Just six companies —BYD, CATL, LG Energy Solution, Panasonic, Samsung SDI, and SK Innovation—were responsible for supplying 87 percent of batteries and battery metals in passenger EVs in the second half of 2020.
In 2021, according to Statista, battery makers took in US $26 billion. By 2023, global EV battery revenues had mushroomed (according to a separate service, Markets and Markets) to $132.6 billion. It stands to reason that this was because of concomitant increases in EV production and sales.
When IEEE Spectrum provided a snapshot of the world’s leading EV battery makers in 2021, China’s Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. (CATL) and South Korea’s LG Energy Solution were industry’s twin titans, each boasting a 26 percent market share.
Still, the top three battery makers are responsible for two thirds (66%) of the total battery deployment, which highlights the importance of scale in this business, in order to have the most competitive product on the market. Panasonic, once upon a time a leader in the automotive EV business, has continued its slow slide down the table.
The centre of global battery production is China. It is home to four of the world’s five biggest manufacturers, including CATL and BYD (see chart 3). The share of China’s battery production destined for stationary storage has risen from almost nothing in 2020 to around a fifth last year, overtaking the share used in consumer electronics.
No other automaker possesses meaningful market share in the global EV battery industry. BYD has been able to keep costs down and sell increasingly inexpensive models thanks to its in-house capabilities in batteries and even semiconductors.