Electric-Car Battery Costs Already Cheaper Than 2020 Predictions: Study

It's widely assumed that electric cars will never emerge into the mass market if buying them requires paying a significant premium over comparable internal-combustion models.

While owners may save money on fuel and maintenance over the long term, a higher initial purchase price remains intimidating, and take time to amortize.

And by far the most expensive component of a plug-in electric car is its battery pack.

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But there's good news: The price of lithium-ion cells for those packs is dropping. Fast.

A new study claims electric-car batteries are already cheaper than previous estimates for 2020, reports The Carbon Brief.

Back in 2013, the International Energy Agency (IEA) estimated that it would take until 2020 for cell costs to sink to $300 per kilowatt-hour.

Yet researchers suggest thatthe electric-car industry may already have reached that goal.

Research estimates put the drop in industry-wide costs at $1,000 per kWh between 2007 and 2014, reducing costs to as low as $140 per kWh.

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The study also claims that certain "market-leading firms" such as Nissan and Tesla have also smashed the IEA's $300-per-kWh barrier.

The study is based on 85 cost estimates from peer-reviewed academic publications, as well as reports from analysts, the media, and from the battery and car manufacturers themselves.

The authors note that this constitutes an incomplete body of data. Companies rarely disclose their true costs of manufacturing to the public, they note.

Echoing other analyses, they also say battery costs will have to fall further for electric cars to gain mass appeal.