The ongoing cost increase of raw materials such as steel and lithium that have driven up car prices over the past year or more has come to an end, car makers have said.
“Headwinds for raw materials have disappeared,” Thierry Piéton, Renault’s chief financial officer, said on the company’s first-half financial results call. “We are going into a period where costs should gradually get better.”
Renault’s note of optimism about material costs was picked up by other car makers as they told financial analysts of a more settled environment after multiple price shocks delivered first by Covid and then Russia’s war on Ukraine.
Other inflationary pressures remain, but there was a sense of relief that the bill of materials for each car was on a downward trajectory for a change.
