Electric Batteries and Electric Cars by 2030

Reuters reports that the world’s top automakers are planning to spend nearly $1.2 trillion through 2030 to develop and produce millions of electric vehicles, along with the batteries and raw materials to support that production.

EVs, carmakers and their battery partners are planning to install 5.8 terawatt-hours of battery production capacity by 2030, according to data from Benchmark Mineral Intelligence and the manufacturers.

Tesla outlined a Battery plan to build 20 million EVs in 2030 using an estimated 3 terawatt-hours of batteries. However, this has been updated where Tesla plans to develop its own batteries to 1 TWh/year in the US alone and use terawatts hours of batteries from suppliers like CATL.

Every 10 million cars per year (50 kwh packs) needs 500 GWh/year of batteries.

Sourcing from CATL and others. Tesla could have enough batteries for 20 million cars by 2025. The number of electric cars that Tesla could produce would increase when they introduce the $30k car with double the production, lower weight and probably a 25 kwh battery pack.

European battery capacity will rise to over 700 GWh by 2025 and over 1.4 TWh by 2030.

CATL, SVolt, CALB, BYD, Gotion targeting a combined 1.8 TWh/year of batteries by 2025. European, US and other makers ramping too. The battery production of auto makers overlaps with their battery company partners.

By 2025, CALB’s production capacity is expected to exceed 500 GWh/year, with an annual production capacity of 1 TWh by 2030.

SVOLT was targeting 600 GWh/year by 2025.

CATL was targeting 1200 GWh/year by 2025.

Energy Storage news reports that Tesla has a target of at least 1500 GWH (1.5 TWH) of energy storage deployment by 2030.

Lithium ion batteries will probably get to around 10 TWh per year by 2030

Lithium Ion Battery capacity was expected to increase to increase more than threefold to 2.8 TWh in 2025 from 0.8 TWh in 2021, with the potential to surpass 5.9 TWh in 2030.

Germany’s Volkswagen (VOWG_p.DE), targets over $100 billion to build out its global EV portfolio. VW will add new battery “gigafactories” in Europe and North America and lock up supplies of key raw materials.

Toyota is investing $70 billion to electrify vehicles and produce more batteries, and expects to sell at least 3.5 million battery electric models (BEVs) in 2030.

Ford now plans to spend at least $50 billion – and at least 240 gigawatt-hours of battery capacity with its partners as it aims to produce around 3 million BEVs in 2030 – half its total volume.

Mercedes-Benz will spend at least $47 billion for EV development and production, nearly two-thirds of that to boost its global battery capacity with partners to more than 200 gigawatt-hours.

BMW, Stellantis and General Motors (GM.N) each plan to spend at least $35 billion on EVs and batteries, with Stellantis laying out the most aggressive battery program: A planned 400 gigawatt-hours of capacity with partners by 2030, including four plants in North America.

23 thoughts on “Electric Batteries and Electric Cars by 2030”

  1. Faster battery charging will help:

    “Standard electric-vehicle batteries can recharge much of their range in just 10 minutes with the addition of a thin sheet of nickel inside them, a new study finds. This could provide a welcome and economically attractive alternative to expensive EVs that carry massive and massively expensive battery packs.”

    See:

    https://spectrum.ieee.org/ev-battery-fast-charging

  2. How are they going to get charged?
    Any electrical substation distributing power to the local neighborhood will need to double output to supply even one car per household. Plus the distribution substations. All that before doubling the supply, mostly from fossil fuels.

    • It sounds like you answered your own question – where necessary, power substations get boosted, the cost of that gets covered by your electric bill. Though for a typical day’s driving it’d be more like 10kWhr/day, maybe on average 20% – 40% increase – not double.

      On average US electricity is about 38% from natural gas, 22% from coal, the rest mostly nuclear or renewable. EVs use about half as much energy as an ICE car, and 60% of that is fossil fuel – so about 1/3rd as much CO2 as an ICE car.

      Your area may vary – you can check it out on a per-state level at this site:
      https://afdc.energy.gov/vehicles/electric_emissions.html
      West Virginia is about the worst, but even there an EV reduces CO2 about 10% and can save you money eventually.

    • Ice pilot,

      If, as many suggest, these EV’s will be charged in homes, do the math.

      Most homes/apartments etc
      are going to have 120v 20 amp circuit breakers doing this charging.
      120 volts x 16 amps = 1920 watts, say 2kw.

      If your battery size is 85 kWh
      And it is close to empty when you start charging, you will need 40+ hours to charge it.

      This is why “free charging” can be given away at malls.
      Most of us are going to spend an hour or two shopping, resulting in ~ 4kwh of energy and at $.20/kWh that’s less than $1.00 of free charging.

      On board charging systems will coordinate with utility power availability so as not to put a demand strain on the local distribution system. Our EV’s will not charge at the max rate simply because we want/need them to.

      It’s going to be interesting how this all shakes out, impatiently in Chicago, I wait.

  3. 10 TWh/year = 1,14 GW

    So need to build that much power generation pr year

    BTW, did you see the compressed CO2 for energy storage?

    • 1.14 GW isn’t bad; it’s a single large nuclear power plant per year. If you auction off the licenses to ten or so, they would supply that increase in demand.

      Large hydro plants could also supply that demand, but I’m not sure there is much more untapped hydro potential in the US. Maybe in Canada?

      • I was too quick, this will only let you charge the batteries once, you are more likely to change your batteries 50 times pr year, so 50 GW

        • The US is still building natural gas power plants, and of course China leads the world in a new coal plant every two days.

      • Solar farms give about 0,5 MW or hectare x capacity factor of 0,1 so 50 GW needs a million hectares plus seasonal storage. It’s global though so it’s 1,25 m2 pr person, pr year, for 10 years to get to 2 billion cars

  4. Would like to see articles focused on the amount of money the car manufacturers will spend on battery disposal / recycling and what is their target date for implementation.

  5. With all of the incredible brain power and think tanks working on battery development, if is only a matter of time b4 someone figures out the next chemical configuration that propagated the next paradigm shift.

    The ICE is a old curmudgeon dinosaur gear head with 1 foot on a banana pole and the other in the grave.

    Battery power is the way forward, not ICE, or hydrogen.

    • Look at the energy per liter or kilogram of various chemical reactions & you find that metal air batteries are the only battery options that approach the energy density of gasoline.
      Since lithium is the lightest metal lithium-air has the potential for the greatest energy density battery. However, there are lots of difficulties with getting a battery type to get somewhere near its theoretical potential, so we might have to settle for something not as good as that best theoretical.
      I would also support research into using non-fossil (mostly nuclear) energy to take CO2 from the air & make a fuel that is fairly compact & can be used in a fuel cell. Also research something similar for ammonia fuel cells.

      • For cars, you don’t need the energy density of gasoline. Electric motors are far more efficient than ICE, and they reclaim some of the energy by slowing down.

        • Yeah, in 2022 the issue for cars is kWh/$, not kg or L.
          Though lighter batteries would still help a lot.

          Lighter batteries look like they’d still help for bikes though. And weight is still critical for aircraft.

  6. That’s a lot of disruptive cash being channeled away from the status quo, to new areas. Things are going to flip faster than anyone thinks, across the board. The proliferation of battery storage will also push renewables along at a nose bleed rate of adoption and roll out.

    • Especially all that farm machinery and trucking and aviation and shipping and war machines and rural people in ‘flyover country’…. Lithium batteries are going to ‘revolutionize’ all that shot, riiiiight? City Boys don’t get it – live in a bubble…

      • Talk about living in a bubble. All of your concerns have already been addressed. We’ve got semis coming out, by multiple manufacturers, on multiple continents. Agricultural equipment is right behind that. Miss the stories about electric aviation?

        • Some aviation might be able to go electric with a combination of batteries (for a power boost at take off) and lower power but high efficiency jets for cruising. With just batteries you’re limited to very short hops – essentially air taxis. Electric air taxis are likely only viable by separating the ‘lift and control’ module from the ‘passenger and batteries’ module – with an excess number of the latter sitting idle and charging. Jet speeds for many hours is probably not practical at all, but maybe excess wind and solar electricity generation could be used to synthesize jet fuel – the economics of that TBD.

          Long-haul electric semi-trailer trucks might just barely make the cut, but only because of regulations limiting the number of hours truck drivers can drive per day, and due to exceptions made for EV truck weight. A LOT of Mega chargers are going to be needed to feed all those trucks within the alloted rest periods. It may make sense to switch long-haul trucks to hybrid EVs for good fuel and CO2 reductions at a lower cost, especially if cars going EV results in the price of fuel falling.

          Electric farm tractors and combines can likely be practical with sufficiently advanced battery swapping technology. At planting and harvest time, farmers work very long days and won’t accept long downtimes to charge. As farms switch to self-driving tractors (already happening) they’ll be able to operate 24-7. So it probably makes sense to use a small self-driving battery delivery and swap vehicle and two sets of batteries. A two minute swap operation every 2 hours is probably not too big a productivity loss. So each battery pack has to last 2 hours. With the main tractor or combine moving at about 5mph, 15miles of energy ought to be sufficient per pack. I believe that’d be around 100kg of batteries, around 40kWhr per set – less than a Tesla, and able to be recharged in under 2 hours. Each battery set would get charged 10-12 times a day at peak use, but days of use will be less than an EV car, so that kind of balances out.

        • You are both right. The transition away from the ICE is underway, unstoppable.

          However, the amount of infrastructure to replace is mind boggling, and cannot be replaced in time for “net zero” the eco fanatics are agitating for.

          No one should count on government to safely navigate us through the treacherous rocks of moving away from fossil fuels rapidly. Look at Europe and the price of diesel in NA. Both situations made much much worse by government meddling and green energy fantasies.

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