In March 2015 researchers at the Stockholm Environment Institute suggested electric car sales will accelerate when the price of batteries falls below $150 per kilowatt-hour (this is one way to calculate battery capacity), which they thought was already trending. Tesla and Elon Musk plan to stay ahead by producing 35 gigawatt-hours of cells per year by 2020 but others are stalking the market.
Success breeds success and also competition. Jamie Condliffe writing in MIT Technology Review reveals that Chinese electric carmaker BYD is planning to come close to this with 34. Another Chinese firm is already talking of 26.
After allowing for refurbished batteries we could be pumping close to 130 gigawatt-hours of electric car batteries into the market by 2020 annually which is impressive.
Solar heating prices fell through the floor when production took off thanks to affordable technology. Perhaps the same will happen with electric car batteries. Bloomberg’s New Energy Finance thinks lithium-ion battery pack prices are ‘set to plummet as production increases’. Between 2015 and 2025, they expect the current $400 / kilowatt-hour price to fall to between $220 and $180.
Tesla Cars Are Also Facing Competition
Volkswagen is still smarting under the emissions scandal. It is unsurprisingly seeking new ways to clean up its act electrically. By 2025, Jamie Condliffe thinks the German manufacturer could be selling a million electric vehicles every year in China. Volkawagen hopes Chinese car manufacturer Jianghuai Automobile will build them.
Of course, that dream is just speculation at present. Tesla, on the other hand already has 400,000 preorders for Model 3 on its books. This would be a great leap forward if it materialized. We shall have to see whether it has capacity to ramp up at that rate
Elon Musk may yet see his prediction come true that ‘within thirty years a majority of new cars made in the United States will be fully electric’ and we hope he does. One thing is increasingly certain though. Not all the electric cars are going to be Tesla’s.
Related
New Electric Car Battery Decay Caused by Heat
New Lithium-ion Battery Will Alert when there is the Danger of Fire
