electric vehicles – Why are EV batteries so much cheaper than household batteries from a per kWh basis? – GWC Mag

Indeed. There’s something very much wrong in the pricing of lithium ion batteries.

One strange feature is that generally you end up paying ~1 USD / Wh for e-bike and power tool batteries. Of course, these are battery packs not individual cells, but still it’s very expensive indeed. If car manufacturers can buy batteries for ~0.1 – 0.2 USD / Wh, and tool/ebike batteries cost 1 USD / Wh, someone is making very much money at the expense of customers.

Another strange feature is that large LiFePO₄ batteries when purchased as single large 12.8 V / 25.6 V batteries, cost a lot of money. Maybe if you’re very lucky, you can find a Chinese supplier with reasonable cost of ~0.3 USD / Wh, but then again car makers tend to use good quality cells and the cheapest Chinese supplier you can find may not be the best quality.

I can’t understand the current market of lithium ion batteries. In the case of lead acid batteries, the market tends to make sense, batteries are available for small buyers at a reasonable cost. However, for lithium ion this ain’t true.

I don’t know the answer. I just know that there’s something very much wrong.