Price of lithium-ion batteries: World, 1991–2024
Draw it before you lookCould you sketch this curve from memory? Draw it, then see how close you were.Price of lithium-ion batteries in World: how has it changed since 1991?
Price of lithium-ion batteries (World) went from $9,210 in 1991 to $78 in 2024.
When Sony sold the first lithium-ion batteries in 1991, a kilowatt-hour of cells cost about $9,200 in today's money. Phones, laptops and then electric cars drove prices down by over 99% to about $78 in 2024. A car battery that would have cost $700,000 now costs a few thousand.
What are the key figures?
- First year
- $9,210 in 1991
- Latest year
- $78 in 2024
- Highest
- $9,210 in 1991
- Lowest
- $78 in 2024
- Change
- 118× lower
What does this chart measure?
Price of lithium-ion batteries (dollars per kilowatt-hour). Average price of battery cells for each kilowatt-hour they can store. In 2024 dollars. One value per year.
What happened along the way?
- 1991Sony's first cell
What are the exact numbers?
| Year | dollars per kilowatt-hour |
|---|---|
| 1991 | $9,210 |
| 1992 | $7,388 |
| 1993 | $5,882 |
| 1994 | $6,714 |
| 1995 | $6,302 |
| 1996 | $5,308 |
| 1997 | $4,545 |
| 1998 | $3,657 |
| 1999 | $2,770 |
| 2000 | $2,691 |
| 2001 | $1,878 |
| 2002 | $1,346 |
| 2003 | $1,040 |
| 2004 | $931 |
| 2005 | $803 |
| 2006 | $687 |
| 2007 | $656 |
| 2008 | $688 |
| 2009 | $613 |
| 2010 | $551 |
| 2011 | $525 |
| 2012 | $540 |
| 2013 | $491 |
| 2014 | $434 |
| 2015 | $332 |
| 2016 | $259 |
| 2017 | $187 |
| 2018 | $157 |
| 2019 | $132 |
| 2020 | $123 |
| 2021 | $119 |
| 2022 | $132 |
| 2023 | $111 |
| 2024 | $78 |
Where does the data come from?
Price of lithium-ion battery cells. Rupert Way (2026) based on Ziegler and Trancik (2021), BloombergNEF, and Avicenne Energy. Data published by Our World in Data under CC BY 4.0.
Played in CurvGuessr puzzle #5, November 9, 2026. Past puzzles
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