//evt/industry
Editorial
The $108 battery pack: what’s actually inside EV battery economics
BloombergNEF’s latest survey puts the average lithium-ion pack at $108 per kWh — but China pays $84, Europe pays 56% more, and the cheapest chemistry costs barely half of the most expensive.
The single most important number in the electric vehicle industry is the price of a battery pack. BloombergNEF’s annual price survey — the industry’s benchmark — puts the average price of a lithium-ion battery pack at $108 per kilowatt-hour in 2025, down 8% from the previous year. In real terms, pack prices have now fallen 93% since 2010, according to BNEF’s survey.
Batteries for cars are under $100 — for the second year
Battery packs for battery-electric vehicles specifically averaged $99 per kWh in 2025, the second year below $100. Cells are roughly a quarter of a new EV’s cost, so every $10 per kWh movement translates directly into sticker prices. BNEF’s 2026 forecast puts the overall average at about $105 per kWh, roughly 3% lower.
The chemistry gap is the margin story
Not all chemistries move together. BNEF reports LFP (lithium-iron-phosphate) packs averaging $81 per kWh in 2025 — nearly 40% below nickel chemistries — while NMC packs averaged $128 per kWh. Stationary storage systems, a market where energy density barely matters, fell fastest of all: down 45% to $70 per kWh.
The battery market is entering a critical growth phase as EVs establish themselves as mainstream technologyYayoi Sekine, head of energy storage at BloombergNEF, on the 2025 survey
Geography is the real price signal
China’s average pack price reached $84 per kWh in 2025, down 13% — below the BNEF global average for the seventh straight year. Comparable North American packs were 44% higher and European packs 56% higher than China’s. That gap — driven by overcapacity and price competition among Chinese producers — is the margin line against which every Western gigafactory is judged.
Battery prices are the clearest indicator of cost-competitiveness in the EV transition. The challenge is making sure those gains reach every market, not just China.Andrew Cunningham, senior analyst at the International Energy Agency
The caveat on the curve
Falling prices are real, but the IEA notes deployment concentrated where prices fell hardest: global battery deployment reached 1.2 TWh in 2025, two-thirds of it in the EV sector. A price curve driven by Chinese overcapacity is good news for buyers and brutal for non-Chinese cell makers — a tension that defines battery manufacturing strategy heading into 2027.
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