Thor Forums

[Chance]

Originally Posted by HMCSW

Battery costs or up over 400% in the last year. China is enjoying the increase as they build more coal fire power plants every day.

Retail battery costs which had been declining steadily bottomed out and are now increasing, but I don’t see evidence of quadrupling yet. I don’t know what auto industry is paying, though many are building their own batteries and wouldn’t necessarily share costs.

The common Lithium Iron Phosphate battery often used in RVs, manufactured and or sold by companies like BigBattery and many others, had dropped to as low as $300 per kWh of capacity. The same BigBattery company list prices as low as $400 per kWh today. Range depending on size and voltage has gone up from $300 ~ $400 to about $400 ~ $500, give or take. No doubt more expensive but not even doubled.

From my perspective an important question is whether high battery cost is temporary, or a long-term issue. Broad electrification of transportation depends on lower battery costs leading to cheaper EVs affordable to most buyers. Cost is not there yet, and moving in wrong direction.

I agree lowering CO2 is extremely complex when countries like US can’t control what others do. We can try to influence with trade, but that’s no longer going to work with economies as large and as powerful as China. They will put themselves first and will build coal plants if it’s in their best interest.