China Power Battery Production Capacity Likely to Record 358GWh in 2022

SHANGHAI, Dec 16 - According to the 2021 Energy Saving and New Energy Vehicle Development Report (hereinafter referred to as the "Report") released by China Association of Automobile Manufacturers (CAAM) on December 14, under the scenario that the chip shortage will effectively improve next year, the new energy passenger vehicle market will continue to grow fast in 2022. And on the combination of CAAM’s new energy market forecast scheme and model with accurate evaluation on all key factors, it is expected that in 2022, new energy passenger car sales will reach about 4.8 million units, an increase of 66% year-on-year. Among them, pure electric passenger car sales are expected to reach 3.8 million units in the same period, with a market share of 79.2%, and plug-in hybrid passenger car sales will be 1 million units, with a market share of 20.8%.

In addition, from the perspective of the price structure of new energy passenger cars, sales in the past two years have shown a "dumbbell" structure. In other words, the main focus of sales is on A00/A0 models below RMB100,000 and B/C models above RMB250,000, accounting for 30% and 31% of the total sales from January to November 2021 respectively, much higher than the sophisticated fuel car market (22% and 21% respectively). While the share of new energy vehicles in the RMB 100,000-200,000 range is only 31%, far less than the 50% share in the fuel car market. The Report predicts that all price segments in the new energy vehicle market are expected to grow in 2022, with the high and low end price segments continuing to perform well and bringing sustained growth.

According to the Report, the development of the new energy passenger car market is collectively determined by the supply side, demand side and policy side, where the supply side covers product supply, technology development, battery capacity, etc., the demand side is based on user awareness, and the policy side covers financial subsidies and infrastructure, etc. Next year, product supply and user awareness are the main drivers for the rapid development of the market, in addition to multi-facet breakthroughs from the supply side, including the improvement of key technologies to alleviate user concerns, optimal battery capacity to enhance the supply of supporting components, all of which will promote terminal sales. On the policy side, the financial subsidies will gradually be replaced by market management, and the improvement of infrastructure will also benefit mid to long term development, but it will have little impact on the sales next year.

In terms of batteries, the Report shows that in recent years, China's new energy market has developed rapidly and the industry demand is strong, but only about 20 enterprises such as CATL, BYD, EVE Energy and CALB have been able to meet the requirements of automakers in terms of energy density, safety, price, service life and many other performance indicators and achieve massive production of power batteries. And the cumulative production capacity of these enterprises entering the supporting system is less than 50% of the power battery industry, but occupies more than 90% of the market share of new energy vehicles, resulting in an overall shortage of high-quality, high-end production capacity.

The Report expects that in 2022, China's automotive power battery production capacity is expected to reach 358GWh. Based on the average power battery capacity utilisation rate of 92% and 65% of the installed capacity ratio as well as the current average power battery of 40KWh per new energy vehicle, the cumulative automotive power battery output could support the production of about 5.4 million new energy vehicles.