A new cell level target, set in October 2025
Ford, General Motors and Stellantis set a new battery price target through a joint research group called the United States Advanced Battery Consortium, or USABC, working with the Department of Energy, national laboratories and universities. In a technical target sheet dated 6 October 2025, USABC named a cost goal of 60 dollars per kilowatt hour, a kilowatt hour being the unit that measures how much energy a battery can store. The figure is for a single cell, the basic unit inside a battery, not the finished pack, which costs more once casing, wiring and control electronics are added around hundreds of cells. The target assumes cells built in the United States, at a rate of 250,000 vehicles worth a year, in a pack sized at 100 kilowatt hours.
A second, lower target for a design with fewer critical minerals
USABC published a companion target the same day, 50 dollars per kilowatt hour, for a design it calls earth abundant, using less lithium, nickel, cobalt or graphite, metals that are slow and difficult to mine at scale. That is about 17% lower than the standard target, a figure calculated for this article from the 2 numbers. The earth abundant design must meet sourcing rules under the Inflation Reduction Act, a United States law, and last twice as many fast charge cycles, 2,000 against 1,000 for the standard design, before it wears out.
The earth abundant figure comes from a companion target sheet at a separate web address, source 2 below, published by USABC the same day as the standard target.
Show the numbers
| Standard design | 60 |
| Earth abundant design | 50 |
The government set a similar target once before
In January 2013, the Department of Energy published a planning document, following a challenge from President Obama the year before. It set a battery cost target of 125 dollars per kilowatt hour by 2022, down from 500 dollars per kilowatt hour in 2012, and stated plainly that hitting 125 dollars would make the lifetime cost of an electric car with a 280 mile range equal to a similar gasoline car. Dr. David T. Danielson, then Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy at the Department of Energy, wrote this in the document opening message.
Every challenge presents an even greater opportunity, and the EV Everywhere Grand Challenge is no exception.
Dr. David T. Danielson, then Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy at the Department of Energy. Source 4.
The document describes itself as a planning paper, not official government policy.
The 500 and 125 dollar figures are the unqualified battery cost figures the Department of Energy stated in its 2013 planning document. The 108 dollar figure is BloombergNEF global average pack price for 2025, source 5, a separate publisher measuring a different thing.
Show the numbers
| 2012 starting cost | 500 |
| 2022 target | 125 |
| 2025 market average | 108 |
The old target came and went. No promise is attached to the new one yet
No source states that the Department of Energy declared the 2022 target met. BloombergNEF, a market research firm, measured the global average price of a lithium ion battery pack, across every use, at 108 dollars per kilowatt hour in 2025, a record low that sits below the old 125 dollar target, 3 years after that target date passed. That 108 dollar figure is a pack level, worldwide average across every application, not the same measurement as the new 60 and 50 dollar figures, which are cell level, United States production only, and specific to 1 light duty passenger pack size. Nobody has yet published what reaching the new numbers will do to the price of a car. The institutions who set the last target watched the market beat it, and have now written the next one.