BEIJING, February 7 (TMTPOST)— Contemporary Amperex Technology (CATL) consolidated its top position in the world’s electric vehicle (EV) battery market, as recent data showed the Chinese giant has widened its gap with the arch-rival LG Energy Solution (LGES), a split-off battery business of LG Chem.

Source: CATL

In terms of electric vehicle (EV) battery installation, CATL was ranked the first for a fifth consecutive year with the market share of 32.6% in 2021, up from the previous year’s 24.6%, while LGES’s share was 20.3%, declining from 23.4% a year ago, according to SNE Research. The South Korean research and consulting firm on renewable energy industries showed the annual global deployment of CATL batteries reached a capacity of 96.7 gigawatt-hours (GWh), with a year-over-year (YoY) growth of 167.13%, and LGES’s deployment just increased 20.3% YoY to 60.2 GWh. CATL’s significant increase obviously benefited from the home market’s strong demand, as other Chinese battery makers in SNE’s top ten listing last year also saw triple-digit percentage gains, such as BYD (up 168.37%), China Lithium Battery Technology Co., Ltd. (CALB) (up 132.35%). And as the one with fastest GWh increase in the top ten ranking, SVOLT Energy Technology,a spin-off of the Chinese auto manufacturer Great Wall Motors, even jumped 416.67% YoY.

The aggregate battery capacity deployed in various new energy vehicles (NEVs) amounted to 154.5 GWh from January to December, jumping 142.8% from the same period in 2020, China Association of Automobile Manufacturers (CAAM) data showed. In order to meet the strong demand, workers in a large number of CATL production bases across the country have been working overtime in the Chinese New Year holiday, an insider told Shanghai Securities Journal.

However, CATL has been facing increasing competitions in domestic market.  Reports in late January said that Xpeng, one of leading Chinese EV makers, would gradually transit from CATL batteries to products made from CALB to address pressure from cost increase due to CATLs’ big price hiking, and Xpeng has decided to apply the fast-charging 4c batteries made by Sunwoda Electronic Co.,Ltd., a Chinese lithium-ion battery maker, in G9, an SUV model released in last September, instead of its major battery supplier CATL. Xpeng later clarified that neither of these reports appeared any closer to the truth. “We will choose suppliers with strength such as CATL, as usual, to become our core partners,” it added.

本文内容来源：钛媒体英文站