According to research by BloombergNEF, affordable electric cars will arrive longer than expected. In addition, electric car prices may experience a significant increase in the coming years. The biggest reason for this is the increase in the price of lithium-ion batteries used in electric cars. But there is another important underlying problem. Let’s take a look at the details of the news together.
War with Russia drives up the price of electric cars
According to research by BloombergNEF, rechargeable lithium-ion batteries have increased significantly in 2022. Therefore, affordable electric cars expected soon will not be produced for a long time. In fact, it is likely that there will be a large price increase for the electric car in the current situation.
Lithium-ion batteries rose 7 percent from the previous year in 2022 to $151 per kWh hour. This price increase in batteries was the first time since 2010. In addition to batteries, BloombergNEF also announced that there was an increase in the price of raw material sources used for batteries.
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One of the biggest reasons for the price increase in rechargeable lithium-ion batteries is the war environment between Russia and Ukraine. Russia has a significant share in the supply of Nickel, which is the main source of lithium-ion batteries. Nickel is also used in many other technological fields such as mobile phones and batteries. Russia, on the other hand, is the leader with 10 percent of the Nickel market.
Yayoi Sekine, head of energy storage at BloombergNEF, said:
“We’ve seen cost inflation for all input costs of batteries. Electric cars will certainly be costly. We’ve already seen the prices of electric cars go up.”
In addition, Yayoi Sekine stated that there was an increase in the price of lithium batteries compared to previous years due to the large increase in demand. In other words, apart from the tension between Russia and Ukraine, the increase in the demand balance also prevents the arrival of electric cars with affordable price tags. On the other hand, especially Elon Musk and other automotive companies want to launch their affordable electric cars.
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