Battery prices for electric vehicles are seeing a “ridiculous” increase on the back of soaring raw material prices, and carmakers will soon have to raise prices if they haven’t done it yet, according to the top executive of Chinese electric vehicle manufacturer Li Auto Inc.“The cost of batteries in the second quarter rose by a very ridiculous amount,” Bloomberg quoted Li Auto’s chief executive officer Li Xiang as saying on his Weibo account this weekend.Because of rising costs for raw materials, Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. Ltd. (CATL), the largest battery maker in the world, already announced today in a statement to Reuters that it had raised the prices for some of its battery cells, without giving additional details of the price hike.
China’s Li Auto has not yet announced any price increases for its EVs.Rising costs for raw materials and logistics…