The price of lithium-ion battery cells declined by 97% in the last three decades. A battery with a capacity of one kilowatt-hour that cost $7500 in 1991 was just $181 in 2018. That’s 41 times less. What’s promising is that prices are still falling steeply: the cost halved between 2014 and 2018. A halving in only four years.
That's a huge drop in battery cost. The report says that a kilowatt-hour of usable EV battery capacity costs about $139 in 2023, and using 2023 constant dollars, it was $1,415/kWh in 2008. The estimate was calculated for production at a scale of at least 100,000 battery packs per year.
At our 2018 price, the battery costs around $7,300. Imagine trying to buy the same model in 1991: the battery alone would cost $300,000. Or take the Tesla Model S 75D, which has a 75 kWh battery. In 2018 the battery costs around $13,600; in 1991, it would have been $564,000. More than half a million dollars for a car battery.
“The reduction in battery costs could lead to more competitive EV pricing, more extensive consumer adoption, and further growth in the total addressable markets for EVs and batteries,” says Bhandari.
Lithium-ion batteries are the most commonly used. Lithium-ion battery cells have also seen an impressive price reduction. Since 1991, prices have fallen by around 97%. Prices fall by an average of 19% for every doubling of capacity. Even more promising is that this rate of reduction does not yet appear to be slowing down.
Battery pack prices are now expected to fall by an average of 11% per year from 2023 to 2030, writes Nikhil Bhandari, co-head of Goldman Sachs Research’s Asia-Pacific Natural Resources and Clean Energy Research, in the team’s report.