China has spent decades cementing its status as a global leader in procuring minerals and developing critical technologies such as EV batteries while the U.S. has fallen behind. That will make it harder now for Western automakers to wholly shut out Chinese suppliers, said Tu Le, founder and managing director of Sino Auto Insights, a consulting firm.
“If automakers are going to build affordable, clean-energy vehicles this decade, the only way that happens is by using Chinese batteries,” Le said.
Translation: Chinese EV makers would be swamping global EV market with super-cheap EVs produced on low production costs. China's EVs would dominate global markets, they have no interest to want to see battery and lithium pricing going higher. The higher market share of EV that China gets mean the larger share of lithium supplies that they would be purchasing or have access to, which means they get to set the pricing for lithium going forwards. And they won't be high.
