Battery

The unveiling of the Sehol E10X test vehicle means that sodium-ion batteries are starting to be used in passenger cars, after the new batteries were mainly used in electric two-wheelers and for energy storage.

Industrial-grade lithium carbonate prices in China today fell below 400,000 yuan ($58,000) per ton, a pullback of more than 30 percent from the November peak.

Chinese Academy of Sciences academician Ouyang Minggao said he expects the price of lithium carbonate in China to drop to between RMB 350,000 yuan ($50,890) and 400,000 yuan per ton in the second half of this year.

BYD overtook CATL in LFP market share again after six months, the last time being in July 2022.

Chinese companies, including CATL and BYD, saw explosive growth in the power battery market, while South Korean and Japanese manufacturers were not performing as brightly.

Gotion and InoBat will explore building a 40 GWh cell and Pack facility in Europe and explore producing energy storage batteries based on the latter's existing facility in Slovakia.

For the full year 2022, CATL's share of China's power battery market was 48.2 percent and BYD 23.45 percent.

CATL's installed power battery volume from January to November was 165.7 GWh, ranking first with a 37.1 percent market share.

Battery-grade lithium carbonate has fallen more than 10 percent compared to mid-November when prices reached as high as RMB 590,000 per ton.

Svolt Energy expects to complete the development of sodium-ion batteries with an energy density of 160 Wh/kg and cycle life of more than 2,000 by the fourth quarter of 2023.