The heaviest electric car battery chemistry weighs 120 kilograms more than a lighter nickel based chemistry, for the same 300 mile range

Same range, 5 different weights

A battery chemistry is the specific mix of metals a battery uses to store and release power. Argonne National Laboratory, the government laboratory that built the battery model the industry runs on, modelled 5 chemistries built to the same 300 mile driving range, digested here through a Congressional Research Service report, and the finished packs do not weigh the same. Lithium iron phosphate, a chemistry using no nickel and no cobalt, is the heaviest of the 5 at 405 kilograms. A nickel manganese cobalt chemistry built 8 parts nickel to 1 part manganese to 1 part cobalt weighs 285 kilograms for the identical range, 120 kilograms less than the heaviest.

The gap is not because iron phosphate is a heavier compound. The nickel heavy chemistry packs more energy into each kilogram it weighs, 248 watt hours per kilogram, so a car needs less of it to go the same distance.

What is inside one pack

A pack is the complete unit installed under an electric car, built from many sealed cells joined by wiring, casing and electronics. Malvern Panalytical, an instrument maker, states that 1 cell holds 2 parts that charge and discharge, the cathode and the anode, plus a chemical fluid the two sit in and a thin sheet that keeps them from touching. The cathode holds the metals that store the charge, and the anode, made of graphite in these packs, is what the lithium moves into while the car charges. In the 285 kilogram nickel heavy pack, the cathode weighs 90 kilograms and the graphite anode weighs 65 kilograms. That leaves 71 kilograms for the chemical fluid, the foil the cathode and anode are coated on, and the material that seals the cell shut, none of which the modelling breaks out on its own. A further 59 kilograms of wiring, electronics and casing turns single cells into a finished pack.

The heaviest chemistry is winning the market

In China, the largest electric vehicle battery market, lithium iron phosphate cells made up 81.2% of everything installed in 2025, against 18.7% for the lighter nickel chemistry, according to the China Automotive Battery Innovation Alliance. Production of the lighter chemistry in China has not grown since 2022. Carmakers there are trading extra weight for a chemistry that uses no cobalt and no nickel at all.

Zooming out to an average pack

Looked at across the whole market rather than 1 chemistry, the mineral bill looks different again. Transport and Environment, a transport policy research group whose report was peer reviewed by experts at Bloomberg New Energy Finance and Circular Energy Storage, models an average pack built to the typical 2020 mix and sized at 60 kilowatt hours, the standard unit for the energy a battery stores. That pack carried about 5.9 kilograms of lithium and 7.7 kilograms of cobalt, the report states directly. Multiplying the nickel rate the report gives for 1 kilowatt hour by that same 60 kilowatt hour size puts nickel at roughly 28.8 kilograms, nearly 4 times the cobalt weight, a MAOWCE calculation from 2 numbers the report gives rather than a total it prints itself. Nickel, not lithium and not cobalt, is the heaviest of the widely discussed battery metals in an actual pack.

These figures describe what laboratory modelling says these chemistries need, not a fresh teardown of a car built this year. The newest of the 3 reports behind them is from 2021, and battery design keeps changing.