But here again, high costs have been an obstacle. Customers, of course, expect power all the time.īatteries provide an obvious solution. But these carbon-free energy sources have a big downside: they only generate power some of the time. We've seen robust growth of solar and wind energy sources over the last decade. The cost advantage will be even bigger once you factor in the low cost of charging an electric car, so we can expect falling battery costs to accelerate the adoption of electric vehicles.īatteries are a key technology for de-carbonizing electric power, too. But once battery packs get cheap enough-experts estimate around $100 per kWh for non-luxury vehicles-electric cars should actually become cheaper than equivalent gas-powered cars. The high cost of batteries has historically made electric cars much more expensive than conventional cars. The trend is hugely significant because cheap batteries will be essential to shifting the world economy away from carbon-intensive energy sources like coal and gasoline.īatteries and electric motors have emerged as the most promising technology for replacing cars powered by internal combustion engines. That's the result of a virtuous circle where better, cheaper batteries expand the market, which in turn drives investments that produce further improvements in cost and performance.
Several forecasters project the average cost of a kilowatt-hour of lithium-ion battery capacity to fall below $100 by the mid-2020s. That's a massive drop, and experts expect continued-though perhaps not as rapid-progress in the coming decade. By 2019, the figure had fallen to $156, according to data compiled by BloombergNEF. In 2010, a lithium-ion battery pack with 1 kWh of capacity-enough to power an electric car for three or four miles-cost more than $1,000. Ahead of the event, we thought readers would enjoy this article, first published in May, about Tesla's role in the falling cost of batteries over the last decade. At today's "Battery Day" event, Tesla is expected to unveil new technologies that will drive the company's products over the next decade.
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