According to the latest report from SNE Research, during the challenging first seven months of 2020, the global EV battery market amounted to 53.3 GWh, which is 16.8% less than a year ago. That’s completely understood, as the lockdowns hit automakers pretty hard.
Most of the EV battery manufacturers noted sales decline, but the three biggest South Korean companies (LG Chem, Samsung SDI and SK Innovation) actually expanded significantly, more than doubling market share to 35.6% during January-July period (up from 15.9%).
LG Chem is also the top player with an estimated 13.4 GWh of capacity deployed (up 97.4%) and the highest market share of 25.1%.
Chinese CATL is #2 because of a 25.5% decrease year-over-year to 12.7 GWh, and Panasonic (once the lone market leader) decreased even more – by 30.9% to 10.1 GWh.
LG Chem is gaining a lot of momentum with its gigafactory in Europe as well as a partnership with Tesla in China. Samsung SDI benefits from the growing volume of Audi e-tron, Ford Kuga PHEV (Ford Escape PHEV in the U.S.) and BMW plug-ins. SK Innovation supplies Hyundai/Kia.
Electric vehicle (EVs) have emerged as a focal point of realizing eco-friendly policies across the world. Increasingly, automobile OEMs recognize that the future of their products lies outside the ecosystem of internal commercial engines (ICE). As a result, they are tweaking their business models to be future ready that is why we are seeing growth in EV battery market in spite of pandemic.
Reference- SNE Research Report, Counterpoint Research, InsideEvs, The Driven