Energy · Battery Storage
Battery Cell Cost
Lithium-ion cells fell 99% in real terms, the engine under the EV.
- $9,210/kWh → $78/kWh, 1991–2024
- LFP chemistry shift cut costs further
- A cell, not a finished pack
- Reversals in 1994, 2008, 2012, 2022 are real
This is the price of a lithium-ion battery cell, the component doing the actual energy storage, and it is the single decline that made electric cars and grid storage possible. It fell from $9,210 per kilowatt-hour in 1991, when Sony first commercialised the technology, to $78 in 2024: a factor of 118, or 99.2%. Every figure is in constant 2024 dollars, so none of the fall is inflation; it is real.
The series is the academic reconstruction maintained by Rupert Way, built on Ziegler and Trancik’s learning-curve dataset and extended with BloombergNEF and Avicenne Energy figures, so it holds one consistent basis across the whole span. That consistency matters, because the drop is not perfectly smooth: cells got dearer in 1994, 2008, 2012 and again in 2022 when lithium and nickel prices spiked, and a single consistent basis preserves those reversals instead of smoothing them away. The decline follows a learning curve, with price falling a roughly fixed percentage for every doubling of cumulative production, lately helped by the shift to cheaper lithium-iron-phosphate chemistry.
One note on what this measures: a cell is not a finished pack. Once you add the module housing, wiring, cooling and management electronics, the pack costs more. BloombergNEF’s headline pack price was $108/kWh in 2025, on a different and shorter series that only starts in 2010.
| Year | Value | Note | Projected |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1991 | $9,210.2/kWh | $9,210/kWh, first commercial Li-ion | |
| 1992 | $7,388.1/kWh | ||
| 1993 | $5,881.8/kWh | ||
| 1994 | $6,714.4/kWh | ||
| 1995 | $6,301.9/kWh | ||
| 1996 | $5,307.8/kWh | ||
| 1997 | $4,545.3/kWh | ||
| 1998 | $3,656.9/kWh | ||
| 1999 | $2,769.9/kWh | ||
| 2000 | $2,690.6/kWh | ||
| 2001 | $1,878/kWh | ||
| 2002 | $1,345.5/kWh | ||
| 2003 | $1,040.4/kWh | ||
| 2004 | $930.9/kWh | ||
| 2005 | $802.54/kWh | ||
| 2006 | $687.3/kWh | ||
| 2007 | $655.84/kWh | ||
| 2008 | $687.66/kWh | ||
| 2009 | $612.58/kWh | ||
| 2010 | $550.72/kWh | ||
| 2011 | $524.6/kWh | ||
| 2012 | $539.69/kWh | ||
| 2013 | $490.89/kWh | ||
| 2014 | $434.27/kWh | ||
| 2015 | $331.94/kWh | ||
| 2016 | $259/kWh | LFP scale-up begins | |
| 2017 | $187/kWh | ||
| 2018 | $157/kWh | ||
| 2019 | $132/kWh | ||
| 2020 | $123/kWh | ||
| 2021 | $119/kWh | ||
| 2022 | $132/kWh | ||
| 2023 | $111/kWh | ||
| 2024 | $78/kWh | $78/kWh |