The shocking truth behind China’s EV dominance and America’s uphill battle
With cutting-edge advancements and massive investments, China is outpacing the U.S. in EV development, can America catch up?
This is from Autoblog , a very standard gearhead site. Not an EV site.
Sam Evans isn't alone in seeing what's happening in the world.
The race is over and we have lost. As far as lithium-ion battery technology goes, the Chinese have won. They set their sights on a product that they could excel at and now they own it.
CATL Qilin Li-ion battery with 620-mile (1,000 km) range
CATL
China decided on this course very early
China has pursued a position of supremacy in the lithium-ion battery space since 2001, when the country made it a cornerstone of its Five Year Plan. After “inviting” their many joint venture partners into China and learning how to properly manufacture vehicles, there was a realization that they would not be able to out-innovate the Americans and Europeans when it came to internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles.
CATL battery factory, Guiyang, China
CATL
This led to major government support for the development of an EV battery industry starting in 2009. This was something that the “foreigners” were not pursuing. From 2009 to 2023, the Chinese government poured a substantial $230 billion into both batteries and EVs. This took the form of inexpensive land, tax breaks, and other incentives. Top Chinese battery producers like CATL, BYD, CALB, and Gotion have reaped the benefits and dominate the battery market, in China and elsewhere.
Changan Lumin with CALB battery
CALB
Total control of the supply chain
In addition to the manufacturing of EV batteries, China has gained control of the entire EV battery supply chain. This includes materials found on its home turf as well as supplies on other continents.
Here’s one example: Partially or completely Chinese-owned firms will produce over 90% of Africa’s entire lithium supply for the next ten years! To make things worse, China’s EV battery production capacity already exceeds world demand by around 400%.
CATL battery factory, Liyang, China
CATL
Is it any wonder Chinese EVs are so inexpensive?
This helps to explain how the Chinese can price their EVs so low - all of the materials going into the battery have been subsidized by their government. This gives them a pricing advantage, which when combined with the industry’s overcapacity, now has them shipping their EVs all over the world to various export markets.
BMW Li-ion battery plant, Woodruff, South Carolina, USA
BMW
Is there anything we can do to stop this?
While it’s pretty much game over as far as liquid electrolyte lithium-ion batteries go, we should not give up. We should be building our own lithium-ion battery plants and supply chains so that we can provide our EV industry with a stable source of batteries that cannot be cut off for political reasons.
The Inflation Reduction Act has already spurred a massive investment in American-based lithium-ion battery plants, making that goal a reality. Regardless, we should realize that lithium-ion batteries are reaching their performance limits and it’s time to go beyond them.
Moving forward, the real action is at the next level of EV battery development. And that’s solid-state batteries, for which we have not yet ceded development to the Chinese. It’s the best way to preserve our auto industry for the future.
Solid-state batteries will solve many of our EV problems
The next generation of solid-state EV batteries are the answer to many troubling issues we must live with in today’s electric vehicles. These solid-state batteries will charge faster, have more energy density and thus be lighter, and will be much safer than today’s lithium-ion cells, eliminating the possibility of thermal runaway. Even better, solid-state batteries need no graphite, which China has near-total control of.
Just imagine an EV with 1,000 miles of range, a five-minute charging time, normal weight, and low fire hazard. That would solve most of our EV adoption problems right there!
QuantumScape
We need to get on the solid-state bandwagon now, while there’s still time
In order to reap a commercial advantage from the development of solid-state EV batteries, we must provide more funding for R&D, accelerate the commercialization of products that come out of the lab, and provide a protected environment (such as military-related projects) in which these batteries can be made ready for mass production as soon as possible.
The next race for solid-state batteries is on and we are not the only ones running in it. In addition to a Chinese-sponsored consortium including battery maker CATL and automaker BYD, Japan’s Toyota , Nissan , and Honda , and Korea’s Samsung are also hotly pursuing solid-state batteries. The big challenges facing all solid-state battery developers are making them at large scale while bringing the cost down.
Final thoughts
It’s now or never. The Chinese have eaten our lunch where lithium-ion batteries are concerned, but we still have a chance to grab the lead in the solid-state battery race. The clock is ticking…
Stephen Fogel has been a freelance automotive writer for the past eight years, covering all aspects of the automotive scene he knows so well. He has written extensively for RepairPal, as well as for Tier 1 suppliers, EV startups, and automotive M&A consultants.
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Americans have, for a very long time, not paid much attention to the rest of the world. They didn't need to.
Today, America is no longer the greatest economic power in the world. That requires some readjustment.
Not with Trump as PotUS. This clown's big solution is 'drill, baby, drill' which focuses on a problem we do not have and continues to take our eyes off the renewable ball.
Precisely.
Lol …. Powered by coal fired power plants
Ya gotta keep up, Sparty.
A couple days ago, I seeded an article about China lowering its fossil fuel consumption, and particularly coal.
The Federal government instituted initiatives and investments to develop hydrogen as an alternative to fossil fuels in the 1970s. The United States bet on hydrogen instead of batteries to power EVs that were planned to become commercially available in the 1990s. The Federal government's focus on hydrogen as an alternative encompassed research and development on hydrogen fuel cells, wind, solar, geothermal power plants, and nuclear energy as alternatives to, primarily, oil as fuel. There was even limited Federally funded research on coal gasification to produce hydrogen. Back in the 1970s, some environmentalists opposed the deployment of these alternatives as too disruptive to the environment. Environmentalists favored large scale, centralized power generation distributed over a national grid. There really were environment arguments that coal was less environmentally disruptive than alternative energy because mining could be regulated and smokestacks could be cleaned with imposed technology requirements.
American capital did not take advantage of Federal R&D spending. While the Federal government was funding R&D to address the problem, activists in society engaged in coercing the Federal government to impose onerous environmental, labor, and safety regulations on American businesses. American capital chose to flee the United States to places where environmental, labor, and safety regulations did not exist since that would obviously be more profitable. The Federal government subsequently approved trade agreements that favored unfair competition and provided further incentive for American capital to flee the United States.
So, on one hand the Federal government was making the investments to develop EVs using new technology beginning in the !970s. On the other hand the Federal government was deliberately creating obstacles to commercially develop the new technology that had been researched. The United States was supposed to have hydrogen powered EVs by the 1990s but political government chose, instead, to do everything in its power to prevent commercial development.
China owes the Federal government and the American people everything. The Federal government kick started the R&D effort that China has appropriated. The Federal government assumed all the risk of weeding out blind alleys and dead ends in development of alternative energy technology. China only dominates the EV market because the Federal Government funded the necessary research and proof of concept funding.
Thank a liberal for the United States' dependence on China. Liberals turned business into the enemy with NIMBY attitudes. Now the only thing the United States can do is produce Monopoly money. The United States can no longer feed itself, cloth itself, house itself, heal itself, or protect itself without China. And the United States will just pull more money out of thin air to pay for it all.