According to the CEO of Ford, the fault of the price of the electric car being higher is the raw materials, which are also on the rise.
During the week it was announced that the price of electric car will get louder, for a longer period. According to Jim Farley, CEO of Ford, together with the group of executives from automakers in the world, they claim to be very concerned with the increase in prices of commodities. In fact, for some time now, there has been talk about price increases in several products that are indispensable for the manufacture of an electric car, mainly in the rise in the prices of specific metals used in the manufacture of electric cars. electric car batteries, which may continue to be an issue for automakers and manufacturers. According to Ford, during an event in Michigan, the price of lithium, cobalt and nickel won't ease up any time soon, so automakers will have to keep pricing their cars even more expensive.
Having to deal with rising commodity prices, automakers decide to keep electric car prices high
If the price of the electric car was already high, everything indicates that more increases are to come. If the pace continues in this way, with metals becoming more and more expensive, the solution found by automakers is to raise the price of cars that run on batteries.
A Tesla and Ford created a table for their main cars, where the F-150 Lightning pickup, depending on the version, will have estimated increases between 6.000 and 8.500 dollars (R$ 30.700 to R$ 44.000). The period of the Coronavirus pandemic contributed to the market, in general, having a delay in its sectors, mainly in automotive industry.
Before that, a 'phenomenon' called “hunger of electrification” had already been installed, in which people, as well as the automotive industry, became aware of the situation of the environment. With the post-Covid recovery, automakers found the mining industry partially unprepared, failing to keep up with demand from automotive industry.
Technology will increasingly help the electric car industry
Despite the difficulties, there are alternatives to circumvent this situation, even partially. According to Farley, investments in batteries made from less “noble” raw materials, such as lithium-iron-phosphate (LFP), could be an alternative.
Without nickel and cobalt, as a way to reduce production costs, the Ford CEO believes that it can be an affordable alternative for achieving zero emission mobility.
Alternatives to create low-cost batteries
Ford has already announced that it has purchased these revolutionary accumulators from the Chinese manufacturer CATL. The automaker's goal is to mount them on the Mustang Mach-E, this as early as next year (2023) and on the F-150 Lightning electric pickup from 2024.
Another alternative developed by Ford are solid-state batteries, which are safer and have greater capacity, in addition to being faster to recharge than the conventional nickel-manganese-cobalt (NCM) standard.
In addition, batteries are being developed by several companies, such as Solid power, a company in which Ford invested jointly with the manufacturer BMW.
The startup plans to deliver the first prototypes by the end of this year, even if it will take a few more years before we actually see these battery prototypes hit the market.
