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One company has absolutely run away with the trophy for largest EV battery producer in the world. That would be Chinese battery giant CATL (Contemporary Amperex Technology Co Ltd). I recall when it stole the title from LG Chem a few years ago, and it seems that it has only been on an upward trend since then.
We should keep in mind that China accounts for more than half of global electric car sales, and the Chinese market is dominated by Chinese automakers. BYD supplies its own market-leading EVs with batteries, but many other Chinese automakers must be buying batteries from CATL.
Of course, we also know that Tesla, the largest BEV seller in the world, buys some batteries from CATL and from LG Energy Solution, as well as producing many of its batteries itself.
Overall, I think there’s a pretty health mixture of companies each supplying 2% or more of the world’s EV batteries. CATL is dominant and often seems to be the fastest-innovating battery maker, and there’s a clear “big 3,” but there are a lot of battery makers out there. Also, LG Energy Solution’s lead over the other brands has dropped a lot in recent years (while BYD’s lead has grown). In the end, though, CATL stands so far ahead of the others and sells so many batteries to both Chinese EV producers and European and US EV producers.
In total, 285.4 GWh of EV batteries were sold in January–May 2024, which is a 23% percent increase from 232.1 GWh sold in January–May 2023, according to SRE Research.
CATL’s total alone was 107 GWh, up 31.1% from the 81.6% that were sold in the same period of 2023. BYD’s total was 44.9 GWh, which is an increase of 21.1% from 37.0 GWh a year prior. LG Energy Solution reached 35.9 GWh of EV battery sales in January–May 2024, which was down 5.6% from a year prior. In fact, LG Energy Solution dropped from 14.7% share of the EV battery market in January–May 2023 to 12.6% share of the market in January–May 2024.
To end, for some historical perspective, here’s the chart of the top EV battery producers for the whole year 2022:
There are clear changes, but we also still have the same big 3 and almost the same top 10.
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