A recent 20236 report reflects on China’s dominance in the whole supply chain of battery production. It is not just about cheaper factories but years of building the know-how, supplier networks and engineering depth. While the report notes that “Batteries are becoming one of the most important technologies of the 21st century”. The supply chain includes material processing, cell manufacture. Batteries are crucial to Electric Vehicles, power grids (themselves ever more important to the AI boom) and , also more evident, military applications.
The report is not anti-Chinese in tone but argues for subsidies in other parts of the world to create strategic resilience for the future. It suggests that even though there are innovative types of battery─-solid state and sodium-ion─Western companies should focus on the now regular lithium-ion type. It suggests they create partnerships with Asian manufacturers. At the same time such companies are researching more efficient lithium extraction though European projects on the evidence of a mine in the Austrian state of Carinthia, are dependent on Australian capital and Saudi extraction facilities. One company however , General Motors which in its heyday of US auto manufacture carried the slogan What’s-Good-For-General-Motors-Is Good-For- America. has its own Wallace Battery Cell Innovation Center is betting on sodium-ion, developing a cheaper version of such a battery on expectation of data centre demand.
Chinese ambiguity towards its dominance and export capacity is between its desire to keep control of the supply chain as with its export controls on graphite an essential component, and the needs of Chinese battery battery makers weighed down by domestic oversupply. A specific case are the dealings between China’s CATL and India’s Reliance Industries conglomerate. In relation to Reliance’s hope for a technology transfer that would allow the making of cells locally and catch up with China’s expertise through partnerships. Negotiations are running into China tightening controls on some battery technology exports.