In 2022, CATL made 34 per cent of all the world’s electric car batteries. The number of car makers with which it works is simply staggering – BMW, Mercedes, Hyundai, NIO, Peugeot, Opel, Citroen, Tesla, Toyota, Volkswagen, Honda, Volvo, and Ford
While CATL has long been a leader in what one might call the “orthodox” lithium-ion battery design, it’s also reckoned to be one of the world’s leaders when it comes to lithium iron phosphate batteries, which are seen as a critical next step in battery design as they’re cheaper to build, and robust and reliable for a cost of a small bit of range.
All told, Chinese battery makers last year accounted for 56 per cent of all EV batteries made. That doesn’t sound like the most massive lead in the world – if LG, SK, Samsung, and Panasonic all increased their share by 1.5 per cent each, the Chinese advantage would be wiped out – but it’s not just about the finished batteries. China also controls, quite deliberately, huge swathes of the materials needed to make batteries. Any battery. Anywhere.
quite some time ago, China, with orders from the top of the ruling Communist Party, put itself on a deliberate, calculated trajectory to become the world’s dominant electric car power. That strategy has worked, in spades The thing is, it’s expected that many of these car companies will actually fail, and that’s precisely what the Chinese government is happy to allow. The idea is to encourage as many start-ups as possible, to generate as many ideas and innovations, and then allow a brutal, Darwinian whittling to take place. In a country with guaranteed employment, the workers in those companies won’t end up on the breadline.