(Yicai Global) March 21 -- Since the second half of last year China’s Contemporary Amperex Technology has twice raised the prices of power batteries it supplies to new energy vehicle makers because of soaring raw material costs, according to an executive at one of the buyers.

“We also quietly raised the prices of our NEV models twice in recent months as we could not bear the pressure arising from soaring costs of batteries and other raw materials,” the executive told Yicai Global.

Each of CATL’s price hikes prompted the NEV manufacturer to charge each customer CNY10,000 (USD1,571) more on its models, the person said.

CATL declined to comment, and a representative said the Ningde-based company could not provide any additional information.

Higher NEV prices can be attributed mainly to surging raw material costs. A ton of lithium carbonate is now priced at CNY500,000 (USD78,570), up from CNY50,000 in early 2021. Lithium is used in power batteries.

Soaring downstream costs have been passed on to power battery producers and subsequently to vehicle makers, with a number recently announcing their own price increases.

BYD unveiled an increase of CNY3,000 to CNY6,000 (USD472 to USD944) for each of its NEV models on March 15, marking the second such hike so far this year.

Hozon New Energy Automobile’s NEV brand Neta, Geely Auto Group’s all-electric vehicle sub-brand Geometry, Xpeng Motors, WM Motor and Zhejiang Lingpao Technologies have also raised prices.

In addition, Tesla has upped its prices three times in the past 10 days, with some models increasing by as much as CNY30,000 each.

Editors: Xu Wei, Peter Thomas