29 ms·

Electric vehicle battery prices are falling faster than expected

565 points by dakna 3y ago

olddustytrail 3y ago
Look at that chart. "40% by 2025 (from 2022)". That's pretty impressive.
- SoftTalker 3y ago
  Looks like I'll be waiting until at least 2035 to consider an EV or home solar system.
  - thebruce87m 3y ago
    Why wait? You can get good deals on the second hand market now.
    - zdragnar 3y ago
      Why invest in second hand equipment now when new, warranted, more efficient versions will be the same price in a few years?
      - uoaei 3y ago
        In the case that opportunity cost calculations over the next few years dictate it, why wouldn't you buy now?
      - thebruce87m 3y ago
        Save money now on fuel. I used to spend £130/month on diesel. I now spend £30 on electricity. Save time, I used to spend time filling up my car. It now charges while I sleep.
      - toomuchtodo 3y ago
        Total cost of ownership. Easy to model in Excel in 30-60 minutes.
  - MostlyStable 3y ago
    So this is going to depend a lot on your driving habits, the cost of fuel in your area, the cost of electricity, and what kind of car you want/need, but I bought a new car earlier this year and the combination of those factors meant that an EV was cheaper than all comparable ICE vehicles (admittedly the EV was slightly smaller than we wanted and similar ICE vehicles would have better matched the size we wanted). The main thing is that the cost of fuel vs. the cost of electricity meant that we are saving ~$100/month and the difference in car payments for ICE vehicles vs EV was smaller than that. Although I'm pretty sure this only holds for new vs. new. The "used" market for EVs is almost non-existent and the savings you get is not nearly as large in used as it is for ICE. So if you are willing to buy used, then yes, ICE is still going to have an advantage for a while. But for new vehicles at least, modulo all those factors up above, it's already the case that some EVs are cheaper than comparable ICE vehicles.
    - Maxion 3y ago
      > So if you are willing to buy used, then yes, ICE is still going to have an advantage for a while. It does depend on where you are. In the Nordics an EV is definitely cheaper than even a used ICE. Biggest reason being the reduced fuel costs, but also lower tax.
    - worik 3y ago
      > The "used" market for EVs is almost non-existent Depends Here in New Zealand we get 3-year old ex Japanese vehicles at about half new price
      - xsmasher 3y ago
        In the US, a six year old Nissan Leaf goes for 2/3 of the price of a new one. It's a seller's market.
    - ff317 3y ago
      I can give a real datapoint: Family of 4 in TX, suburban neighborhood, and we drive a ton of mileage (~25-30K/year) running kids around town and the occasional roadtrips. ~2 years ago, we financed solar panels on the roof, and around the same time, bought a brand new Tesla Model Y. We came from a slightly-larger gas SUV before that. I also switched electricity plans, and opted for one with free nights (9p-9a) and a high rate during the day, which doesn't buy back any power from my solar, because the math works out better that way. So basically the car recharges for free overnight, and the solar helps offset a decent chunk of the daytime usage. When I net /everything/ out (electric bill changes, solar monthly bill, car payment swap, fuel, and maintenance costs), all total on average I'm coming out ~$700/month ahead from making these changes.
  - skhameneh 3y ago
    I would recommend getting quotes for solar from EnergySage and consider going without a battery. Incentives and prices will vary over time. While there is new "tech" for solar in the pipeline, it will take time to reach market. As prices decrease, incentives will as well. Be mindful of how incentives and financing may stack, EnergySage will provide all the info you need to make an informed decision.
    - rootusrootus 3y ago
      > EnergySage I love it. Went there, and it gave me two options. One with a 17.2 year payback, and a second where I get a loan and my 20 year savings are -$27K. Ha! Seems like they should just replace that second option with "we calculated this one and it turns out you'd lose a bunch of money, it's not feasible." Alas, 17.2 years is longer than my current roof has left before replacement, and almost certainly longer than I'll live here. Maybe the next house. Especially since I'm thinking of moving somewhere with enough open land that I can just DIY a nice ground-mount setup instead of mucking about with holes in the roof.
      - jandrese 3y ago
        "Solar Loans" are pretty much always a bad idea. Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs) are even worse. If you can't buy the system outright consider getting a Home Equity loan. This is exactly the sort of thing they are designed for and have much less overhead than any other option. In the US we suffer from high demand in a small market allowing installers to inflate the system prices considerably. We should be paying less than $2/watt installed, but you see quotes for like $4-$8/watt all the time because these companies get to pick their customers.
        PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
        > We should be paying less than $2/watt installed Hmm, not sure how much prices have changed, but I installed my own ground mount 7kW array(s) back in 2020, and that was right around $2/watt with me doing all the work except a concrete mixer dump session for the footings.
  - marssaxman 3y ago
    I can understand waiting on an EV, but why wait on solar? An EPA subsidized "energy efficiency" loan will cover the cost of the installation, with a payment lower than your power bill. You save money immediately and break even in ~7 years. I had solar panels installed a little over ten years ago, for environmental reasons, and I was surprised to learn that the economics were already good enough to make it work out as a benefit in purely financial terms. Equipment has only gotten better since then.
    - fbdab103 3y ago
      There are a ton of factors that go into making solar a sound decision. Will the person plan on living there for the next 5-10 years? Will installation costs finally start falling three years from now? Will the government institute a large grid connection fee so as to significantly impact payback periods? Is the roof going to need replacement within the next 10 years?
    - elzbardico 3y ago
      Net metering is in practice a subsidy for solar owners and probably won't last long. Without net metering things are not as good.
resolutebat 3y ago
The article mentions lower cost of raw materials, but the other factor driving this is more efficient batteries. CATL is starting mass production of 500 Wh/kg batteries, about twice as dense as the ones used today, which reduces the need for rare materials as well.
- cogman10 3y ago
  The other two things that are happening. * LFPs are really starting to take off which pull a lot of pressure off higher capacity NMC batteries. * Sodium ion batteries are just starting to hit the market which further reduce demands on Lithium. The ramp up on alternative chemistries is playing a fairly good role here and sodium ion will likely push prices down even more aggressively. Further, I expect that battery recycling will really start to be a major contributor to lower costs in the next 10 years or so. So I'd expect even lower prices as the battery market starts approaching saturation.
  - paddy_m 3y ago
    You seem to know a lot about battery tech. What do you read to keep up to date?
    - cogman10 3y ago
      Oh everywhere really. It's something I've been interested in for quiet a while. A battery related article was something I'd click on every time it came up on slashdot. Limiting factor [1] can be really good at breaking things down and covering current battery tech (they are fairly bullish on tesla). But I also get bits and pieces from google news feeds, renewable focused social media, and diving into anti-renewable social media :D. I don't mind reading into a critical piece to challenge my preconceived notions. It does help, though, to simply know who the big players are and watch what they are actually manufacturing (and then read up on that tech). I mostly ignore the "this battery is 8 billion times cheaper than lithium ion!" news stories because they are sensationalist. An article about CATL building a solid state battery line and now I want to know what it is, how it works, and what the cons are. CATL is probably the most interesting manufacturer to watch if you want to know where the cutting edge is. (Similar to TSMC being cutting edge when it comes to chip manufacturing). [1] https://www.youtube.com/@thelimitingfactor https://www.youtube.com/@thelimitingfactor
hunglee2 3y ago
New industries require a monopoly to create the infrastructure and standardisation to scale. Absent an Amazon or Apple-like private sector actor in EV's, it was the state which had to do it. Same goes with Small Reactor Nuclear, Solar / Wind / Wave, space exploration and the rest. Free market comes after
jjcm 3y ago
No surprise there. Increased demand -> increased economies of scale over time. What I'm really curious about is if a new battery with increased density heavily disrupts this. If you double density, then naively you need half the batteries / half the materials, or half the cost.
- PheonixPharts 3y ago
  > Increased demand -> increased economies With the caveat that demand is decreasing right now. [0] 0. https://www.wsj.com/business/autos/ev-makers-turn-to-discounts-to-combat-waning-demand-3aa77535 https://www.wsj.com/business/autos/ev-makers-turn-to-discoun...
  - hiddencost 3y ago
    The cycles aren't quite that tightly coupled, I think. The current battery tech is responding to demand (and demand predictions) from a couple years ago.
  - thehappypm 3y ago
    I can’t read that article, but, EV adoption is growing like crazy. They went from 6% of new car sales in Q3 2022 to 8% in Q32023. I suspect demand is softer than expected but I am struggling to see how it is “decreasing”.
    - jandrese 3y ago
      It's a decrease in the rate of growth, which of course means the industry is doomed doomed doomed according to a big oil guy at the Wall Street Journal. In reality there were some pretty big price bumps in the past year that softened demand and now they're having to walk those back via incentives. In other words normal business shit.
  - dkjaudyeqooe 3y ago
    That's a positive market move, because EV prices have been stupidly high and out of reach for most people in the market for a car. Manufacturers need to to focus on cost and scale, the thing they are, in theory, good at. Competitive pressures should drive the industry to achieve those things.
sapiogram 3y ago
Headline seems to contradict the article? It's predicting that prices will fall in the future.
- stavros 3y ago
  Yeah, but prices won't stay the same until 2025-01-01, when they'll all drop by 40% at once. It's linear, and they're dropping faster than expected.
2wrist 3y ago
It is interesting. I read recently that the next generation of BMW's (2026?) will have a 50% reduction on the cost of the battery. Hope it falls further.
hshsbs84848 3y ago
“Goldman Sachs Research estimates the EV market could achieve cost parity, without subsidies, with internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles around the middle of this decade” That would be quite the milestone I’m curious at what point it will flip and EVs become cheaper than ICE
- aaomidi 3y ago
  I feel like once the cost drops, it will be just in maintenance alone.
  - cfeduke 3y ago
    > it will be just in maintenance alone Can confirm; >5 years on a Model 3 and other than tires $0 in maintenance so far. >3 years on a Model Y and other than tires, $0 in maintenance so far. Absolute huge cost and time savings compared to my ICE vehicles, even when I perform my own maintenance on them.
    - toomuchtodo 3y ago
      Tesla will also come to my house (or any other address I specify within their service coverage area) with a mobile ranger to do the service I don't want to do myself (brake fluid exchange every 2 years). I wish other automakers would offer this. Not EV specific, but a material improvement in user experience imho. Major work will still require a shop visit (dropping the HV battery pack, motor replacement, other major mechanicals). (I am aware of YourMechanic and other similar services, but having the unified experience with a brand is nice and fancy, I can order it in the Tesla app and the maintenance records can easily transfer to the next VIN owner)
      - droopyEyelids 3y ago
        Its an improvement to you but a lost sales opportunity for the dealer. Im surprised this isnt mentioned more, but dealers make a ton of money pressuring people who come in for maintenance to get a bunch of other stuff. According to NADA in 202 49% of dealership profits came from the service and parts department, 36% from new vehicle sales, and 14% from used sales. Service and parts averages 60-70% profit on the transactions.
hristov 3y ago
This is very good news. Now I would like to see western car manufacturers lower prices of EVs in unison. Remember how in the 90s the intel pc completely overwhelmed and completely destroyed several layers of computing competitors. Intel and their PC manufacturing bretheren did that by providing a decent quality product at the lowest price. Then they used the benefits of manufacturing scale to improve the price quality ratio to the point where the intel PCs were higher performance than even the fancy work stations that cost 10 times as much. Well the chinese are about to do that with EVs. EVs are very similar to PCs in this respect, because they have a lot of potential for manufacturing efficiencies. Western manufacturers (other than Tesla) should drop their prices and try to get to scale as soon as possible. Tesla is at scale but it has a bunch of other problems. Elon should stop his public stage embarrassments (latest having to do with antisemitism and neo nazis) and should concentrate on making cars people like.
- 3cats-in-a-coat 3y ago
  I believe your analogy with computers is incorrect. Prices are dropping not because of rabid competition that tries and succeeds in one-upping each other with better cheaper tech. No, instead demand is rapidly drying up, because suddenly people realize most EVs are vastly, vastly inferior to what they were supposed to replace. The only EVs that make sense are small ones, small battery, for urban transport without the emissions, so you can keep the city air clean. From that point on, the bigger you get, the worse it gets. Notice that although Tesla has sold several million sedan/compacts and... uhmm "SUVs" (really: just slightly bigger Model 3s), they keep postponing the CyberTruck and Semi. They've only made 90 Semis and avoiding mass production. CyberTruck also won't be in mass production for at least a year more as they test the market (expect several thousand sold). That's because no amount of hype can hide the facts for too long. These cars are expensive to buy, but way more expensive to own. Insurance is shooting up to the sky as they have to write off entire cars over minor damage because they dented the battery and this sh*t can't be fixed. EVs will also be increasingly a liability when parked tightly below residential buildings, malls, ferries and so on. If it catches fire, the whole parking lot is done. The EV bubble is popping before your eyes. The future is not electric. The future is hybrid and I mean this in multiple ways. Diesel trucks, gas pickup trucks, hybrid family cars, and small electric urban cars and electric scooters.
endisneigh 3y ago
I wish you could buy Chinese EVs in United States.
- speedgoose 3y ago
  You can buy a Polestar I think.
  - ptr 3y ago
    Polestar is Swedish. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polestar https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polestar
    - stephen_g 3y ago
      They are designed in Sweden but Polestar (along with Volvo) is now owned by Geeley, a Chinese company.
      - mdasen 3y ago
        The Polestar vehicles are manufactured in China (in addition to being owned by Geeley, a Chinese company) If you check the vehicle info in the door, they note they're made in China: https://static.cargurus.com/images/forsale/2023/11/04/04/31/2024_polestar_2-pic-3555117585540801214-1024x768.jpeg https://static.cargurus.com/images/forsale/2023/11/04/04/31/...
      - leke 3y ago
        Volvo are owned by the Chinese!?
        speedgoose 3y ago
        Yes. Geely also own Lotus and started to produce heavy Lotus branded SUVs. MG is also Chinese.
      - ptr 3y ago
        Yes — the Wikipedia article that I linked says so as well. But Polestar is headquartered in Sweden, and the cars are designed by Swedes in Sweden. It’s a Swedish brand.
londons_explore 3y ago
I am dubious of these numbers. If I could really buy 1 kWh of cells for $130, I would expect to see them show up on eBay for not much more than that. (Or, even for less, because eBay has a lot of factory seconds, damaged goods, etc) However, prices for new bare cells on eBay is more than double the numbers quoted in this article. It makes me think there are market distortions going on, and the real price is differing from the advertised price.
- crooked-v 3y ago
  Or the people getting those prices are carmakers with negotiated bulk discounts, and they don't have any reason to sell their cells on eBay. > damaged goods A damaged battery is recycling material, not a resale item.
darkclouds 3y ago
[dead]
ARandomerDude 3y ago
Not total clickbait but close to it. The article uses words like “expect”, “might”, “could”, and “hope” throughout. Look at where 2023 is on those charts: way to the left on the x-axis. I hope batteries really do get cheaper in the future but this is optimistic prediction headlined as present-tense fact.
- elzbardico 3y ago
  And a prediction based in a transitory problem with the market, where we have lots of inventory and production cuts. Of course the prices of the raw materials for batteries are going to fall if the demand fall. Is it an indicative of a longer term trend? No.
dns_snek 3y ago
Cool. Let me know when I can buy a used one for 10k and expect to drive it for another 10 years.
- Tade0 3y ago
  I can't help but wonder if that's possible with a modern ICE car. It's not like their quality is worse - far from that. It's just that they're engineered to last a very specific engine hours figure.
  - maximus-decimus 3y ago
    In Canada, it's also gonna be a rust bucket before then.
- edent 3y ago
  You can buy a 2nd hand Zoe, e-Up, or i3 for under £10k - https://www.autotrader.co.uk/car-search?advertising-location=at_cars&fuel-type=Electric&include-delivery-option=on&moreOptions=visible&postcode=w1a1aa&price-from=5500&price-to=10000&sort=relevance https://www.autotrader.co.uk/car-search?advertising-location... Will they last 10 years? Probably too early to say. Battery degradation isn't the problem people thought it would be. But anything mechanical is going to need some maintenance.
elzbardico 3y ago
There's a lot of inventory right now in the industry, so there production cuts across the industry, thus lowering the demand for raw materials, decreasing their prices.
6stringmerc 3y ago
Doesn’t matter the engineering approach is still all wrong. Basic transport in the NEV class is far superior and benefits with tech true innovation. Bigger heavier more shit to break is what I see Lincoln advertise meanwhile in Texas car payment insurance gas parking tolls (sound familiar?) take a huge chunk of income. It’s dumb. Fix this first.
xbmcuser 3y ago
I am more interested how this is also bringing price of batteries down generally. With some chinese factories starting mass manufacturing sodium ion batteries this year. I think we are fast moving towards an electricity revolution because of how solar/wind and battery prices are falling and a lot of people have still not woken up to the fact. Cost of solar and battery is going to be half in 5 years maybe even 1/4 in 10 years. It is the similar thing as the doubling of processor speed we had for computer not as fast but similar.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
switch007 3y ago
What does past data about car prices and car manufacturers’ responses to falling costs tell us about how manufacturers price vehicles?
elihu 3y ago
> "Goldman Sachs Research now expects battery prices to fall to $99 per kilowatt hour (kWh) of storage capacity by 2025 — a 40% decrease from 2022 (the previous forecast was for a 33% decline). Our analysts estimate that almost half of the decline will come from declining prices of EV raw materials such as lithium, nickel, and cobalt." It wouldn't surprise me if BYD, CATL, and Tesla were already there now. Not sure if there's public information on that though. I'd imagine they'd keep it a secret if they can. Funny they mention nickel and cobalt, since they're not actually required. I think LFP cells are somewhere around half the EV-battery market these days.
- sunshinesnacks 3y ago
  > Funny they mention nickel and cobalt, since they're not actually required. I think LFP cells are somewhere around half the EV-battery market these days. Agreed!
wg0 3y ago
Same rosey picture fluff. That's Hallmark of almost any piece on fusion, self driving, AGI, VR, electric cars, electric planes and quantum computers etc. Oh, available tomorrow. Done deal. Find me a after the market Chinese cell phone battery that lasts 24 hours or an after the market laptop battery that lasts two hours on a charge and I'll be a devotee to Chinese electric cars for whole my life. This feel good tech utopia of endless possibilities where wind can power terra watts, sunlight can do wonders and such sells well but otherwise is irrational and non scientific. At the moment. Problems are harder than that.
- Supermancho 3y ago
  See Peter Zeihans concise Electric Car breakdown on youtube. Major EV Manufacturing expansion has been cancelled by automakers, including Tesla The manufacturing costs that were propped up by cheap Chinese labor and exotics is ending. Not enough exotics available for a long term plan to convert the US to EVs. Cost ends up driving EV prices too high for foreseeable future. Not enough infrastructure in the US. This isnt changing anytime soon. Money is tight and risk averse consumers avoid EVs, especially anything that isnt the current models.
fulafel 3y ago
This is car-centric. Oddly e-bike prices have continued to rise without a real correction after the covid shortage constrained supply price spike, and the used market is kept from balancing it out through very high replacement battery pricing with various vendor lock in mechanisms. (eg: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1396568/average-e-bike-price-in-europe/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1396568/average-e-bike-p...)
- kibwen 3y ago
  Vendor lock-in for batteries is a bad thing, but I'm pretty sure that e-bike prices would be rising regardless because demand is skyrocketing around the world.
  - fulafel 3y ago
    I think e-car shipments has been growing faster still, but they have not been getting more expensive. Eg this says the e-bikes YoY growth has been only 10% ish and forecasted to continue that way: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1261084/global-e-bike-market-forecast/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1261084/global-e-bike-ma...
    - kibwen 3y ago
      According to this, e-bikes are outselling EVs in the US: https://electrek.co/2022/01/26/electric-bicycles-are-now-outselling-electric-cars-and-plug-in-hybrids-combined-in-the-us/ https://electrek.co/2022/01/26/electric-bicycles-are-now-out... And that's despite the fact that the US lags behind the Asian and European markets when it comes to e-bike demand: https://electrek.co/2022/02/08/us-electric-bicycle-sales-tracking-towards-1-million-annually-global-market-heading-to-40b-with-a-b/ https://electrek.co/2022/02/08/us-electric-bicycle-sales-tra... Without more data, I think it's too soon to conclude that EVs are outselling e-bikes, at least in terms of units shipped. And the fact that EV subsidies are expiring around the globe puts downward pressure on EV demand in a way that doesn't apply to e-bikes.
      - 3y ago
fma 3y ago
"Our analysts estimate that almost half of the decline will come from declining prices of EV raw materials..." Is Goldman confident this is a long term trend? I didn't see in their report that the decline in price is due to permanent increased supply or increased efficient extraction etc...
- mech765 3y ago
  I know that Tesla, for example, has either reduced or eliminated Cobalt from their batteries. Changing composition can reduce material cost.
thelastgallon 3y ago
This is incredible news! EVs provide the sweetest kind of demand for a grid, they are parked 23 hours a day, can charge whenever power is free and less than free. Power prices go negative 200 million times/year[1]. Batteries, Solar and Wind and still in the early stages, as volume grows, both will get a lot cheaper. Batteries add the much needed gigantic-distributed-storage-reservoir, soaking up all the excess production that is currently wasted. An insightful comment from a HNer (don't remember who), if there is excess production we have to either move it across time or across space. Across space requires building transmission lines (costly, takes a decade). Across time is easy, we just need more EVs, everywhere. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:3-Learning-curves-for-electricity-prices.png https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:3-Learning-curves-for-e... (2019 article) “Batteries will fall much faster than you are forecasting.” The key determinant of our forecast is the relationship between price and volume. From the observed historical values, we calculate a learning rate of around 18%. This means that for every doubling of cumulative volume, we observe an 18% reduction in price. Based on this observation, and our battery demand forecast, we expect the price of an average battery pack to be around $94/kWh by 2024 and $62/kWh by 2030: https://about.bnef.com/blog/behind-scenes-take-lithium-ion-battery-prices https://about.bnef.com/blog/behind-scenes-take-lithium-ion-b... Learning rate for Solar is 20%. According to this article (https://ourworldindata.org/learning-curve https://ourworldindata.org/learning-curve), the price declined from $106 to $0.38 per watt in these four decades. A decline of 99.6%. It looks like modules are a lot more cheaper, its now $0.14 per watt for TOPcon(28% efficiency) and $0.12 per watt for PERC (24% efficiency). A common critique that comes up is, we don't have electricity for all the EVs. This is nonsense. (1) Renewable energy is currently curtailed. A lot of production is wasted, because there is no demand at that time. EVs absorb all that. (2) See the calculations here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35845334 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35845334 (3) Electricity is used heavily in fossil fuel and oil production. We simply shift it to EVs. No additional demand. (4) Right now, everyone's energy is fragmented: natural gas for cooking, water heating, boiler for heating, gas for cars and electricity. When people switch to EVs, a lot of them switch to solar, consolidating all energy, saving ~$1000/month. And also lowering consumption from the grid. (5) We somehow found a ton of electricity everywhere for bitcoin, 127 TWh. We can definitely find electricity for EVs. But, more importantly, EVs can replace natural gas peaker plants (the costliest part of electricity) and make some money! Powerwall owners are making $150/day: https://electrek.co/2023/07/05/tesla-electric-customers-report-making-150-day/ https://electrek.co/2023/07/05/tesla-electric-customers-repo.... When virtual power plants start popping up, there will be a huge rush to buy EVs. A ton of people are buying homes for 500K+ to put them up on airbnb and they barely make 100/day. Owning an EV (replacing your existing ICE) and make $100+ per day just by opting in to participate in a VPP is the very definition of passive income. [1]https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-08-30/trapped-renewable-energy-sends-us-power-prices-below-zero?embedded-checkout=true https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-08-30/trapped-r...
goodSteveramos 3y ago
Headline is false. The data shows virtually no change over the last 4 years and PREDICTS prices will fall 40% by 2030.

565 points by dakna 3y ago

olddustytrail 3y ago

Look at that chart. "40% by 2025 (from 2022)". That's pretty impressive.

SoftTalker 3y ago
Looks like I'll be waiting until at least 2035 to consider an EV or home solar system.
- thebruce87m 3y ago
  Why wait? You can get good deals on the second hand market now.
  - zdragnar 3y ago
    Why invest in second hand equipment now when new, warranted, more efficient versions will be the same price in a few years?
    - uoaei 3y ago
      In the case that opportunity cost calculations over the next few years dictate it, why wouldn't you buy now?
    - thebruce87m 3y ago
      Save money now on fuel. I used to spend £130/month on diesel. I now spend £30 on electricity. Save time, I used to spend time filling up my car. It now charges while I sleep.
    - toomuchtodo 3y ago
      Total cost of ownership. Easy to model in Excel in 30-60 minutes.
- MostlyStable 3y ago
  So this is going to depend a lot on your driving habits, the cost of fuel in your area, the cost of electricity, and what kind of car you want/need, but I bought a new car earlier this year and the combination of those factors meant that an EV was cheaper than all comparable ICE vehicles (admittedly the EV was slightly smaller than we wanted and similar ICE vehicles would have better matched the size we wanted). The main thing is that the cost of fuel vs. the cost of electricity meant that we are saving ~$100/month and the difference in car payments for ICE vehicles vs EV was smaller than that. Although I'm pretty sure this only holds for new vs. new. The "used" market for EVs is almost non-existent and the savings you get is not nearly as large in used as it is for ICE. So if you are willing to buy used, then yes, ICE is still going to have an advantage for a while. But for new vehicles at least, modulo all those factors up above, it's already the case that some EVs are cheaper than comparable ICE vehicles.
  - Maxion 3y ago
    > So if you are willing to buy used, then yes, ICE is still going to have an advantage for a while. It does depend on where you are. In the Nordics an EV is definitely cheaper than even a used ICE. Biggest reason being the reduced fuel costs, but also lower tax.
  - worik 3y ago
    > The "used" market for EVs is almost non-existent Depends Here in New Zealand we get 3-year old ex Japanese vehicles at about half new price
    - xsmasher 3y ago
      In the US, a six year old Nissan Leaf goes for 2/3 of the price of a new one. It's a seller's market.
  - ff317 3y ago
    I can give a real datapoint: Family of 4 in TX, suburban neighborhood, and we drive a ton of mileage (~25-30K/year) running kids around town and the occasional roadtrips. ~2 years ago, we financed solar panels on the roof, and around the same time, bought a brand new Tesla Model Y. We came from a slightly-larger gas SUV before that. I also switched electricity plans, and opted for one with free nights (9p-9a) and a high rate during the day, which doesn't buy back any power from my solar, because the math works out better that way. So basically the car recharges for free overnight, and the solar helps offset a decent chunk of the daytime usage. When I net /everything/ out (electric bill changes, solar monthly bill, car payment swap, fuel, and maintenance costs), all total on average I'm coming out ~$700/month ahead from making these changes.
- skhameneh 3y ago
  I would recommend getting quotes for solar from EnergySage and consider going without a battery. Incentives and prices will vary over time. While there is new "tech" for solar in the pipeline, it will take time to reach market. As prices decrease, incentives will as well. Be mindful of how incentives and financing may stack, EnergySage will provide all the info you need to make an informed decision.
  - rootusrootus 3y ago
    > EnergySage I love it. Went there, and it gave me two options. One with a 17.2 year payback, and a second where I get a loan and my 20 year savings are -$27K. Ha! Seems like they should just replace that second option with "we calculated this one and it turns out you'd lose a bunch of money, it's not feasible." Alas, 17.2 years is longer than my current roof has left before replacement, and almost certainly longer than I'll live here. Maybe the next house. Especially since I'm thinking of moving somewhere with enough open land that I can just DIY a nice ground-mount setup instead of mucking about with holes in the roof.
    - jandrese 3y ago
      "Solar Loans" are pretty much always a bad idea. Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs) are even worse. If you can't buy the system outright consider getting a Home Equity loan. This is exactly the sort of thing they are designed for and have much less overhead than any other option. In the US we suffer from high demand in a small market allowing installers to inflate the system prices considerably. We should be paying less than $2/watt installed, but you see quotes for like $4-$8/watt all the time because these companies get to pick their customers.
      - PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
        > We should be paying less than $2/watt installed Hmm, not sure how much prices have changed, but I installed my own ground mount 7kW array(s) back in 2020, and that was right around $2/watt with me doing all the work except a concrete mixer dump session for the footings.
- marssaxman 3y ago
  I can understand waiting on an EV, but why wait on solar? An EPA subsidized "energy efficiency" loan will cover the cost of the installation, with a payment lower than your power bill. You save money immediately and break even in ~7 years. I had solar panels installed a little over ten years ago, for environmental reasons, and I was surprised to learn that the economics were already good enough to make it work out as a benefit in purely financial terms. Equipment has only gotten better since then.
  - fbdab103 3y ago
    There are a ton of factors that go into making solar a sound decision. Will the person plan on living there for the next 5-10 years? Will installation costs finally start falling three years from now? Will the government institute a large grid connection fee so as to significantly impact payback periods? Is the roof going to need replacement within the next 10 years?
  - elzbardico 3y ago
    Net metering is in practice a subsidy for solar owners and probably won't last long. Without net metering things are not as good.

resolutebat 3y ago

The article mentions lower cost of raw materials, but the other factor driving this is more efficient batteries. CATL is starting mass production of 500 Wh/kg batteries, about twice as dense as the ones used today, which reduces the need for rare materials as well.

cogman10 3y ago
The other two things that are happening. * LFPs are really starting to take off which pull a lot of pressure off higher capacity NMC batteries. * Sodium ion batteries are just starting to hit the market which further reduce demands on Lithium. The ramp up on alternative chemistries is playing a fairly good role here and sodium ion will likely push prices down even more aggressively. Further, I expect that battery recycling will really start to be a major contributor to lower costs in the next 10 years or so. So I'd expect even lower prices as the battery market starts approaching saturation.
- paddy_m 3y ago
  You seem to know a lot about battery tech. What do you read to keep up to date?
  - cogman10 3y ago
    Oh everywhere really. It's something I've been interested in for quiet a while. A battery related article was something I'd click on every time it came up on slashdot. Limiting factor [1] can be really good at breaking things down and covering current battery tech (they are fairly bullish on tesla). But I also get bits and pieces from google news feeds, renewable focused social media, and diving into anti-renewable social media :D. I don't mind reading into a critical piece to challenge my preconceived notions. It does help, though, to simply know who the big players are and watch what they are actually manufacturing (and then read up on that tech). I mostly ignore the "this battery is 8 billion times cheaper than lithium ion!" news stories because they are sensationalist. An article about CATL building a solid state battery line and now I want to know what it is, how it works, and what the cons are. CATL is probably the most interesting manufacturer to watch if you want to know where the cutting edge is. (Similar to TSMC being cutting edge when it comes to chip manufacturing). [1] https://www.youtube.com/@thelimitingfactor https://www.youtube.com/@thelimitingfactor

hunglee2 3y ago

New industries require a monopoly to create the infrastructure and standardisation to scale. Absent an Amazon or Apple-like private sector actor in EV's, it was the state which had to do it. Same goes with Small Reactor Nuclear, Solar / Wind / Wave, space exploration and the rest. Free market comes after

jjcm 3y ago

No surprise there. Increased demand -> increased economies of scale over time. What I'm really curious about is if a new battery with increased density heavily disrupts this. If you double density, then naively you need half the batteries / half the materials, or half the cost.

PheonixPharts 3y ago
> Increased demand -> increased economies With the caveat that demand is decreasing right now. [0] 0. https://www.wsj.com/business/autos/ev-makers-turn-to-discounts-to-combat-waning-demand-3aa77535 https://www.wsj.com/business/autos/ev-makers-turn-to-discoun...
- hiddencost 3y ago
  The cycles aren't quite that tightly coupled, I think. The current battery tech is responding to demand (and demand predictions) from a couple years ago.
- thehappypm 3y ago
  I can’t read that article, but, EV adoption is growing like crazy. They went from 6% of new car sales in Q3 2022 to 8% in Q32023. I suspect demand is softer than expected but I am struggling to see how it is “decreasing”.
  - jandrese 3y ago
    It's a decrease in the rate of growth, which of course means the industry is doomed doomed doomed according to a big oil guy at the Wall Street Journal. In reality there were some pretty big price bumps in the past year that softened demand and now they're having to walk those back via incentives. In other words normal business shit.
- dkjaudyeqooe 3y ago
  That's a positive market move, because EV prices have been stupidly high and out of reach for most people in the market for a car. Manufacturers need to to focus on cost and scale, the thing they are, in theory, good at. Competitive pressures should drive the industry to achieve those things.

sapiogram 3y ago

Headline seems to contradict the article? It's predicting that prices will fall in the future.

stavros 3y ago
Yeah, but prices won't stay the same until 2025-01-01, when they'll all drop by 40% at once. It's linear, and they're dropping faster than expected.

2wrist 3y ago

It is interesting. I read recently that the next generation of BMW's (2026?) will have a 50% reduction on the cost of the battery. Hope it falls further.

hshsbs84848 3y ago

“Goldman Sachs Research estimates the EV market could achieve cost parity, without subsidies, with internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles around the middle of this decade” That would be quite the milestone I’m curious at what point it will flip and EVs become cheaper than ICE

aaomidi 3y ago
I feel like once the cost drops, it will be just in maintenance alone.
- cfeduke 3y ago
  > it will be just in maintenance alone Can confirm; >5 years on a Model 3 and other than tires $0 in maintenance so far. >3 years on a Model Y and other than tires, $0 in maintenance so far. Absolute huge cost and time savings compared to my ICE vehicles, even when I perform my own maintenance on them.
  - toomuchtodo 3y ago
    Tesla will also come to my house (or any other address I specify within their service coverage area) with a mobile ranger to do the service I don't want to do myself (brake fluid exchange every 2 years). I wish other automakers would offer this. Not EV specific, but a material improvement in user experience imho. Major work will still require a shop visit (dropping the HV battery pack, motor replacement, other major mechanicals). (I am aware of YourMechanic and other similar services, but having the unified experience with a brand is nice and fancy, I can order it in the Tesla app and the maintenance records can easily transfer to the next VIN owner)
    - droopyEyelids 3y ago
      Its an improvement to you but a lost sales opportunity for the dealer. Im surprised this isnt mentioned more, but dealers make a ton of money pressuring people who come in for maintenance to get a bunch of other stuff. According to NADA in 202 49% of dealership profits came from the service and parts department, 36% from new vehicle sales, and 14% from used sales. Service and parts averages 60-70% profit on the transactions.

hristov 3y ago

This is very good news. Now I would like to see western car manufacturers lower prices of EVs in unison. Remember how in the 90s the intel pc completely overwhelmed and completely destroyed several layers of computing competitors. Intel and their PC manufacturing bretheren did that by providing a decent quality product at the lowest price. Then they used the benefits of manufacturing scale to improve the price quality ratio to the point where the intel PCs were higher performance than even the fancy work stations that cost 10 times as much. Well the chinese are about to do that with EVs. EVs are very similar to PCs in this respect, because they have a lot of potential for manufacturing efficiencies. Western manufacturers (other than Tesla) should drop their prices and try to get to scale as soon as possible. Tesla is at scale but it has a bunch of other problems. Elon should stop his public stage embarrassments (latest having to do with antisemitism and neo nazis) and should concentrate on making cars people like.

3cats-in-a-coat 3y ago
I believe your analogy with computers is incorrect. Prices are dropping not because of rabid competition that tries and succeeds in one-upping each other with better cheaper tech. No, instead demand is rapidly drying up, because suddenly people realize most EVs are vastly, vastly inferior to what they were supposed to replace. The only EVs that make sense are small ones, small battery, for urban transport without the emissions, so you can keep the city air clean. From that point on, the bigger you get, the worse it gets. Notice that although Tesla has sold several million sedan/compacts and... uhmm "SUVs" (really: just slightly bigger Model 3s), they keep postponing the CyberTruck and Semi. They've only made 90 Semis and avoiding mass production. CyberTruck also won't be in mass production for at least a year more as they test the market (expect several thousand sold). That's because no amount of hype can hide the facts for too long. These cars are expensive to buy, but way more expensive to own. Insurance is shooting up to the sky as they have to write off entire cars over minor damage because they dented the battery and this sh*t can't be fixed. EVs will also be increasingly a liability when parked tightly below residential buildings, malls, ferries and so on. If it catches fire, the whole parking lot is done. The EV bubble is popping before your eyes. The future is not electric. The future is hybrid and I mean this in multiple ways. Diesel trucks, gas pickup trucks, hybrid family cars, and small electric urban cars and electric scooters.

endisneigh 3y ago

I wish you could buy Chinese EVs in United States.

speedgoose 3y ago
You can buy a Polestar I think.
- ptr 3y ago
  Polestar is Swedish. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polestar https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polestar
  - stephen_g 3y ago
    They are designed in Sweden but Polestar (along with Volvo) is now owned by Geeley, a Chinese company.
    - mdasen 3y ago
      The Polestar vehicles are manufactured in China (in addition to being owned by Geeley, a Chinese company) If you check the vehicle info in the door, they note they're made in China: https://static.cargurus.com/images/forsale/2023/11/04/04/31/2024_polestar_2-pic-3555117585540801214-1024x768.jpeg https://static.cargurus.com/images/forsale/2023/11/04/04/31/...
    - leke 3y ago
      Volvo are owned by the Chinese!?
      - speedgoose 3y ago
        Yes. Geely also own Lotus and started to produce heavy Lotus branded SUVs. MG is also Chinese.
    - ptr 3y ago
      Yes — the Wikipedia article that I linked says so as well. But Polestar is headquartered in Sweden, and the cars are designed by Swedes in Sweden. It’s a Swedish brand.

londons_explore 3y ago

I am dubious of these numbers. If I could really buy 1 kWh of cells for $130, I would expect to see them show up on eBay for not much more than that. (Or, even for less, because eBay has a lot of factory seconds, damaged goods, etc) However, prices for new bare cells on eBay is more than double the numbers quoted in this article. It makes me think there are market distortions going on, and the real price is differing from the advertised price.

crooked-v 3y ago
Or the people getting those prices are carmakers with negotiated bulk discounts, and they don't have any reason to sell their cells on eBay. > damaged goods A damaged battery is recycling material, not a resale item.

darkclouds 3y ago

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ARandomerDude 3y ago

Not total clickbait but close to it. The article uses words like “expect”, “might”, “could”, and “hope” throughout. Look at where 2023 is on those charts: way to the left on the x-axis. I hope batteries really do get cheaper in the future but this is optimistic prediction headlined as present-tense fact.

elzbardico 3y ago
And a prediction based in a transitory problem with the market, where we have lots of inventory and production cuts. Of course the prices of the raw materials for batteries are going to fall if the demand fall. Is it an indicative of a longer term trend? No.

dns_snek 3y ago

Cool. Let me know when I can buy a used one for 10k and expect to drive it for another 10 years.

Tade0 3y ago
I can't help but wonder if that's possible with a modern ICE car. It's not like their quality is worse - far from that. It's just that they're engineered to last a very specific engine hours figure.
- maximus-decimus 3y ago
  In Canada, it's also gonna be a rust bucket before then.
edent 3y ago
You can buy a 2nd hand Zoe, e-Up, or i3 for under £10k - https://www.autotrader.co.uk/car-search?advertising-location=at_cars&fuel-type=Electric&include-delivery-option=on&moreOptions=visible&postcode=w1a1aa&price-from=5500&price-to=10000&sort=relevance https://www.autotrader.co.uk/car-search?advertising-location... Will they last 10 years? Probably too early to say. Battery degradation isn't the problem people thought it would be. But anything mechanical is going to need some maintenance.

elzbardico 3y ago

There's a lot of inventory right now in the industry, so there production cuts across the industry, thus lowering the demand for raw materials, decreasing their prices.

6stringmerc 3y ago

Doesn’t matter the engineering approach is still all wrong. Basic transport in the NEV class is far superior and benefits with tech true innovation. Bigger heavier more shit to break is what I see Lincoln advertise meanwhile in Texas car payment insurance gas parking tolls (sound familiar?) take a huge chunk of income. It’s dumb. Fix this first.

xbmcuser 3y ago

I am more interested how this is also bringing price of batteries down generally. With some chinese factories starting mass manufacturing sodium ion batteries this year. I think we are fast moving towards an electricity revolution because of how solar/wind and battery prices are falling and a lot of people have still not woken up to the fact. Cost of solar and battery is going to be half in 5 years maybe even 1/4 in 10 years. It is the similar thing as the doubling of processor speed we had for computer not as fast but similar.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

switch007 3y ago

What does past data about car prices and car manufacturers’ responses to falling costs tell us about how manufacturers price vehicles?

elihu 3y ago

> "Goldman Sachs Research now expects battery prices to fall to $99 per kilowatt hour (kWh) of storage capacity by 2025 — a 40% decrease from 2022 (the previous forecast was for a 33% decline). Our analysts estimate that almost half of the decline will come from declining prices of EV raw materials such as lithium, nickel, and cobalt." It wouldn't surprise me if BYD, CATL, and Tesla were already there now. Not sure if there's public information on that though. I'd imagine they'd keep it a secret if they can. Funny they mention nickel and cobalt, since they're not actually required. I think LFP cells are somewhere around half the EV-battery market these days.

sunshinesnacks 3y ago
> Funny they mention nickel and cobalt, since they're not actually required. I think LFP cells are somewhere around half the EV-battery market these days. Agreed!

wg0 3y ago

Same rosey picture fluff. That's Hallmark of almost any piece on fusion, self driving, AGI, VR, electric cars, electric planes and quantum computers etc. Oh, available tomorrow. Done deal. Find me a after the market Chinese cell phone battery that lasts 24 hours or an after the market laptop battery that lasts two hours on a charge and I'll be a devotee to Chinese electric cars for whole my life. This feel good tech utopia of endless possibilities where wind can power terra watts, sunlight can do wonders and such sells well but otherwise is irrational and non scientific. At the moment. Problems are harder than that.

Supermancho 3y ago
See Peter Zeihans concise Electric Car breakdown on youtube. Major EV Manufacturing expansion has been cancelled by automakers, including Tesla The manufacturing costs that were propped up by cheap Chinese labor and exotics is ending. Not enough exotics available for a long term plan to convert the US to EVs. Cost ends up driving EV prices too high for foreseeable future. Not enough infrastructure in the US. This isnt changing anytime soon. Money is tight and risk averse consumers avoid EVs, especially anything that isnt the current models.

fulafel 3y ago

This is car-centric. Oddly e-bike prices have continued to rise without a real correction after the covid shortage constrained supply price spike, and the used market is kept from balancing it out through very high replacement battery pricing with various vendor lock in mechanisms. (eg: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1396568/average-e-bike-price-in-europe/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1396568/average-e-bike-p...)

kibwen 3y ago
Vendor lock-in for batteries is a bad thing, but I'm pretty sure that e-bike prices would be rising regardless because demand is skyrocketing around the world.
- fulafel 3y ago
  I think e-car shipments has been growing faster still, but they have not been getting more expensive. Eg this says the e-bikes YoY growth has been only 10% ish and forecasted to continue that way: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1261084/global-e-bike-market-forecast/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1261084/global-e-bike-ma...
  - kibwen 3y ago
    According to this, e-bikes are outselling EVs in the US: https://electrek.co/2022/01/26/electric-bicycles-are-now-outselling-electric-cars-and-plug-in-hybrids-combined-in-the-us/ https://electrek.co/2022/01/26/electric-bicycles-are-now-out... And that's despite the fact that the US lags behind the Asian and European markets when it comes to e-bike demand: https://electrek.co/2022/02/08/us-electric-bicycle-sales-tracking-towards-1-million-annually-global-market-heading-to-40b-with-a-b/ https://electrek.co/2022/02/08/us-electric-bicycle-sales-tra... Without more data, I think it's too soon to conclude that EVs are outselling e-bikes, at least in terms of units shipped. And the fact that EV subsidies are expiring around the globe puts downward pressure on EV demand in a way that doesn't apply to e-bikes.
    - 3y ago

fma 3y ago

"Our analysts estimate that almost half of the decline will come from declining prices of EV raw materials..." Is Goldman confident this is a long term trend? I didn't see in their report that the decline in price is due to permanent increased supply or increased efficient extraction etc...

mech765 3y ago
I know that Tesla, for example, has either reduced or eliminated Cobalt from their batteries. Changing composition can reduce material cost.

thelastgallon 3y ago

This is incredible news! EVs provide the sweetest kind of demand for a grid, they are parked 23 hours a day, can charge whenever power is free and less than free. Power prices go negative 200 million times/year[1]. Batteries, Solar and Wind and still in the early stages, as volume grows, both will get a lot cheaper. Batteries add the much needed gigantic-distributed-storage-reservoir, soaking up all the excess production that is currently wasted. An insightful comment from a HNer (don't remember who), if there is excess production we have to either move it across time or across space. Across space requires building transmission lines (costly, takes a decade). Across time is easy, we just need more EVs, everywhere. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:3-Learning-curves-for-electricity-prices.png https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:3-Learning-curves-for-e... (2019 article) “Batteries will fall much faster than you are forecasting.” The key determinant of our forecast is the relationship between price and volume. From the observed historical values, we calculate a learning rate of around 18%. This means that for every doubling of cumulative volume, we observe an 18% reduction in price. Based on this observation, and our battery demand forecast, we expect the price of an average battery pack to be around $94/kWh by 2024 and $62/kWh by 2030: https://about.bnef.com/blog/behind-scenes-take-lithium-ion-battery-prices https://about.bnef.com/blog/behind-scenes-take-lithium-ion-b... Learning rate for Solar is 20%. According to this article (https://ourworldindata.org/learning-curve https://ourworldindata.org/learning-curve), the price declined from $106 to $0.38 per watt in these four decades. A decline of 99.6%. It looks like modules are a lot more cheaper, its now $0.14 per watt for TOPcon(28% efficiency) and $0.12 per watt for PERC (24% efficiency). A common critique that comes up is, we don't have electricity for all the EVs. This is nonsense. (1) Renewable energy is currently curtailed. A lot of production is wasted, because there is no demand at that time. EVs absorb all that. (2) See the calculations here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35845334 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35845334 (3) Electricity is used heavily in fossil fuel and oil production. We simply shift it to EVs. No additional demand. (4) Right now, everyone's energy is fragmented: natural gas for cooking, water heating, boiler for heating, gas for cars and electricity. When people switch to EVs, a lot of them switch to solar, consolidating all energy, saving ~$1000/month. And also lowering consumption from the grid. (5) We somehow found a ton of electricity everywhere for bitcoin, 127 TWh. We can definitely find electricity for EVs. But, more importantly, EVs can replace natural gas peaker plants (the costliest part of electricity) and make some money! Powerwall owners are making $150/day: https://electrek.co/2023/07/05/tesla-electric-customers-report-making-150-day/ https://electrek.co/2023/07/05/tesla-electric-customers-repo.... When virtual power plants start popping up, there will be a huge rush to buy EVs. A ton of people are buying homes for 500K+ to put them up on airbnb and they barely make 100/day. Owning an EV (replacing your existing ICE) and make $100+ per day just by opting in to participate in a VPP is the very definition of passive income. [1]https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-08-30/trapped-renewable-energy-sends-us-power-prices-below-zero?embedded-checkout=true https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-08-30/trapped-r...

goodSteveramos 3y ago

Headline is false. The data shows virtually no change over the last 4 years and PREDICTS prices will fall 40% by 2030.