Rising battery prices threaten to derail arrival of affordable EVs

There are several factors driving the uptick in prices, but the single most important one is rising costs for materials including cobalt, nickel and lithium

Falling battery prices have been one of the most consistent trends in the electric vehicle industry for the last decade. Prices dropped from well over $1,000 per kilowatt hour in 2010 to $141 per kWh last year. This jump-started one of the biggest shifts in the auto industry in the last century, spurring automakers to plow billions of dollars into EVs.

The trend has ground to a halt this year, with BloombergNEF’s annual lithium-ion battery price survey showing a 7% increase in average pack prices in 2022 in real terms. This is the first increase in the history of the