The Cost to Build An EV Battery is Going Up… A Lot

This chart explains in part why Chinese battery giants are moving as fast as possible to lock up supplies of the key ingredients needed to manufacture lithium-ion batteries used to power electric vehicles.

With the cost of certain materials, particularly lithium and nickel, skyrocketing this year, the concern is that if they don’t lock supplies now, then they could potentially be priced out of the market later.

One interesting takeaway from this chart is how the price of cobalt has largely remained stable since 2019. China controls a sizable share of the cobalt supply chain from extraction all the way to processing.

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by Eric Olander

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