It will matter a lot if (replacement) battery prices skyrocket…

Most individual buyers are unable or not willing to take global perspectives into account, otherwise Japanese cars would never make impact on the American market for example. You need people in power to make informed decisions, and even then you risk the only result will be people getting very angry that politician mess up with the market.

I don't really see a prospect of that, since the batteries are steadily getting both better and cheaper. What makes you think so?

For E-Bikes at least communication between the engine and the battery pack is encrypted and you can't replace either without the manufacturer's consent.

This seems more like an added feature of some E-Bikes, rather then an essential design element of E-Bikes in general.

And even if true, it doesn't follow for me that "therefor, batteries must become more expensive in general, despite the current trend".

I think you're implying lock-in and extractive profits, rather than rising cost of manufacture. It's an argument for diversity of key industries, and that batteries might become such. I agree with that. But as an argument that (in parent the comment's words) "so, battery prices will skyrocket", it seems a bit thin to me.

battery prices are expected to "Plummet" not "Skyrocket": https://cleantechnica.com/2025/10/15/plummeting-battery-pric...

I don’t think the argument is „batteries are getting more expensive“, the argument is that manufacturers will start maximizing profits once they have sufficiently handicapped the competition.

They might, at which point the argument for diversity of key industries kicks in. Batteries are key to the near future of hand-held gadgets, e-bikes, many other vehicles and to power grids, so the tolerance for extractive monopolies might be limited.

That's a hard argument to make as long as the relevant antitrust authorities are diligent about mergers & acquisitions.

Batteries are not a differentiated product. They're basically completely defined by 3 numbers: capacity (in watt-hours), power delivery (watts), and weight. Once those are optimized (which is the process going on now), the chemistry, construction, and manufacturing of batteries is basically a solved problem. Any barriers to entry are purely in the technology and manufacturing. About 200 years of industrial history shows that these are not durable barriers to entry: eventually, technology and know-how diffuses, and knowledge of how to make even very complex machines becomes a commodity. (See eg: power looms, memory chips, hard disks, agriculture, TVs, automobiles, drones.)

Durable competitive advantages usually take the form of either a.) complex consumer interface, eg. with software or CPUs b.) network effects, eg. telecommunications, payment networks, software again, utilities or c.) regulations, eg. payment again, airplane manufacturing, healthcare, and shortly software. These are industries where factors outside the company in question ensure that there will only be one or at most a small set of companies in the market.

When you have a commodity product, the only route to extractive profits is to form a cartel and lobby governments or consumers to believe the cartel is in their interests, eg. with oil or diamonds. But this is a hard sell because the cartel is not in their interests. You can generally only fool people for a decade or two before they decide they've had enough and legislate your monopoly out of existence.

People tend to overindex on the software industry when it comes to "maximizing profits" because that has been the big story of the 2010s, ignoring that Big Tech very carefully implemented every play in the "build a monopoly" playbook to get there, and that millions of indie software developers actually do not make a very good living because their products are commodities.

Remind us all how that’s working out with insulin.

Free-of-charge to patients where I am. I know that the US takes a different choice on the consumer price of insulin, but it is exactly that: a choice.

"The relevant antitrust authorities" aren't going to be able to touch anyone who manufactures in China, and that is currently the centre of battery manufacturing. I have nothing against batteries and EVs and solar panels made in China. They are a huge benefit to humanity as a whole. But it should not be a chokepoint.

But the rest stands. The barriers aren't that high. How soon it is diversified, depends on how much attention the other countries and companies are paying.