Lithium prices more than doubled in 7 months, the average electric car rose 1.6%

The price of a battery ingredient more than doubled

Lithium carbonate is a refined mineral used to make the batteries inside nearly every electric car sold today. The Chilean copper commission, the government agency that tracks metal exports out of Chile, puts the price of battery grade lithium carbonate arriving in Asia, after shipping and insurance are added, at 9.45 dollars a kilogram on September 17, 2025 and 9.55 dollars a kilogram on October 1, 2025. By mid May 2026 the same benchmark reached 24 dollars a kilogram, the highest level since December 2023. That is a rise of about 2.5 times in about 7 months. The commission names 2 causes, a mining suspension at a CATL owned lithium deposit in China after a tightened environmental review, and a ban on raw lithium mineral exports from Zimbabwe. Averaged over the first 5 months of 2026, the price came to 19,358 dollars a tonne, nearly double the 9,566 dollar average for the whole of 2025. By the time the commission published its report, the price had eased back to about 17.5 dollars a kilogram, still far above where it started.

Before the spike, cars and batteries got cheaper

The International Energy Agency, the intergovernmental body that tracks global energy trends, states that lithium prices at the start of 2026 were already more than double what they were at the start of 2025, and that even after that jump, prices remained 70% below the peak they reached in 2022. Through 2025 itself, while lithium sat near its low point, the average cost of a battery pack fell 8% worldwide. Average battery electric car prices fell too that same year, down 10% in China, 6% in Germany, and 2% in the United States. Those falls happened before the 2026 spike, not because of it, so they show what a cheap lithium year looked like at the sticker, the baseline the later spike then had to move.

The spike did not reach the buyer

The clean test of whether the spike itself reached buyers comes from Cox Automotive, the company that reports what United States dealers actually charged. It puts the average new electric car transaction price at 56,126 dollars in July 2026, up 1.6% from a year earlier, a reading taken after lithium had already climbed past 20,000 dollars a tonne. Cox Automotive attributes that small rise to lower manufacturer discounts and a sales mix that shifted toward pricier models, and nothing in its report ties the change to battery or raw material costs. Manufacturer discounts on a new electric car averaged 6,626 dollars in July 2026, 11.8% of the price and 24.3% less than a year earlier. Battery makers typically lock in lithium supply through long term contracts, which is one reason a swing in the spot price does not show up straight away at the sticker.