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No, lithium price makes very little difference to lithium battery price. All those "industry analysts" from McKinseys and such suggesting it have never set their foot in a battery factory.

The biggest price components of lithium cells is cobalt oxide used in cathode plates, followed by nickel in cell chemistries using them. Both are not cheap at all, and their supply is famously unstable. Metallurgical cobalt goes at $30-40 per kilo in China, and battery grade cobalt oxide at almost the same price.

So for a 200kg battery pack, you will be paying 2000-3000$ only for the cathode material.

Second after this is plainly volumes. Tooling costs are very high. Even model 3 and BAIC EU are rather low volume by industry standards. You have to add to that that EVs don't share chassis/platform with any other high volume car, and thus can't share the bodywork tooling costs.




We start to see platform sharing between thermal and electric. E.g. Peugeot new e-208 have very high part commonality with regular 208.




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