China's CATL Has Nations Shaking in their boots

Investment Analysis Clubs Macro Economic Trends and Risks
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Le says there is an increasing pressure on US companies not to use any Chinese batteries, “but if the US is going to be competitive on the global stage with EVs, through 2030 they’re going to have to use Chinese batteries”.

Michael Dunne, the founder of Dunne Insights, an EV consultancy, says the US is “years behind when it comes to batteries, battery supply chains, critical minerals. This is where our cupboard is bare.”

CATL just announced it has already improved on the Shenxing LFP battery it introduced last year. According to the company, its latest battery, called Shenxing PLUS, can charge at 4C, add 600 kilometers of range in just 10 minutes using a DC fast charger, and power an electric car for up to 1000 kilometers on a full charge. BOOM! The EV revolution just got disrupted and nothing will ever be the same again.

How are automakers in Europe, North America, Japan, and South Korea going to compete with their electric cars that use outdated technology? Will their ads read, “Our cars are almost as good as those with the CATL Shenxing PLUS battery, except they have a shorter range and take three times as long to charge?”

From the perspective of decarbonizing the transportation sector, it is wonderful news. Humanity needs the Shenxing PLUS battery to move beyond the fears people have about owning an electric car.

The US & EU must acknowledge that China has superior battery technology and their EVs aren’t too shabby either.
And that slapping tariffs on their offerings slows the transition of their respective vehicle fleets via higher prices.
Is the US economic war upon China a needlessly self-destructive overreaction to a problem?
Of course GM & Ford benefit from a breathing space. But who else is helped by this war?

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Every western nation has concluded petroleum-based economies are a huge economic and security risk.

And as we saw during COVID, supply chains are vulnerable. Unless we want to continue to spend trillions on never ending wars, we have to develop our own battery expertise and manufacturing pipelines. That may incur higher costs in the short and medium term, but it is cheap compared to the alternative.

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I don’t know about other EV makes but Tesla grabbed the bull by the horns…

Tesla to Open US Battery Plant With Equipment From China’s CATL

Tesla (TSLA) to Open New US Battery Plant in Nevada With CATL Equipment - Bloomberg.

The Captain

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More likely Tesla is unable to get ahold of the Shenxing OR the PLUS versions. China will not let it go at any price, for any reason–because they KNOW it will be copied and replicated ASAP. I am more interested to learn why US intelligence (and the intelligence agencies of US allies) don’t have a clue about the tech behind these batteries.

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Why do you think they don’t?

JimA

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That is pretty much the US bipartisan foreign policy of the “exceptional” nation. The US are using surrogate Ukrainians & the economic war on China to lay low Russia & China fulfilled the goal of the Wolfowitz Doctrine proposed in 1992 establishing the USA as the sole superpower in the world.

The US relied on private enterprise/capitalism to develop the EV and ancillary technology. By early 2009 Musk had made a few hundred EVs . Musk was able to tap into federal government assistance mid 2009 to the tune of ~1/2 billion $.

China being state run and having long term vision threw many billions of cash into green energy [solar, wind, EVs, & battery technology] along with intellectual property theft which is why they surpassed the USA.

From 2009-2022, China’s government devoted more than 200 billion yuan ($28 billion) to subsidies and tax breaks for the EV industry. China already holds a prominent position as the top producer of rechargeable batteries, a crucial technology within the electric vehicle supply chain.

Several experts tell MIT Technology Review that the government has long played an important role—propping up both the supply of EVs and the demand for them. As a result of generous government subsidies, tax breaks, procurement contracts, and other policy incentives, a slew of homegrown EV brands have emerged and continued to optimize new technologies so they can meet the real-life needs of Chinese consumers. This in turn has cultivated a large group of young car buyers.

“They realized … that they would never overtake the US, German, and Japanese legacy automakers on internal-combustion engine innovation,” says Tu. And research on hybrid vehicles, whose batteries in the early years served a secondary role relative to the gas engine, was already being led by countries like Japan, meaning China also couldn’t really compete there either.

This pushed the Chinese government to break away from the established technology and invest in completely new territory: cars powered entirely by batteries.

The US government could make technology a priority. But they won’t.
Because corporate money runs our corporatocracy. Defense budget nearing $1 trillion a year. Petroleum industry self interest will work against such a strategy of technology priority. Insurance industry & pharmaceutical industry working to keep profits up and government out of healthcare.

AND the US will never match the low production cost of China.
The US could reach an accord similar to what we arranged with Japan. But no, we have to destroy China as a super power rival.

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China doesn’t need Tesla to develop its FSD technology. They are already well along the way.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/we-tried-a-tesla-full-self-driving-competitor-from-china-it-s-better-than-you-think/ar-BB1m3vol
China’s own tech and car giants have stepped in to fill that self-driving vacuum. Geely and Baidu (often called China’s Google) have teamed up to tackle the problem, forming Ji Yue, a new brand under Geely’s umbrella. I got to see the brand’s technology in action, albeit from the passenger seat.

Like Tesla’s vision-based system, the Ji Yue 01’s PPA (Point-to-Point Autopilot) system is primarily camera-only. When I asked Ji Yue representatives how the company avoids the same pitfalls as Tesla, they said that the Ji Yue system does use some radar as a backup. It wasn’t clear how that radar data factors into the car’s self-driving abilities. But high-quality HD maps give the car more granular environmental data than it could get with its cameras alone.

https://electrek.co/2024/02/29/xpeng-tesla-fsd-xngp-self-driving-adas-now-available-throughout-china/
XPeng continues to challenge Tesla FSD with XNGP self-driving, now available throughout China

XNGP is now available unlimitedly on all roads, everywhere in China. That’s only part of it; XPeng also shared plans to expand the self-driving tech to other markets.

XPeng Motors ($XPEV) currently operates as one of China’s big hitters in EVs. Part of the company’s appeal is its innovation and advanced technology, including out-of-the-box ideas like genuine flying cars.

XPeng Motors has been quickly rolling out self-driving XNGP access to drivers in China, hitting five cities in June 2023, which jumped to 52 cities by late December. By January 2, 2024 XNGP was available in 243 different cities ahead of news that universal access to the ADAS could be covering all of China soon.

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Odds are none of it works well.

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Our government is happy to invent things that the military wants invented. GPS. The Internet. Jet engines. Drones. Radar. Night vision. Digital cameras. And of course the big one: computers.

I guess I should be thankful that at least some of that bloated Pentagon budget ends up inventing things that actually prove useful to the rest of us, I suppose.

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If that $1B “donation” is realized, all the EV incentives would be repealed. I wouldn’t be surprised to see EV penalties imposed instead. The US could become an ICE powered island in an increasingly EV world.

Steve