The rub: Our EV future is dependent on batteries from Asia … mostly CHINA!
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According to an SNE Research analysis channeled by Statista…
At present, the ten manufacturers with the highest market share in terms of battery capacity are all headquartered in Asian countries, mainly China, South Korea and Japan.
The top five manufacturers – CATL, LG, Panasonic, BYD and Samsung – together account for over 80 percent of global automotive battery production.
The Chinese company Contemporary Amperex Technology (CATL) alone controls about 1/3 of the market.
If that isn’t scary enough, consider that about 97% of lithium is currently refined in China. Source
Ditching Russian energy is a great idea … but putting our eggs in China’s basket strikes me as jumping from the pan into the fire.
The Homa Files 
March 9, 2022 at 10:29 pm |
Prof Homa,
China plays a long term strategic game. They have been strategically focused on Alternative technologies, Electric Cars, and next Generation network 5G in last 10+ years. It is sad that we end up developing critical technologies doing years of research and China reaps the benefit. On the contrary, I have to say our politicians don’t operate methodically and our policies are responsible for this.
I have been Solar industry for last 15+ years and seeing this first hand. Solar technologies have been developed in US under DARPA funding. In 2008 the top two solar manufactures in the world were US companies ( SunPower and First Solar), The two of them are nowhere in top 10 today. In some ways our dependence on China is a double whammy. Without China government’s long term thinking Solar cost would have never come down to the level they are today. Chinese govt spent billions of dollars developing polysilicon supply chain and now account for close to 90% of world supply. Polysilicon prices dropped from $200/kg to $10/kg as a result.
Same thing goes with lithium batteries, they have been responsible for dropping prices from $1500KWH to $100-$120KWH.
Our politicians kept of debating if alternate energy will ever be cost effective while all this is happening and china was supporting there industry giving out incentives. We are now realizing the Godzilla we have in front of US.
In some regards Tesla ( & Elon Musk) is the only one in this area who has guts to think big. Others are trying to follow the suit and will rely on china batteries. I see lot of people critizing green technologies but only if we have invested these like china did over last decade US companies would have been ruling the world not Chinese.
Unfortunately, even in conventional industries like steel mfg, today china mfg world’s 65% steel. Its said and I hate to say, we can put sanctions on Russia, but even the idea of having something similar of china shivers me up.