Global average lithium-ion battery pack prices have fallen 20% to US$115 per kWh this year, going below US$100 for electric vehicles (EVs), BloombergNEF said.
The 20% drop is the biggest annual fall since 2017, the clean energy market intelligence arm of media company Bloomberg said in its annual Lithium-Ion Battery Price Survey, which found a 14% fall last year.
The price figure is a combination of the cell and pack price, of US$78 and US$37 respectively, and the historical trajectory is shown in the chart further down. The firm expects another US$3 fall in 2025.
The main drivers of the fall are cell manufacturing overcapacity, economies of scale, low metal and component prices, a slowdown in the EV market and increased adoption of lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries, which are cheaper than nickel manganese cobalt (NMC) batteries.
The figure is an average across use cases. For battery electric vehicles (BEVs), the figure dropped below US$97 per kWh, below US$100 for the first time. EVs have reached parity with internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles in China, and the gap should begin to close elsewhere, the firm added.
Packs for battery energy storage systems (BESS) saw a similar trend, falling 19% to US$125 per kWh. Intense competition in China, oversupply in China and LFP adoption drove this, as well as a move to larger cell and system sizes.
The overcapacity is illustrated by the fact that the 3.1TWh of battery manufacturing capacity online today is two-and-a-half times the demand for lithium-ion batteries this year, BloombergNEF said.
On a regional basis, average battery pack prices were lowest in China, at $94/kWh, while packs in the US and Europe were 31% and 48% higher, and this gap has grown on previous years in light of ‘fierce competition in China’. The same trend has been noted for battery energy storage systems (BESS).
Evelina Stoikou, the head of BNEF’s battery technology team and lead author of the report, said: “The price drop for battery cells this year was greater compared with that seen in battery metal prices, indicating that margins for battery manufacturers are being squeezed. Smaller manufacturers face particular pressure to lower cell prices to fight for market share.”
BloombergNEF’s figures cover the whole year, but the latter part of the year may be seeing even lower prices.
BESS system-level costs in China have fallen to just US$82 per kWh in Q3, said Iola Hughes, head of research for Rho Motion (a downstream battery industry analysis firm recently acquired by lithium-ion battery materials supply chain analysts Benchmark Mineral Intelligence). Cell prices have even gone as low as US$40/45 per kWh in China, though a more typical average would be US$55, she added.
