A worker operates equipment at a production line of Gotion High-tech Co, a Chinese company focusing on power battery development and production, in Hefei, Anhui province, in December 2022. RUAN XUEFENG/FOR CHINA DAILY

Globalization still priority next year as home market becomes saturated amid challenges
China has helped power millions of electric vehicles around the world in 2023, responsible for over three-fifths of global installations of power batteries — the muscle at the heart of EVs.

South Korean market consultancy SNE Research said in a recent report that China continued to dominate the global power battery market in the first 10 months. Six of the world's top 10 battery makers are from China, with their market share taking up 63.3 percent of the total.

For these Chinese battery manufacturers, "globalization" has been the keyword this year after charging up the massive domestic market. Looking ahead into 2024, it will still be a priority for them to get an even bigger slice of the international market, but they face rising geopolitical challenges and uncertainties abroad, industry experts said.

Ouyang Minggao, an academician at the Chinese Academy of Sciences and a Tsinghua University professor, said, "As competition among power battery makers continues to intensify in the domestic market, Chinese battery manufacturers will no doubt accelerate their steps to go global."

Ouyang predicts the market scale of power batteries and energy storage batteries is expected to exceed the original goal of 7 billion kilowatt-hours — which is already high — this year and grow seven to 10-fold over the next seven years.

"Huge opportunities await for these battery makers as the global battery market still has huge development potential in the coming years," he added.

Currently in China, in addition to well-known battery giants like Contemporary Amperex Technology Co Ltd and BYD, peers such as CALB, Gotion High-tech Co, Sunwoda and Eve Energy are also among the world's top 10 EV battery makers. All of these battery giants have announced plans to expand foreign business.

"Globalization is an irresistible trend," said Li Zhen, founder and chairman of Gotion High-Tech Co, at a Bloomberg forum in Singapore in November. "You have to share the technology and products with other countries. That is the fundamental economic side of it."

The company, backed by leading Germany-based automaker Volkswagen, invested recently in battery manufacturing plants in two US states, Illinois and Michigan, which marked a milestone among Chinese battery makers in globalization due to the significant role the US market plays in EV and renewable energy technologies.

The planned $2 billion lithium battery plant in Illinois is expected to produce 10 gigawatt-hours of lithium battery packs and 40 GWh of lithium-ion battery cells annually, while the Michigan plant will take an investment of $2.36 billion to produce anode and cathode materials for batteries.

"The United States is a market that we must enter," Zeng Yuqun, founder and CEO of CATL, the world's largest EV battery maker, said in an internal meeting involving over 50 renowned investors — including Hillhouse Capital, Sequoia Capital, Tencent Holdings and Temasek Holdings — late last year.