The battery industry is changing the perspectives of many sectors, in particular the vehicles one.
“The economist” has presented recently an interesting vision.
Vision of “The Economist” on e-car
“..if the timing of their take-off has proved uncertain, the belief that electric vehicles are going to be a big business very soon is ever more widely held”.
China is running in the e-car segment: it counts about half of the 750.000 e-vehicles sold in the world in 2016, and it has a target of 2 millions by 2020, based on lithium battery technology.
We are in front of a “remarkable expansion of the lithium-ion battery business and to the belief that it is set to get much bigger”.
The top 5 manufactures, Panasonic, LG, Samsung, BYD and CATL, are planning to triplicate the production in next 3 years.
Growing manufacturing capacity is driving down the costs and improving reliability and performances.
Reduction of lithium battery cost and other application
The lithium battery kWh price passed from about 1.000 $ in 2010 to 130-200 $ in 2016.
The lithium batteries are used for energy storage too, for residential, industrial and utility application.
The technology benefits from the results of R&D oriented to e-mobility industry, and they are contributing to add volumes.
A competitive energy storage, in particular for small and decentralized prosumers, is a great opportunity for a sustainable development of photovoltaics, that can become an energy system together with storage and e-car, where the battery of electrical vehicle could be managed as a part of the storage.
In this new scenario the companies involved in photovoltaics could become the main driver in the proposal of new energy technologies.
