THE symbolism was clear final June when Emmanuel Macron, surrounded by manufacturing facility staff, held up a glossy lithium battery in his proper hand and a mining lamp in his left. He was in Douai, a northern French metropolis with a coal mining historical past relationship again to the 1700s. The metropolis is now additionally the positioning of a battery manufacturing facility, which might enable France to provide all components of electrical automobiles domestically. This manufacturing facility, Macron declared, represented an “economic and ecological revolution.”
Macron instantly acknowledged that France didn’t pull this off alone: “We brought in investors from the other side of the world. They transferred their technologies. They helped train people,” Macron mentioned, gesturing at a person beside him.
The man was Zhang Lei, the founding father of Envision, a outstanding Chinese firm that makes wind generators and lithium batteries. Its battery arm is investing as much as €2 billion on this Douai manufacturing facility and, extra importantly, contributed the experience for environment friendly mass manufacturing. He and Macron grabbed markers and signed their names on the primary battery produced in Douai. “Thank you, Chairman, because you trusted us and because you did exactly what you said you would do,” Macron mentioned, wanting straight into Zhang’s eyes.
In 2026, it’s OK to nerd out at events about batteries. Lithium batteries are turning photo voltaic and wind into 24/7 secure vitality sources. Battery-powered vehicles are shaking up the multitrillion-dollar automotive trade and made Elon Musk the richest man on Earth. Lithium batteries even gained a Nobel Prize, and the US authorities now categorizes lithium as a “critical mineral.”
Lithium’s rising tides lifted one set of boats greater than others—China’s battalion of battery corporations. After a long time of quiet progress, companies comparable to CATL, BYD, Gotion High-Tech, and Envision at the moment are main suppliers for the world’s EVs and vitality grids. In 2024, greater than 80 p.c of the world’s battery cells had been produced in China, in keeping with the International Energy Agency. Now these corporations are increasing past China’s borders. In the previous decade they’ve constructed or introduced at the very least 68 factories outdoors China, in keeping with knowledge collected by WIRED and the Rhodium Group, a New York–primarily based assume tank.
Collectively, per the Rhodium Group, the factories characterize an funding of greater than $45 billion in the remainder of the world. They additionally replicate an enormous shift in what manufacturing dominance appears to be like like. “Made in China” was—and nonetheless typically is—a label for affordable labor, knockoffs, and $5 devices. Now it additionally means state-of-the-art expertise assembled anyplace on the planet.
“We believe it’s a new phase. We have never really seen that in Chinese overseas investments,” says Armand Meyer, a senior analysis analyst at Rhodium Group. According to his calculations, 2024 was the primary yr Chinese EV and battery corporations spent extra money constructing factories outdoors of China than inside. “They are ready to leave the domestic market, and they are as competitive as traditional Western players, or even more competitive,” Meyer continues. “We think it’s just the beginning.”
Today, among the world’s finest battery analysis comes from Chinese universities and firms, says Brian Engle, chairman of NAATBatt International, a US commerce affiliation for the battery trade. And that’s as a result of China guess on it early.
When Engle toured a lab at China’s prime engineering faculty in 2019, he noticed greater than 60 graduate college students constructing and testing battery cells. Surprised, he turned to an American educational on the tour and requested her what number of American universities they’d must lump collectively to seek out as many battery-focused postgrads. “And she said we couldn’t,” he recalled. “We simply couldn’t.”
So it’s maybe no shock that Chinese battery corporations are dominant—and that the competitors between them is fierce. Nowadays, native incentives and decrease transport prices make it such that opening a manufacturing facility abroad will be extra worthwhile than staying house. CATL, the world’s largest lithium battery maker, reported in a latest monetary submitting that its revenue margin is 29 p.c abroad versus practically 23 p.c in China. Other Chinese corporations, together with Gotion and EVE Energy, even have reported larger revenue margins abroad.
Macron isn’t the one politician to herald a Chinese battery plant’s arrival. The lovefest is just about international: Brazil’s Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva rode in a BYD automobile with the corporate’s founder. Spain’s president held palms with CATL’s CEO. The governor of Illinois, JB Pritzker, shared a stage with Gotion’s chairman to announce a manufacturing facility in Manteno, Illinois.
But issues emerge as blueprints flip into large crops. Factory initiatives typically embrace guarantees to rent regionally, however generally corporations usher in migrant labor. In Hungary, native media reported in July that CATL laid off greater than 100 staff at a manufacturing facility, most of them Hungarians, prompting the municipality to launch an investigation and raid the plant. CATL can be going through protests and a lawsuit in Hungary for its water use and environmental footprint—points generally confronted by battery factories worldwide.
The scenario would possibly sound oddly acquainted. When Apple constructed its expertise empire on the backs of Chinese factories, the nation needed to reckon with whether or not it was benefiting from Apple’s victories or being exploited. As China’s battery expertise takes over the world, Chinese corporations are those now elevating these questions—of who finally advantages and who’s exploiting whom.
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