Posted on 16 Aug 2022
The competition between Chinese leading power battery companies BYD and CATL is getting more intense as BYD begins to catch up on power battery market share and lithium mine development, Kallanish discovers.
On 15 August, the local governments of Yichun City and Yifeng County, Yichun Mining, and BYD signed a strategic cooperation framework agreement in Nanchang, Jiangxi Province. BYD intends to invest CNY 28.5 billion ($4.21 billion) in Yichun to construct a comprehensive base project covering 30 gigawatt-hour/year power battery production, 100,000 tonnes/y battery-grade lithium carbonate production, and lithium-containing ceramic soil ore selection. This mine in Yichun has attracted CATL, as well. In fact, it has already started construction.
Meanwhile, there have been more rumours about BYD's power battery supply deal with Tesla. According to teslamag.de, Tesla has already received approval from the European Union to use BYD's structural battery on its new Model Y.
"In fact, teslamag.de was able to confirm that there are already batteries from BYD in the German Gigafactory in Grünheide near Berlin ... As usual with Tesla, the approval was issued by the Dutch authority RDW, in this case on 1 July, 2022. In the documents, the new Model Y is referred to as Type 005 and internally as variant Y7CR. The capacity of its BYD battery is estimated at 55 kilowatt hours, the range at 440 kilometers."
It is reported that Tesla seems to be impressed by the light-weight efficiency of BYD's new battery techniques used on the latter's recently launched Seal model and may appreciate BYD's power batteries even more than its long-registered CATL ones.
Previously, BYD's executive vice president Lian Yubo disclosed in an interview that BYD will supply power batteries for Tesla. Yet, after the release of that interview video, there has been mixed information. Tesla didn't directly admit to the partnership.
In July's Chinese domestic market, BYD was ahead of CATL in terms of lithium iron phosphate power battery loaded capacity volume.
Source:Kallanish
