Rapidly falling costs of battery packs for electric vehicles (original) (raw)

Nature Climate Change volume 5, pages 329–332 (2015) Cite this article

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Abstract

To properly evaluate the prospects for commercially competitive battery electric vehicles (BEV) one must have accurate information on current and predicted cost of battery packs. The literature reveals that costs are coming down, but with large uncertainties on past, current and future costs of the dominating Li-ion technology1,2,3. This paper presents an original systematic review, analysing over 80 different estimates reported 2007–2014 to systematically trace the costs of Li-ion battery packs for BEV manufacturers. We show that industry-wide cost estimates declined by approximately 14% annually between 2007 and 2014, from above US$1,000 per kWh to around US$410 per kWh, and that the cost of battery packs used by market-leading BEV manufacturers are even lower, at US$300 per kWh, and has declined by 8% annually. Learning rate, the cost reduction following a cumulative doubling of production, is found to be between 6 and 9%, in line with earlier studies on vehicle battery technology2. We reveal that the costs of Li-ion battery packs continue to decline and that the costs among market leaders are much lower than previously reported. This has significant implications for the assumptions used when modelling future energy and transport systems and permits an optimistic outlook for BEVs contributing to low-carbon transport.

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Figure 1: Cost of Li-ion battery packs in BEV.

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Figure 2: Modelled experience curves for battery packs.

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Acknowledgements

This study is supported by grants from Nordic Energy Research (NORSTRAT, award number 06-64) and EU FP7 (PATHWAYS, award number 603942).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Stockholm Environment Institute, Linnégatan 87 D, 115 23 Stockholm, Sweden
    Björn Nykvist & Måns Nilsson
  2. Division of Environmental Strategies Research, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and the Built Environment, Drottning Kristinas väg 30, 100 44 Stockholm, Sweden
    Måns Nilsson

Authors

  1. Björn Nykvist
  2. Måns Nilsson

Contributions

B.N. conducted the main part of data gathering, review, analysis and writing. M.N. contributed to analysis and writing.

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Correspondence toBjörn Nykvist.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Nykvist, B., Nilsson, M. Rapidly falling costs of battery packs for electric vehicles.Nature Clim Change 5, 329–332 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate2564

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