Welcome to this week’s battery roundup. The most important news surrounding battery technology and production from Europe and beyond.
EVs Cheaper Than Conventional Cars by 2027
A report by BloombergNEF, commissioned by Transport & Environment, predicts that the break-even point for all types of cars between electric and ICE vehicles will be reached by 2026. The battery pack of an EV makes up around 30% of its price, depending on the type of car. Therefore, the price drop will be mainly due to lower manufacturing costs for batteries. Those in turn are a result of the Gigafactories announced for the coming years.
According to BloombergNEF, the price for a mid-sized electric car (currently €33,300) and a car with an internal combustion engine (currently €18,600) could both reach €19,000 by 2026. By 2027, EVs are forecasted to be the cheaper option, even without including the cost of gas to calculate the true cost of ownership.
Renault is Looking Into Battery as a Service
Renault’s CEO Luca de Meo recently announced that the French company is considering adopting battery-swapping technology for some of their cars. This would reduce charging times by a lot. At the moment Chinese NIO is the only well-known automaker that has implemented a battery-swapping solution at scale. As I mentioned in the BatteryBay news from last week, NIO is bringing the technology to Europe in the fall of this year. It is not clear if this technology will stand a chance against the fast-charging networks that companies like VW and BP plan to expand in the coming years.
De Meo also announced that Renault and Nissan would cooperate more on battery development and production to cut spendings and to improve their competitiveness. Recently, the strength of the alliance has been doubted due to financial problems.
Beyond Europe: India Offers Incentive to Become a Competitor in Battery Production
The Indian government is currently offering around €2 billion to boost the domestic production of battery cells as part of the “Make in India ” initiative. The “National Programme on Advanced Chemistry Cell (ACC) Battery Storage” aims to attract foreign and domestic investments. Although the aim of the subsidies is to cut imports and become more independent from China, India could become a serious competitor in battery production due to low manufacturing costs. BloombergNEF estimates that India might become the lowest-cost country for manufacturing cells. The subsidies could reduce costs to $65/kWh, compared to $105/kWh in the US, $104/kWh in Germany, and $98/kWh in China. However, it is unclear to which degree this will benefit the local economy.
Recommendation: A Look Into Europe’s Future in Battery Production
Since the focus of this blog lays on the European battery landscape, mainly production, I don’t want to keep the following video from you: Fully Charged’s Robert Llewellyn interviewed Northvolt’s CEO Peter Carlsson about the future of Gigafactories in Europe and about Northvolts mission to produce “the world’s greenest battery”. In the beginning, you get a short glimpse into the manufacturing process in the Swedish factory. At the moment, the company is building two Gigafactories: one in the north of Sweden and one close to VW in Germany.
This is not a complete list of news from this week but the press releases and articles I found the most interesting. Let me know if I missed anything important.
You can also follow me on Twitter (@BatteryBayEU), where I post some of the news before they end up in my weekly roundup. I’m looking forward to learning about your involvement or interest in the industry and chatting about everything batteries.
Also, please feel free to use the comment section below to leave any feedback or suggestions!