Upstream for Volatility, Downstream for Stability
Fifteen charts on battery component prices from January to July 2026, and how little of the upstream move survived the trip downstream.
Battery Component Price Report: H1 2026
H1 2026 was lithium’s round trip. Battery-grade carbonate ran up ~71% from New Year’s to mid-May, then handed most of it back as supply came home, sealed by one Jiangxi mine getting its mining permit renewed. That pulled cathode materials up 18 to 34% and lifted cell prices for only the second time since 2023, though the finished 5 MWh storage block ended July roughly where it started, near $61/kWh.
Everything else was odder. LiPF6 fell another 34%, a new battery safety standard sent vinylene carbonate up 42% in July alone, and the biggest riser in the whole report was shredded battery scrap.
We’re back with the interactive format we launched with our 2025 annual summary. If you’re reading this in your inbox, come over to Substack and hover the charts. Let us know what you think.1
Top movers
Feedstock took the top of the table: LFP black mass +39%, FePO4 +38%, LMFP +34%, VC +29%, lithium carbonate +27%. Every single faller is electrolyte chemistry, still unwinding the late-2025 spike. Green means cheaper, as always.
The supply chain in three charts
Three charts we haven’t seen plotted anywhere else. Upstream feedstocks spiked as much as 70% and the finished 5 MWh block kept none of it. Somebody in the middle ate that. The lithium rally also flattened LFP’s density grade premiums. And black mass, it turns out, tracks whichever metal is actually worth recovering, so we split it one panel per chemistry.
LFP black mass, up 39%, outran the carbonate locked inside it. That’s odd on the face of it, because retired battery volumes rose 90% in 2025, so where is the slack? China also cut the black mass import tariff to 3% in January, and recyclers kept bidding anyway. I can’t separate the feedstock scarcity from the tariff out of the price series alone. If you’re on the recycling side, what are you seeing?
Cell prices
LFP EV cells rose 16% to ~$56/kWh and NMC EV cells 20% to ~$87/kWh, which is lithium cost passing straight through. The 314Ah storage cell rose 22% and is currently the tightest cell in China: makers converted lines to 500Ah+ formats at exactly the moment utility orders surged, and lead times stretched to 45-60 days.
Sodium-ion 100Ah cells still price at NMC levels, ~$87/kWh. Lets keep following the cheap sodium story.
Demand is doing the pushing. Global EV battery usage rose 20% to 609 GWh in H1 and storage cell shipments jumped 71% to 461 GWh. The US is a storage market now, with EV sales down 28% in Q1 once the tax credit expired and storage shipments up 83%. Europe grew BEV registrations 35%. China sold 13% fewer NEVs at home and exported more than twice as many.
Below the paywall: the full lithium story, every cathode, anode, electrolyte, precursor & inactive series with what moved them, why cobalt fell despite the DRC’s export quota, what one Chinese safety standard did to a small electrolyte additive, high voltage electrolyte premiums, silicon by process route, natural versus synthetic graphite, an H2 watchlist, and all tracked prices on one chart…