As Vaclav Smil cautions us regarding Moore's Law, "the doubling time for transistor density is no guide to technical
progress generally."*
From BNN Bloomberg, a quick, sharp analysis, November 30:
....MUCH MORE(Bloomberg) -- Stay on top of the revolutions reshaping the auto world — from EVs to self-driving technology — by signing up for Hyperdrive’s newsletter here.
Hello Hyperdrivers, James Frith here. I wanted to follow up on a topic I first raised in September — battery costs. BloombergNEF has just published the 2021 battery price survey, one of the most important pieces of research we carry out annually.
The key takeaway: On a volume-weighted average basis across the battery industry, prices fell to $132 per kilowatt-hour in 2021. This is down from $140/kWh in 2020 (in real 2021 dollars). The 6% drop isn’t as drastic as the 9% decline we had forecast last year.
Why are this year’s prices higher than expected? The cost of raw materials used in the cathode — lithium, cobalt and nickel — and other key components including the electrolyte have risen this year, putting more pressure on the industry. The increases have been more prominent in the second half of 2021, and even led to Chinese battery manufacturer BYD announcing a 20% battery price increase in November.
The results aren’t as bad as I had feared when I previewed the early findings in September. There are four reasons behind this. First, prices for raw materials and components were relatively low in the first half of the year. This meant that for the first six months of 2021, battery prices were lower than they were in 2020, helping the yearly average to fall.
Second, low-cost lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries have been used more in 2021, in both the passenger EV and stationary storage sector. Despite the increase in the price of LFP cells in China in the second half of the year, the average price of these cells in the country is now the same as the average price of high-performing nickel-based cells in the first half, at around $100/kWh. Again, higher adoption of these low-cost batteries has helped to bring the average price down....
*A couple pertinent Smil posts:
April 2015
"Happy Birthday to Moore’s Law" (plus party pooper Vaclav Smil)
May 2015
Vaclav Smil On Energy: "Revolution? More like a crawl"
And our most recent Vaclav, October 18:
Vaclav Smil: "Want Not, Waste Not"
