The Dawn of EV, page-1608

Re Affordability/China
It's possible that American consumers will go down the LFP route, but everything I've seen so far indicates American consumers appreciate range and are prepared to pay a bit extra for range. If you are looking at a price point like $100/kwh then a 60kwh LFP battery costs US$6k. For a circa $60k vehicle that's an important cost and might be the largest individual item cost. It is however only 10% of the retail cost. If you have a customer saying I need the range and you choice is a top-end battery at say $150/kwh then it would add $3k to the vehicle. What's a consumer going to choose, $60k and limited range or perhaps $65k (inclusive of extra margin/markup on the extra $3k) and better range? I'd also note the retail price gap for a larger price battery seems to be quite a bit more than $3-5k - are car companies boosting profits as part of a larger battery?

There will be a lot of early trial and error in finding out what models and at what price points but my guess is that if the price for extra range is modest and not price gouging, a lot of US customers will upgrade. A lot will also depend on how the resale market prices different vehicle variants. The sales pitch that you will get $x more when you sell this car in x years time may carry quite a bit of weight (i.e. the extra cost is less as you get some/most of it back).

If we are talking 2-3 years and 3-4 years are we just splitting hairs?
E25 is not producing any HPMSM from a commercial facility in 2023 and most likely almost all of 2024 is also impossible. 2025 is 2 years away and initially at least, a lot of the demand may be NCM driven with some initial but quickly growing LMFP demand. The point is that you don't build a processing plant for 1-2 years. By later 2020's if LMFP does become a regularly used option, it will increase HPMSM demand and prompt the need for more HPMSM. If you shift from supplying a vehicle with manganese for NCM811 to perhaps a 1/3rd manganese in LMFP then the manganese demand created by that EV vehicle produced just went up circa 300%. You don't need much of that before it seriously changed HPMSM demand.

LFP vs LMFP
Agreed LFP is the most obvious solution but only if customers are prepared to accept the more limited range that would occur from this. LMFP would appear key LFP benefits without such a large clip to the range. I also don't have an idea how technically difficult it is. A few places have noted LMFP would enable it to be a battery for both low and mid-range not just low-end vehicles.