Battery prices slow growth

Battery prices need to drop by more than half in order for EVs to compete with cars powered by internal-combustion engines. This is the latest from the two-day Future of Energy summit in Shanghai, where it’s been announced that this will only happen by 2026 when lithium-ion battery packs are projected to fall to about $100 per kilowatt. The focus of the industry until then is to move from lithium-ion batteries using liquid electrolytes to solid-state ones. The move suggests the need for safer and more powerful energy storage. Toyota Motor Corp. has said it’s working to commercialise the technology in the early 2020s, and Dyson Ltd. says it will build an electric car using solid-state batteries in three years.  Dyson is planning on investing nearly two billion New Zealand dollars to develop the car, plus the same sum to create solid-state batteries for it. That investment would outpace those made by other major EV players such as Tesla Inc. Panasonic Corp. of Japan, BYD Co. of China and South Korea’s LG Chem Ltd. are the top manufacturers of lithium-ion batteries for EVs. Shares in companies such as lithium-salt maker Stella Chemifa Corp. and Sociedad Quimica y Minera de Chile SA, which mines chemicals including lithium, are on the rise. As demand rises for metals used in batteries, beneficiaries include companies such as Japan’s Tanaka Chemical Corp., which manufactures and sells components for the storage devices.