Battery costs have been a major barrier to increasing BEV penetration. While battery costs have dropped nearly 30% per year for the past five years, that decrease largely has been a function of improved production scale, which now is diminishing.
“Most of the battery cell costs are driven by the price of materials and composition,” Hendrikse says. “Around half of the component cost of the battery cell is in the cathode. Improvements in the energy density of the cathode—the terminal through which electric current flows—will reduce the amount of metal required per kilowatt hour, thereby lowering the metal requirement and the metal price risk.”
Cathode manufacturers are gearing up for substantial increases in production but could face associated pressure on their pricing levels. Demand for battery components like copper, cobalt and lithium could increase sharply, as could prices.
Semiconductors are also critical for improving the range of a BEV, and recent developments in silicon carbine technology offer the possibilities of 20% more mileage from a single battery pack, along with 20% less charging time.
(This also applies to Ultracharges Cathode Technology) Then add cobalt free and the upside is unknown!
The Future of Charging
Finally, mass adoption of BEVs will also require a more robust charging infrastructure which could present opportunities for utilities and capital goods. While many charging points will be private or residential—about 1.8 million of the existing 2 million charge points worldwide now are—questions remain about the number of faster public charging stations required, who will provide and maintain them and which customers will be permitted to use them.
According to Nicholas Ashworth, Co-Head of European Utilities Research, a consensus has yet to emerge on the number of public charging points needed to service the BEV fleet. Current numbers vary widely from country to country, depending on the maturity of the market.
Several possibilities exist around the development of public stations, ranging from those sponsored by automakers and available only to drivers of their vehicles, to those financed and maintained by governments or utilities, or perhaps another model. How to pay for such charging also remains an open question, now that free charging seems to have gone by the wayside.
“There are also schemes where the end user pays a fixed monthly fee affording them unlimited miles, akin to mobile phone pricing,” says Ashworth. “This is a nascent market, and there will be many different ways to pay for BEV charging in the coming years.”
(A quick charge solution will have to be adopted which may also bode well for Ultracharge)
The greater the adoption of Battery powered vehicles the more chance we have of our tech being locked in by a manufacturer.
