Hi

Cylindrical cells (like 18650) had been LIB standard size for so long time that battery suppliers' facility are optimized to fabricate them. There are no standard size in pouch cell. Cylicdrical shape is much easier to wind than puch cell. For these reason 18650 has much short tact time than ordinary pouch cell. So cylindrical cell fabrication cost is acually lower than pouch cell.

This is reason why Tesla uses 18650 despaite it has poor space efficiency. 

Do you normalize the cost of cells when comparing cylindrical cell to pouch cell?  (like 💲/mAh)

Or If your pouch cell order is small anount, cheaper price may be because they are excess inventory product. Since every pouch cell has specific shape for some gadgets, excess inventory will become useless when they become discontinued.

as Keitaro Kitada. Also, pouch cell have higher Fail/Pass ratio (FPR) a similar story to the increasing FPR of (complex ICs, say the PC-cpu like) the i3, i5, i7 processors over increasing complexity and cost[1] .

Note 1: the major source for their price difference is the increasing FPR over series of the famous cpu : i3, i5, i7 processors.

Could it be a question of demand and supply, from an economic viewpoint, meaning that as of now, though we have a slight overage of production, there is a higher demand for, the better understood, cylindrical cell technology? 

Moreover, the integration of a pouch cell often does not end with the actual cell cost and is a complex operation, just think of the EVA, as you already mentioned cylindrical cells often comprise additional safety features which pouch cells do not. However, nor does it with cylindrical cells, I have the impression that the technology and methodology for the integration of cylindrical cells are better understood today.

So an original thought might be, to compare not only the cell cost but opportunity cost per customer or industry player, towards mAh or even better total available capacity over the lifetime, to discover the answer to your question.

Best, Marcus

Thanks to everybody: To clarify: I am talking about very large volume of cells where pouch cells seem to be cheaper than cylindrical cells. Of course for the same capacity.

Marketing rules change, sporadically, real costs, mostly for batteries close to expiration date. So, we must compare batteries with the same capacity and the same expiration date (year).

It's sure from my experience in battery industry that production cost of 18650 is still now the most competitive of all kind of cells as you know from some data.

However as Murcus wrote, actual selling price depends on demand and supply.

Now 18650 is relatively in high demand because of expansion of  EV marcket and suppliers keep rate of operation high. On the other side pouch cell marcket(for smartphone etc) seems to be in intense competition since there are some new suppliers from china in addition to usual suppliers in japan and korea.

This is just my guess of the reason why you can buy pouch cells in cheaper price.

I am talking about a green field approach like Tesla. All the arguments above do not apply to green field (like the Tesla Gigafactory).

Some argument is still missing.

Does anyone know where i can find a table with pouch cell size and capacity comparison?

@ Markus Lienkamp Did you found an answer on your question? I'm very curious because I'm experiencing the same for my project.