Why Bigger Battery Packs Make For Bigger Cost Electric Vehicles

Table of Contents

Introduction

Electric vehicles are better for the environment than their gas-guzzling counterparts, but they’re also more expensive to make. The cost of an electric vehicle’s battery pack accounts for about half of its total price tag, which means that any improvements in battery technology could have a big impact on how affordable EVs become.

The cost of a battery pack is driven in large part by its size.

The cost of a battery pack is driven in large part by its size. The battery pack for an electric vehicle (EV) can be thought of as consisting of many individual cells, each with its own cost, material and labor requirements. The more cells you have, the higher your material costs will be because you’re using more materials per kilowatt-hour capacity (kWh).

The same goes for labor: More individual pieces mean more assembly time required before they’re ready for use in an EV or plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV). And because all these parts add up to significant weight–they’re heavy!–you’ll need more powerful motors and transmissions just to move them around town at speed. That’s why EVs tend toward larger battery packs than PHEVs; it’s just easier on everyone involved if your car has enough power underfoot so that no one ever feels like they’re driving around with a thousand pounds’ worth of batteries strapped on top!

As battery packs get bigger, the cost per kilowatt-hour goes down.

This is because larger battery packs use more raw materials but the cost of those materials is driven by availability and price. As production ramps up, prices drop as supply increases and competition heats up among suppliers who are looking to capture market share. This means that even though Tesla’s Gigafactory may have paid more for its raw materials than a smaller manufacturer would have paid at first, over time those costs will come down to something similar across all manufacturers as they ramp up production.

Battery packs are expensive to make and costly to dispose of when they reach the end of their life.

The batteries themselves are expensive to make, and they’re also costly to dispose of when they reach the end of their life. According to Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who has been quoted as saying that “the raw materials in a battery pack cost around $200 per kilowatt hour,” the cost of producing a large-capacity lithium-ion battery pack can be anywhere between $2,000 and $3,000 per kWh (or roughly $5-7 million for an 85 kWh pack).

Battery packs need special facilities for assembly; they have to be transported with care; and once they’ve reached their destination, manufacturers must maintain them regularly so that performance doesn’t degrade over time. All these factors add up–and when you add them all together? Well…you get an idea why EVs tend not only toward luxury but also toward larger cars!

Improving battery technology could help electric vehicles get cheaper and more reliable.

Battery technology has improved since the early days of electric vehicles, but most people don’t realize how much faster it’s improving now than it was at first. Batteries are getting cheaper and more reliable all the time–and they’re also getting better at storing more energy per pound, holding their charge over time, or both (or some combination thereof).

Conclusion

While electric vehicles are still more expensive than their gasoline-powered counterparts, the cost of batteries is one of the biggest drawbacks to their widespread adoption. Improving battery technology could help electric vehicles get cheaper and more reliable–and that could mean we see more people choosing them over traditional cars in the future.