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KDI 경제교육·정보센터

ENG
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최신자료
Drive Down the Cost: Learning by Doing and Government Policies in the Global EV Battery Industry
CEPR
2025.01.13
Electric vehicle (EV) battery costs have declined by over 90% in the past decade. This study investigates the role of learning-by-doing (LBD) in driving this reduction and its interaction with two major government policies -- consumer EV subsidies and local content requirements. Leveraging rich data on EV models and battery suppliers, we develop and estimate a structural model of the global EV industry that incorporates heterogeneous consumer choices and strategic pricing behaviors of EV producers and battery suppliers. The model allows us to recover battery costs for each EV model and quantify the extent of LBD in battery production. The learning rate is estimated to be 7.5% during our sample period after controlling for industry technological progress, economies of scale, input costs, and EV assembly experience. LBD magnified the effectiveness of consumer EV subsidies by several folds and generated complementarity among subsidies across countries. Upstream battery suppliers capture a small fraction of the benefits brought by LBD to downstream EV producers and consumers, and consumer EV subsidies improved social welfare by accelerating LBD and reducing battery costs. China’s local content requirement helped domestic suppliers gain a competitive advantage at the expense of consumers and foreign suppliers, but its domestic welfare implications would shift from positive to negative if implemented five years later.