SK Innovation EV Batteries Banned* For 10 Years By U.S. ITC
What will happen to battery plants under construction in Georgia and supply deals with Volkswagen and Ford?
The U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) announced today a verdict in the court clash between two South Korean EV battery manufacturers: LG Chem and SK Innovation.
According to the announcement, SK Innovation EV battery business (importation, domestic production, and sale of batteries for electric vehicles) is banned in the U.S. for 10 years.
Well, we are not sure what the options are for the following years until the ban ends.
Maybe production of batteries for other markets/other applications or lease/sale of the plant to another manufacturer just to limit the losses? It's hard to imagine that the brand new plants would stay idle for 8 and 6 years.
Anyway, there are not that many battery suppliers that are ready to provide the required volume of batteries so the race is on.
LG Chem's LG Energy Solution, CATL, Panasonic or maybe others have their chance.
China: CATL To Build 25 GWh Battery Plant In Guangdong
CATL just announced a new investment in more battery manufacturing capacity in China.
CATL, the largest Chinese lithium-ion EV battery manufacturer, announced a strategic cooperation agreement with Guangdong Province.
The company intends to build a new battery plant in Guangdong, which in the first phase will have an output of 25 GWh of cells annually.
In the longer term (2030), CATL would like to have a 150 GWh site in Guangdong.
The planned investment in the initial stage is 12 billion yuan ($1.85 billion).
According to reports from China, CATL is also expanding its other Chinese plants and is on track to increase its installed manufacturing capacity from 109 GWh annually in 2020 to 336 GWh annually in 2023.
A big part of the future growth might be the partnership with Tesla, which started to use CATL cells in high volume last year.
Beside the expansion of manufacturing capacity, CATL is working on multiple fronts to offer batteries of various chemistries, including the most popular NCM, LFP and upcoming solid-state type with a very high energy density.
Chinese CATL is even more diversified in terms of the number of customers/cars, but focused mostly in China.
MIC Model 3 with CATL's batteries launched late in 2020. This is why it's responsible for less than 10% of the volume.
"In 2020, less than 10% of all passenger EV battery capacity deployed onto roads by CATL went into MIC Tesla Model 3s, making it the cell supplier’s third greatest ‘vehicle’ to market for the calendar year, albeit the fastest growing customer on CATL’s books.
Deliveries of CATL-supplied Tesla Model 3s to customers only started in Q4."
(20min delay)