Another month has passed, and yet another 89 gigawatt-hours (GWh) of lithium-ion battery factory capacity has been added to the planning pipeline for production in 2023. This represents growth of 9% in just a single month (more than 100% annualized growth)!
Planned annual battery output by 2023 has now crossed 1,000 GWh of capacity, and over 70% that capacity is in China. There’s enough global lithium-ion production capacity in the pipeline to supply over 21 million EVs each year (around 25% of the global vehicle market) by 2023.
As I mentioned in last month’s update, there’s still plenty of scope for the planned 2023 production capacity to increase further still. The rapid progress at the Tesla Shanghai Gigafactory (Gigafactory 3) — from breaking ground to product output in less than 12 months — illustrates how fast factories can come online, especially in China. We can expect much more planned capacity to be added to the 2023 horizon between now and then. More distant horizons (2025, 2028, and so on) obviously have even more scope for capacity planning. Let’s see how the growth in lithium-ion supply enables the ramp in EV manufacturing over time. Here we assume a 50 kWh global average BEV/PHEV battery pack size (roughly the size of the pack in the Tesla Model 3 Standard Range). We also make the simplifying assumption that all the lithium-ion capacity goes towards EVs. In reality, a proportion will go to stationary storage (no complaints about this, since stationary storage is another powerful use-case for moving beyond fossil fuels):
The growing multitude of lithium-ion battery factories in China will allow for a huge number of locally produced EVs. Using the same simplifying methodology as above, let’s have a look at the latest graph for what will be possible in 2023–2028:
My thanks again to Benchmark Mineral Intelligence for the underlying data. Benchmark produce the industry’s most comprehensive regular monthly global assessments (of battery capacity, lithium supply and pricing, and many other key areas of the battery supply chain), of great value for any business working in this area. Let’s have a straw poll of what total 2023 pipeline capacity we will see on the table by the end of the first half of this year. I’ll be able to report the June figures in mid July if all goes well (3 months from now). Will the total 2023 pipeline break 1800 GWh? 2000 GWh? Even more? Jump in and share your thoughts in the comments. |
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