Trajectory Line
Lithium carbonate's rate of gain has decelerated by roughly a factor of five since January, and the May 13 pullback from near CNY 200,000/MT reads as a ceiling test that will transmit downstream as deceleration in cell quotes — slower gains, same direction.
Application Grid
EV Cells No 2026 assessment available from any tracked source. Calibration baseline: $79/kWh cell, $99/kWh pack (BNEF, 2025 full-year average, published Dec 2025). Direction: materially above baseline given 50% YTD lithium move and 30–50% rise in Chinese LFP cell quotes since December. Magnitude unquantifiable without contract-level data.
BESS Cells (China domestic) Price: 0.34–0.394 RMB/Wh, 314Ah LFP (CEEC tender shortlist, May 7). Top-tier (EVE Energy): 0.394. Second-tier (Rongjie, Shuangdeng): 0.340–0.345. 500Ah+: 0.360–0.383 (same tender, Package 2). Direction: up. Rate: +30% Jan–Mar (MoM×3, Energy-Storage.News citing Mysteel/SMM); system-level rate compressing to +1.1% period-over-period (InfoLink, Mar 20). InfoLink May 13: cell prices still rising, system prices holding.
Defense-Relevant Formats No $/kWh ASP disclosed from any tracked source. No update this week.
Pack / System Level BNEF 2025: LFP pack $81/kWh global average. China all-segment pack average $84/kWh; North America all-segment average ~$121/kWh (+44% regional premium per BNEF). No NA LFP-specific figure published. China BESS system (DC-side, 2h, liquid-cooled): RMB 0.44–0.52/Wh, avg 0.48/Wh (InfoLink, Mar 20). System prices plateauing per InfoLink May 13 despite continued cell-level increases. No US-landed BESS system $/kWh available for Q2 2026.
The Synthesis
Lithium Carbonate and the Five-Fold Deceleration
Track the velocity. Approximately 95% gain in six weeks through January. Approximately 50% cumulative over five months since. The rate of gain compressing by a factor of roughly five. The February limit-down sessions on the Guangzhou Futures Exchange and the May 13 intraday drop exceeding 3% (SMM midday review) are consistent with a market testing a ceiling repeatedly rather than consolidating for a move through it.
InfoLink's February 6 assessment placed the buyer-resistance threshold at CNY 150,000/MT, the level above which profit compression becomes "pronounced for energy storage projects and the EV value chain." The market now sits roughly 33% above that threshold. Seaborne CIF Northeast Asia printed $18,210/ton in April per IMARC. Note: Fastmarkets reported a publishing delay affecting its May 12 EXW China battery-grade lithium carbonate assessment; no free-access May CIF CJK figure is available from Fastmarkets or other tracked sources. IMARC's April CIF serves as a proxy here with lower confidence. At that April level, the domestic-to-seaborne spread was approximately $8,700/ton at prevailing exchange rates, likely wider now given the domestic move since. Most of this rally remains a Chinese domestic phenomenon. The spread itself measures how much of the upstream signal is exportable versus trapped inside the Chinese pricing ecosystem.
SMM's May 11–15 weekly review described prices that "surged earlier this week before pulling back rapidly." Post-May 13 daily settlements are not available from free public sources. Editorial inference, based on directional language only: week-end settlement likely CNY 185,000–195,000/MT. Low confidence. I am triangulating from tone, not from a confirmed print.
BESS Cells Stratify Under Raw Material Pressure
The CEEC 7 GWh tender results published May 12 are this week's most actionable BESS data. They also carry a misread risk for anyone anchoring to the headline low.
That 16% gap between the tender floor and EVE's bid is tier-driven stratification. Second-tier suppliers are pricing for volume at margins that may not survive the next quarter's cathode invoices if lithium holds above CNY 180,000. Top-tier pricing has held: EVE's May bid is essentially flat against the March peak reported by Energy-Storage.News citing Mysteel/SMM.
The lag from lithium carbonate to cell quotes runs 6–8 weeks, mediated by cathode producer inventory cycles and contract repricing windows. If lithium stabilizes from its May peak, that deceleration appears in cell quotes no earlier than mid-July.
If lithium resumes climbing, SMM's scenario of 0.42 RMB/Wh for 314Ah remains live. The 314Ah-to-500Ah+ format transition is adding a supply-tightness overlay: delivery lead times stretched to 45–60 days in March with rush-order premiums of 5–10% (Energy-Storage.News, Mar 11).
InfoLink's May 13 observation that system prices "hold steady" while cells rise tells you where the margin compression is landing. Integrators are absorbing it rather than passing through to SOE procurement desks. That absorption has a finite runway. If cell prices hold near current top-tier levels through June, system prices follow or integrator margins go negative. One of those outcomes is sustainable.
EV Cells, the Missing Benchmark, and the Capacity Drain
The BNEF 2025 baseline is approximately twelve months stale relative to current upstream conditions. No tracked source has published a 2026 EV cell assessment. That absence is itself informative: the market is moving fast enough that no assessment methodology has caught up, or publishers are waiting for contract-cycle data that hasn't surfaced.
Directional inference only: given the 50% YTD lithium move and the 30–50% increase in Chinese LFP cell quotes since December, 2026 Chinese EV cell pricing is materially above the BNEF figure. For Western OEMs, magnitude depends on contract structures that remain opaque.
Meanwhile, Korean makers are pulling EV lines to feed ESS backlogs. LGES posted KRW -208B operating loss in Q1 2026 while repurposing EV lines at Holland, Michigan for LFP ESS production. Samsung SDI is converting EV lines at its Indiana plant to ESS. Both moves are rational given LGES's 140 GWh ESS backlog at end-2025 and collapsing EV subsidy support. But they mean FEOC-compliant EV cell supply from Korean sources is tightening at the same moment BESS supply from those same sources scales. For any team sourcing both applications from Korean makers, those are now competing claims on the same production lines.
The 60–90 day EV cell price trajectory remains unassessable from tracked sources. The capacity reallocation signal suggests tightening supply for compliant EV cells, but no pricing data confirms magnitude or timing. This is a gap I cannot close with available data and will not fill with inference.
US-Landed Pricing Remains Opaque Behind the Compliance Wall
No public $/kWh figure exists for FEOC-compliant Korean ESS cells delivered to US projects in Q2 2026. The LGES-Tesla agreement ($4.3B) and Samsung SDI's $1B US ESS deal disclose no per-kWh terms.
Supply is scaling faster than most 2025 forecasts anticipated. LGES targets >60 GWh ESS capacity (80%+ North America), planning 50 GWh of deliveries in 2026. Samsung SDI targets 30 GWh by year-end. Against the Energy Storage Coalition's 60 GWh deployment forecast and 146 GWh of announced US cell manufacturing capacity, the numbers begin to suggest potential oversupply. If it all reaches nameplate. The distance between an announcement and a qualified, shipping line is where most capacity forecasts die.
The ~60% effective duty stack on Chinese-origin BESS and ~43% cost penalty for non-FEOC-compliant projects losing ITC eligibility structurally insulate US buyers from Chinese spot dynamics. That insulation carries a price: exposure to Korean maker pricing power in a compliance-gated market where those makers are the only scaled source, are losing money on EV operations, and have every incentive to price ESS cells to recover margin. The $35/kWh 45X production credit offsets some of that. The net premium over Chinese ex-works remains substantial and, critically, opaque.
Over the next 60–90 days, US procurement teams face a specific question: does Korean ESS pricing reflect competitive supply economics, or monopoly-adjacent positioning in a compliance-constrained market? Until a second scaled FEOC-compliant source ships at volume, the data leans toward the latter.
Things to follow up on...
- Cell-to-system cost decoupling: S&P Global's Paola Perez Peña argues that cells and modules now account for only 25–45% of total BESS capex in 2026, which explains why the lithium spike has had limited system-level impact so far.
- Benchmark's North American LFP gap: Benchmark Mineral Intelligence launched CIF North America and Europe 314Ah LFP cell price assessments in February, identifying a 63 GWh North American deficit in 2025 with both regional LFP and BESS markets expected to remain in deficit near-term.
- CATL's upstream lock-in signal: CATL signed a six-year, RMB 120B+ cathode procurement deal with Ronbay that drew an immediate Shanghai Stock Exchange inquiry over feasibility, suggesting the world's largest cell maker is pricing in sustained upstream tightness rather than a near-term correction.
- 500Ah+ format ramp timeline: InfoLink expects 500Ah+ utility-scale cells to exceed 15% penetration in 2026, with 587/588Ah emerging as the primary scale-up direction and tight supply-demand balance persisting through H1 before easing moderately in H2.