Buyers around the world are lining up to purchase electric vehicles this year even with sticker prices surging, flipping the script on a decade and a half of conventional auto industry wisdom that electric vehicle (EV) sales would break out only after battery costs dropped below a threshold that was always just over the horizon.
\nThis year, EV demand has stayed strong even as the average cost of lithium-ion battery cells soared to an estimated $160 per kilowatt-hour in the first quarter from $105 last year. Costs rose due to supply chain disruptions, sanctions on Russian metals, and investor speculation.
\nFor a smaller vehicle like the Hongguang Mini, the best-selling EV in China, the higher battery costs added almost $1,500, equal to 30% of the sticker price.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Buyers around the world are lining up to purchase electric vehicles this year even with sticker prices surging, flipping the script on a decade and a half of conventional auto industry wisdom that electric vehicle (EV) sales would break out only after battery costs dropped below a threshold that was always just over the horizon. This year, EV demand has stayed strong even as the average cost of lithium-ion battery cells soared to an estimated $160 per kilowatt-hour in the first quarter from $105 last year. Costs rose due to supply chain disruptions, sanctions on Russian metals, and investor speculation. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[130,246,137],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-485393","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-newspapers","category-power-the-times-of-india","category-the-times-of-india"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/485393","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=485393"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/485393\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=485393"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=485393"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=485393"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}