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China’s battery makers burnish their safety image as they grab the lion’s share of the world’s market for powering electric cars

  • CATL is now the world’s largest EV battery maker, with about 30 per cent of the global market, ahead of LG Energy’s 25 per cent, SNE Research said
  • Chinese brands are fighting an uphill reputational battle against South Korean and Japanese brands, which have the image of being safer

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Illustration: Henry Wong
Daniel RenandJodi Xu Klein

The final instalment of a three-part series on electric car batteries looks at the quality and safety record of China-made packs, and how they stack up against competitors in South Korea and Japan.

Midway through 2019, one of China’s most aggressive makers of electric vehicles (EVs) hit a bump in its breakneck growth pace: it had to take back nearly 5,000 of its ES8 sports-utility vehicles because of reports of their battery packs catching fire.
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The recall would cost NIO nearly 350 million yuan (US$54.7 million) based on analysts’ estimates, about 4.5 per cent of what the Shanghai-based start-up, then barely five years old, sold for the entire year.
The batteries, produced between April and October 2018, were made by Contemporary Amperex Technology Limited (CATL), based in the Fujian provincial city of Ningde. CATL, the world’s largest EV battery maker with 30 per cent of global market share, would roll out a power source for NIO two years later that could clock 1,000 kilometres (620 miles) on a single charge, further than any other battery pack on the market.

But before they could break the records, NIO and CATL had a more immediate task to tackle in 2019: how to assure cautious drivers switching to EVs for the first time that battery packs are safe. For buyers, many of whom count the family car as the largest big-ticket purchase of their lifetime after the home, the spectre of automobiles catching fire was a cause for pause.

NIO’s ES8 all-electric sports utility vehicle (SUV) on display at a Nio House showroom in Shanghai on March 16, 2021. Photo: Bloomberg.
NIO’s ES8 all-electric sports utility vehicle (SUV) on display at a Nio House showroom in Shanghai on March 16, 2021. Photo: Bloomberg.

“Nothing is more important than safety to a car driver,” said Phate Zhang, founder of the Shanghai-based EV news portal CNEVPost. “For consumers with the penchant for battery-powered vehicles, any news about cars catching fire will [douse] their buying interest.”

SCMP Series
China’s electric car batteries
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