Lithium batteries should get increasingly cheaper as the decade goes on
Those of you who are interested in electric vehicles are well aware of the fact that all EVs, be they hybrids, plug-ins or pure EVs, are more expensive than their internal-combustion –engine predecesors, when you compare them. It is true that they will save you money in the long run, but the initial purchase can be quite the investment, and that is due to the fact that you are paying for new technology.
New technology is always expensive, be it due to the use of new materials, or new manufacturing techniques, new technologies always cost more than the status quo, however they also get cheaper as time goes on and what used to be new technology gets worked on further and bettered.
When it comes to electric vehicles, the technology and materials that are costing you the most are the lithium-ion batteries. The same things that power your laptop, smartphone or tablet, are basically used to power an EV, only you need many more of them, so the cost adds up pretty quickly.
However it is projected that the prices for automotive lithium-ion batteries may drop by two-thirds till around the turn of the decade.
Whenever there’s a lot of interest in a particular technological branch, more and more funds are poured into R&D by various interested parties, and this usually leads to the prices for components dropping – as the demand increases – and also there are advancements in anode, cathode and electrolyte technologies, as these parties experiment with different construction methods to make their batteries more efficient – be it increasing their capacity, or simply making them easier to charge quickly.
How much truth is in this projection? Well right now, about as much as in any other projection that has to do with the future, however we won’t have that much to wait till we can see if there is a trend towards the prices lowering, considering this won’t happen as if you were to flip a switch.
