#1 Battery Maker in World Says USA Can’t Make EVs without China

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The world’s largest EV battery producer in the world, by far, is China’s CATL. Second is China’s BYD. The USA wants to block automakers from using Chinese batteries, but these Chinese companies are basically saying — yeah, good luck with that, hahaha.

In fact, the general conclusion is that the US auto market is going to suffer and lag others due to these protectionist efforts. Well, if we’re being honest, that’s currently the case, but there are other factors involved as well that make us a global laggard.

Robin Zeng, founder of CATL and China’s 4th richest person, contends that the US market is doomed without his company. Around a third of the world’s new EVs had CATL batteries last year. That’s all the more impressive when you consider that BYD, the world’s leading EV seller, produces its own batteries.

Zeng doesn’t see the US EV market as doomed forever, though. Eventually, US policies will change, and “after that, it’ll have to be booming, because it is the trend. It is the future.”

If technology keeps marching forward, as it will, once barriers are removed to a big market, it’s inevitable that much advanced technology is going to bust through the gates and become popular quickly, right? Though, in this case, cheaper CATL batteries may not be as blocked as hyped.

“There are signs automakers are already turning to CATL in the United States. Ford recently dropped South Korea’s SK Group as a joint-venture partner for battery projects, focusing on a plan to build CATL-designed lithium-iron-phosphate (LFP) batteries at a new plant in Michigan. To make it happen, Ford is paying CATL intellectual property royalties, which is something the US allows as it builds legal and political hurdles to prevent the Chinese battery giant from setting foot into the market,” Autoblog writes.

“While LFP technology was invented in the US, the Chinese perfected it and figured out how to make it work in cars. […] General Motors is also using CATL-sourced LFP batteries in the 2027 Chevrolet Bolt, but unlike Ford, it imports them from China under a temporary arrangement that is designed to maintain a low purchase price for its entry-level EV before it shifts to domestic LFP cell production. GM is importing the China-made batteries legally, but it does so while paying a 60% tariff. The fact that GM does this while its two billion-dollar US battery plants are idle highlights its inability to produce cheaper batteries.”

Great points. Also clearly very damning. Naturally, a large part of this is the massive scale of the Chinese EV market has enabled these supplies, supply chains, or ecosystems (whatever you want to call them) to develop, mature, and bring costs down. China has accounted for about half of the world’s EV sales in recent years, or even more than half at times. As a result, the EV battery market is huge and costs have come down accordingly thanks to natural learning curves. We don’t have the benefit of that in our tiny US EV market.

“It probably would’ve taken us a decade to catch up and have LFP technology on our own,” Lisa Drake, a Ford executive working on the Michigan battery plant, conceded. Yikes.

Also, CATL is actually now focused on sodium-ion batteries. LFP is old news.

So, does anyone actually disagree with Zeng?