Actually, electric cars should become cheaper year after year – buyers and politicians hope.
But the head of a battery supplier fears the opposite development.
Bruges (France) – Brave new world: At some point, everyone will just whiz around in clean, quiet electric cars.
And, best of all, they hardly pay anything for their individual mobility.
Because vehicles and electricity are getting cheaper and cheaper.
Volkswagen boss Herbert Diess predicted that 100 kilometers in an e-mobile could only cost one euro in the future.
Electric cars remain expensive: manufacturers drop hopes for cheap batteries
But that was before the Ukraine war and inflation, especially in energy.
In the meantime, VW is also rowing back: "Mobility is becoming more expensive," fears Hildegard Wortmann, board member for sales.
Of course, one hope has remained so far: that electric cars will become cheaper and cheaper over the next few years as they become more widespread and technology is optimized – until they are no longer more expensive than comparable combustion engines.
Despite the sinking and then completely expiring environmental bonus, a buyer would then have to invest no more in a Stromer than in a conventional car, or even less.
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Electromobility will remain expensive for the time being.
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© Manuel Geisser/Imago
Electric cars remain expensive: raw materials as price drivers
This optimism is mainly based on the expectation that the prices for rechargeable batteries will continue to fall.
They currently make up almost half of the production costs for an electric car.
But now a high-ranking manager from the battery industry is dropping exactly this hope.
Yann Vincent, head of the important battery supplier Automotive Cells Company (ACC), does not see any cost relaxation in the foreseeable future “if prices for raw materials such as lithium or nickel remain at the current level.
Because they drive up the cost of electric cars.”
The gap between the prices for electric vehicles and those for combustion engines “could widen.
That would not be good," Vincent told the "Handelsblatt".
In fact, according to other experts, lithium is becoming scarcer – and therefore more expensive.
Meanwhile, the demand for electric vehicles will increase sharply, the manager predicts: as a result of the CO2 regulation, more than two-thirds of new European cars will be fully electric by the end of the decade.
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Electric cars remain expensive: there are not enough raw material mines
The cost of battery raw materials, which includes nickel (although Tesla is increasingly banning it), could only come down if there were more mines to mine.
"But it will be a long time before these new mining projects for nickel and lithium are finally implemented," the "Handelsblatt" quotes the battery boss: "That should be the case in 2025 or 2026." Until then really the prices for batteries and finally electric cars fall, so many years would pass.
List of rubrics: © Manuel Geisser/Imago
