, they’re plummeting, and the implications are just starting to ripple out across the automotive and power sectors.
A short thread:
Colin Mckerracher
6,184 posts
Colin Mckerracher
@colinmckerrache
Head of Clean Transport at @BloombergNEF. Canadian. Tweets about EVs, charging, batteries, clean aviation, shipping and more. Opinions are my own.
Oslo, Norway
Joined April 2013
- Things I like this morning: All the garbage trucks in my neighborhood have gone electric. Beautifully silent.
- You often hear people who claim that all these EV batteries "will end up in a landfill" because they can't be recycled. They won't. And the opposite problem is taking shape: there's more recycling capacity coming than there is battery scrap available bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
- Once you start to see how much urban space we've devoted to storing privately owned cars, you really can't unsee it.
- Shenzhen: May 1st: all new commercial light duty trucks = EVs From July 1: Only EVs allowed in ride hailing By Dec 31: Replace all remaining taxis with EVs Build 5,200 EV chargers for taxis Retire 20,000 diesel light duty trucks City policies will reshape auto markets.
- China installed 112,000 public EV charging points in December 2020 alone. That’s more than the size of the entire U.S. public charging network, installed in a single month.
- I'm sympathetic to the workers affected, but I can't help but feel this transition to EVs would have been a lot less painful if some automakers had spent the last decade preparing for it instead of fighting it.
- Replying to @colinmckerrachePrices for lithium iron phosphate (LFP) battery cells in in China fell 51% over the last year and now sit at $54/kWh. The average global price for these cells last year was $95/kWh.
- Do people realize just how good Chinese EVs are now?
- Our team at @BloombergNEF published our 10th annual Electric Vehicle Outlook today! A quick thread on some key findings:
- By the end of this year, passenger EVs and electric buses will be displacing about 350,000 barrels per day of oil demand. bloomberg.com/news/articles/… via @technology
- Replying to @colinmckerracheAnother way to look at it: Almost two-thirds of EVs available in China are already cheaper than internal combustion engine models. Still, intense price competition going on and it’s not clear how long everyone can hold on.
- There are now 5 million electric vehicles on the road globally. Three years ago there was 1 million.
- Replying to @colinmckerracheDrivers: Overcapacity. There is way more battery capacity than is currently needed, and more is coming. Utilization rates are falling and manufacturers are cutting prices to maintain market share. Margins are being compressed.
