The cost of battery packs has dropped 20% to $115 per kilowatt-hour (kWh) in 2024, according to BNEF’s annual battery price survey. An overcapacity in cell production, lower metal and component prices and the continued shift to using cheaper lithium iron phosphate batteries drove the decline, the survey said.
Our researchers forecast that average battery prices could fall towards $80/kWh by 2026, amounting to a drop of almost 50% from 2023, a level at which battery electric vehicles would achieve ownership cost parity with gasoline-fueled cars in the US on an unsubsidized basis. Source: Company data, Wood Mackenzie, SNE Research, Goldman Sachs Research
The cell-to-pack cost ratio was varied between the minimum and maximum values reported for battery-electric vehicles in the year 2020 by König et al. , corresponding to 1.94 and 2.21. Reducing the cell-to-pack cost ratio results in a higher cost-parity price, while it does not affect the maximum payload or battery volume.
We demonstrated techno-economic cell-selection by selecting a cell from a database containing 160 unique cells for a long-haul truck operating with a single driver in Germany. The results show that for BETs charged at 350 kW, the cell price needs to drop to ca. €60 to reach cost-parity with a DT.
The account requires an annual contract and will renew after one year to the regular list price. The cost of lithium-ion batteries per kWh decreased by 14 percent between 2022 and 2023. Lithium-ion battery price was about 139 U.S. dollars per kWh in 2023.
Our estimates give a price level of about 120 USD/kWh for the NMC811 and about 95 USD/kWh for the LFP cell. Regardless of a possible manufacturer's margin, the average prices for EV cells should therefore still be well above the 100 USD/kWh mark.