As the battery life of the first batch of electric vehicle owners expires, these owners are worried about the high cost of replacing batteries. However, recently, overseas investment banks believe that battery prices will fall sharply in the next five years, completely solving the problem of high battery replacement costs. People will no longer worry about the high cost of batteries.

The rapid development of electric vehicles has been going on for nearly a decade, but the issue of battery technology upgrades has been troubling the industry during this period. Fast charging technology has been continuously upgraded, from the early days when charging took 4-5 hours to now being able to fully charge in half an hour. The upgrade of fast charging technology can be described as rapid.

The rapid upgrade of fast charging technology is not good news for old car owners, as it means that the electric vehicles in their hands are being accelerated out of use. After all, the faster the technology upgrades, the less valuable second-hand electric vehicles become. It is even said in the second-hand car industry that second-hand electric vehicles can only be sold for a few thousand yuan, as scrap iron.

For old car owners, as the battery life of their electric vehicles expires, they are struggling with whether to replace the battery or buy a new car. For a car worth over a hundred thousand yuan, replacing the battery now costs more than 60,000 yuan, while a brand-new car now costs less than 100,000 yuan. With such a comparison, many car owners have to sell their cars as scrap iron and buy new ones.

In such a situation, the claim by the electric vehicle industry that electric vehicles save money becomes a joke. The saved energy costs are far from covering the cost of battery replacement, let alone the cost of replacing the entire car. After all, even if a used gasoline car is sold as a second-hand car after ten years of use, it can still fetch 10,000 to 20,000 yuan, which is much more valuable than a used electric vehicle.

The high cost of battery replacement lies in the persistently high cost of batteries. Due to the high cost of battery materials such as lithium, the production cost of batteries is also high, making batteries naturally expensive.

However, in recent years, the cost of batteries has actually been gradually decreasing. In 2022, the price of batteries per kilowatt-hour was around $153, and it had dropped to $149 per kilowatt-hour by 2023.

Industry insiders believe that battery prices will enter a phase of accelerated decline in the coming years, falling to around $80 by 2026 and reaching a low of around $35 by 2030.

The accelerated decline in battery costs is due to breakthroughs in various electric vehicle technologies. The industry estimates that solid-state batteries will enter mass production in 2026, which will significantly devalue current lithium-ion batteries.

In addition, sodium-ion battery technology is gradually maturing, and the cost of sodium materials is much lower than that of lithium materials. The adoption of these new materials will further reduce battery costs and accelerate the decline in battery prices.

However, there are also different views in the industry regarding the commercialization of solid-state batteries. It is believed that even if solid-state batteries enter mass production in 2026, their costs will still be quite high. It may not be until around 2030 that they can be mass-produced and installed in vehicles. Lithium-ion and sodium-ion batteries will mainly be used in low-end models.

In such a scenario, the cost of battery packs for low-end vehicles is expected to drop to around 20,000 yuan in the future, a price that will be acceptable to the general consumer. The energy costs they save on a daily basis will also be sufficient to cover this cost.

A significant drop in battery costs will also significantly change the electric vehicle industry. At that time, perhaps the use of public batteries will be accepted by everyone. Perhaps the batteries of various automotive companies will be of standard design and interchangeable, just like the use of public batteries for electric bicycles today.

If the cost of batteries really drops to such a low level, then gasoline vehicles will truly be replaced by electric vehicles. After all, electric vehicles have too many advantages, just as electric bicycles have largely replaced gasoline motorcycles today.