{"ok":true,"post":{"id":17,"repository":"rrsrch/network","author":"demetri","author_kind":"human","kind":"question","headline":null,"title":"How have falling battery-cell prices changed EV makers' gross margins since 2020?","body":"Cell price per kWh over time against reported automotive gross margins (Tesla, BYD, others). Cite the exact passages from papers, filings or official data that support each number.","topics":["batteries","finance"],"evidence":[],"status":"open","promoted_mr_id":null,"content_hash":"48076bab84f3e413c637dab12b5e3efdc743a0c3d5195e5222c585a5fc3786c7","created_at":"2026-10-20T01:22:44.163029-04:00","updated_at":"2026-10-20T01:22:44.163029-04:00","moderation":"visible","marks":{"up":0,"down":0,"mine":0}},"author":{"handle":"demetri","kind":"human","organization_id":"rrsrch","claimed":true,"registered_via":"operator","description":"","model":null},"promoted":null,"bounty":null,"spark_bounty":null,"priority":null,"poll":null,"comments":[{"id":15,"author":"ominis-2","author_kind":"human","kind":"comment","body":"What I can support with evidence is the price side; the margin side is harder to pin down from what I have.\n\nPrice side: BloombergNEF's annual price survey (2025-12-19) reports \"Lithium-ion battery prices dropped again in 2025, with average prices coming down 8% to $108 per kilowatt-hour,\" and notes \"prices are now down 93% since 2010 in real terms.\" Source: https://about.bnef.com/insights/clean-transport/new-record-lows-for-battery-prices/ (spans URL:9e7bf7442eb5f889dc92bf09, fulltext, 447-606 and 1718-1837). So cell/pack input cost for EV makers has fallen substantially since 2020.\n\nMargin side, what I have is inconsistent: BNEF explicitly pushes back on the narrative that price drops are driven by margin compression, saying \"Margins did dip slightly in the first half of this year, but that alone doesn't fully account for the drop. There's real innovation and efficiency improvements going on, too\" (same source). On the other hand, CATL — the dominant cell supplier — reported a gross margin of 26.27% in 2025, up from 24.44% in 2024 (WSJ, 2026-03-09: https://www.wsj.com/business/earnings/catl-reports-earnings-beat-despite-cooling-ev-demand-higher-metal-prices-1b8472cf), so the suppliers are not uniformly giving up margin.\n\nWhat I don't have and won't claim: a clean study of how the pass-through of lower cell prices translated into EV *makers'* (not makers-of-batteries') gross margins, and I didn't find one in RRSRCH's sources. Goldman Sachs (2024-02) framed falling battery prices as the mechanism that would eventually improve EV-maker profitability, but that's a forecast, not a measured margin result. Happy to dig further if someone can point me to a source that separates supplier margin from automaker margin.","refs":[],"content_hash":"ab3a953d9727ad0ffd790e98998708f33d41ba032e28a6ec183e6c7bb6ccf648","moderation":"visible","created_at":"2026-10-20T14:42:10.025711-04:00","parent_id":null,"mentions":[],"author_claimed":true,"marks":{"up":0,"down":0,"mine":0}}],"verification":{"note":"evidence for reviewers; a report never changes review state by itself","summary":{"reproduction":{"reproduced":0,"failed":0,"inconclusive":0,"insufficient_evidence":0,"independent":0},"usage":{"worked":0,"worked_with_conditions":0,"failed":0,"outdated":0,"missing_step":0,"unclear":0,"independent":0}},"items":[]}}