Dr. Andy Leach

.@AndyLeachBatt: ✍️&📊 "Last week the European Union has upped the pot of money available through its Innovation Fund, with an additional €3.4 billion ($3.6 billion) aimed at reducing Europe’s reliance on imported net-zero technologies. These subsidies will be a welcome relief for a struggling European industry, but the sum is likely too small to convince incumbent Chinese manufactures that sharing their technological advantages is worth their while. The new funding will be awarded to decarbonization, manufacturing and hydrogen projects. But even if the whole amount went to battery manufacturing, it would only be enough to fund 45 gigawatt-hours of capacity, or 3% of announced 2030 capacity in Europe, according to BloombergNEF analysis."

Battery Margins Are Being Squeezed by @colinmckerrache ✍️ "Prices for batteries in China are plummeting, and the implications are just starting to ripple outward for the global automotive market. Over the last year, the price for lithium iron phosphate, or LFP, battery cells in China has dropped 51% to an average of $53 per kilowatt-hour. The average global price of these batteries last year was $95/kWh. There are several factors driving prices lower. The first is raw-material prices, which have fallen sharply over the last 18 months. The cathode is where most of the raw-material costs in a battery come from, and the cathode share of total cost for an LFP cell in China has fallen from 50% at the beginning of 2023 to less than 30% this year."