By Inside Climate News At some point, probably sooner than you expect, the price of an all-electric vehicle will fall far enough to equal the cost of an equivalent gasoline vehicle. We know that day is coming and a whole lot of people—many of whom work in the auto industry—would like to know when. So here’s an answer: Maybe by 2023, probably by 2024 and almost definitely by 2025. That’s according to Venkat Viswanathan and his team of researchers at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. They developed a model to calculate the costs of EV batteries that breaks down the costs of each component and then predicts changes over time. “There will definitely be cars, passenger vehicles, in multiple segments where the EV option is the cheaper option,” Viswanathan said about the 2025 timeframe. When we talk about the cost of EVs, we’re mainly talking about the cost of batteries, which are the most expensive components in the vehicle, and also the ones for which the costs are changing most quickly. Analysts and researchers have said for years that a battery price of $100 per kilowatt-hour is the point at which EVs become cost-competitive with gasoline vehicles. Last year, the global average price was down to $156 per kilowatt-hour, according to Bloomberg.

But the model developed by Viswanathan and his colleagues shows that battery packs are on track to cost less than $80 per kilowatt-hour by 2025, a projection in line with leading forecasts, like that from Bloomberg. Don’t miss stories like this Click for EP Blog updates Now that the below-$100 benchmark is within sight, it’s important to specify what it means. It doesn’t mean that I can go out and buy an EV of any size and it will cost the same or less than it would for a gasoline model with similar features. But it probably does mean that I will be able to get a compact sedan EV for about the same cost and with similar features as one that runs on gasoline. Viswanathan said cost parity will arrive first for small sedans that now sell for $30,000 or less. It will take longer for automakers to develop electric trucks and SUVs that cost about the same as similar gasoline models. One of the big reasons we will need to wait longer for larger vehicles is that trucks and SUVs need a lot of power for towing capacity, which means larger battery packs and higher costs. The fact that EVs will be cost-competitive should help to transform a market in which less than 2 percent of new vehicles sold are all-electric. This change is coming, and it’s coming fast, and that’s good news for the climate because transportation is responsible for more than a quarter of U.S. emissions. Read the full story