A kilowatt hour of battery pack costs 84 dollars in China and 44% more in North America

A kilowatt hour costs 84 dollars in China and far more elsewhere

A kilowatt hour is the unit that measures how much energy a battery can store, and it is the unit battery pack prices are measured in around the world. BloombergNEF, a market research firm that surveys battery prices every year, found the average lithium ion battery pack cost 84 dollars per kilowatt hour in China in 2025. In North America the same kind of pack averaged 121 dollars per kilowatt hour, which the survey states is 44% more than China. In Europe it averaged 131 dollars per kilowatt hour, 56% more than China, also stated directly by the survey.

The gap is manufacturing, not the chemistry inside the pack

Buyers in North America and Europe can choose the same battery chemistries China does, so the price gap is not about what a pack is made of. The International Energy Agency, an intergovernmental body that tracks global energy data, traces the advantage in China to a large skilled workforce, tight links between mines, metal refiners and cell factories, and fierce competition among domestic manufacturers that has pushed efficiency up and prices down. China also holds 85% of battery cell manufacturing capacity across the world, the maximum amount of cells factories there could produce in a year, more than 3 times the amount that all the electric vehicles and storage batteries built in 2024 actually needed, a scale nobody else is close to matching.

The gap has been widening for more than 1 year

The 2025 gap did not open on its own. BloombergNEF found China pack prices fell 13% that year, the steepest drop of the 3 regions, against 8% in Europe and 4% in North America. In 2024, the International Energy Agency found China pack prices fell nearly 30%, while Europe and the United States each fell only 10 to 15%, a separate measurement from a separate year that points the same direction.

The United States is closing the gap with money, not yet with scale

The United States federal government offers battery cell makers a tax credit worth 35 dollars per kilowatt hour of capacity for every cell made domestically, under a law known as section 45X of the tax code. No source read for this article states whether the 121 dollar North America price already reflects producers claiming that credit, so the 2 figures are reported here as separate facts, never subtracted from each other. Nearly 70% of the growth in United States manufacturing capacity in 2024 came from Korean companies building plants there, a pattern the agency ties to the credit. In Lansing, Michigan, LG Energy Solution has put 2 billion dollars into a cell plant that currently employs 900 people, with about 800 more planned, and expects to reach a capacity of 35 gigawatt hours a year the following year.

The best funded battery maker in Europe went bankrupt

Northvolt, once the best funded battery maker in Europe, filed for bankruptcy in Sweden in March 2025, after 2 years of never reaching the production volumes its own factory was built for. That is a shortfall in output, not a problem with cost or chemistry. Tim Johnstone, interim chairman of the board of Northvolt, put it this way.

This is an incredibly difficult day for everyone at Northvolt.

Tim Johnstone, interim chairman of the board of Northvolt. Source 3.

The European Union still grew its overall manufacturing capacity 10% in 2024 despite the setback, but the region stays more reliant on imported cells than China, which the survey names as part of why its pack prices sit highest of the 3 regions.