CATL & VW Collab Showcases China's Dominance

Yesterday CATL, the world’s largest battery maker, and Volkswagon, the world’s second biggest automaker by sales volume, announced a battery development partnership for VW’s Chinese-market EV line. 

The goal, according to a Volkswagon spokesperson, is: “Creating bespoke batteries with higher performance and more efficient cost structures for specific models in the Chinese market.”

While seemingly routine, news like this underscores a new reality in a world where Western attitudes concerning China were traditionally dismissive at best and derisive at worst. 

China is no longer an economy built on cheap knockoffs and low-quality, high-volume consumer junk. 

From Fake Rolexes To Real Global Dominance

It is now a world leader in a number of key technologies, including batteries, and this latest relationship between Europe’s biggest car maker and what is essentially a branch of the Chinese Communist Party, underscores that fact. 

And it didn’t just happen by accident. 

Chinese investment in rechargeable batteries started decades ago as a nascent, party-guided tech industry to address the needs of Western consumers. 

Back in the late 1980s, cheap, compact, fast-charging, high-energy density batteries were the future of consumer electronics. 

The CCP saw it coming with things like portable CD players and early cellular phones, and they set out on a mission to dominate a market that had not even begun to emerge.

Flash forward almost 40 years and lithium-ion batteries run the world, powering everything from watches to cars, to providing storage for renewable power generation. 

They Used Our Own Addictions Against Us

And the Chinese are sitting at the very middle of this exploding demand, looking for and finding ways to keep the world coming back to them for all their battery needs. 

The fact that at any moment China could cut off the flow of these batteries, or stop the flow of refined lithium itself and weaponize the entire industry, never enters our minds as we stand in line for the latest smartphone or shop for cordless powertools on Amazon. 

One company, however, has been keeping this very real threat to global peace at the forefront of its thinking. 

Its product is a new kind of rechargeable battery, a battery that contains no lithium to speak of. 

In fact, it contains no elements at all with questionable supply chain dynamics. 

No lithium means no reliance on China, but that’s only the beginning. 

These batteries are in a new performance category all together. 

If Lithium-Ion Is A Model T Ford… This Is A Brand New Ferrari

When comparing them with the latest lithium-ion offerings, these batteries boast 3-5 times the cycle life, 2-3 times the charge capacity, and absolutely blistering charge speeds of up to 70 times faster than what you’re used to seeing. 

To put that into real-world terms, just imagine charging your phone for less than a minute per week. 

Or charging your EV once per month for less time than it takes to pump even half a tank of gas. 

On top of that, these batteries are supremely reliable and nearly indestructible. There is virtually no fire risk–something lithium batteries are famously incapable of claiming. 

Now, with performance numbers like those, you would expect this technology to be a virtual shoe-in to replace lithium altogether. 

Well, precisely that may start happening later this year. 

That’s when full-scale commercialization of thse next-generation batteries may be kicking off. 

For now, almost nobody knows this story and current share prices reflect that… But it’s not a secret that can stay a secret for long. 

To find out more about what’s happening at the company, and when, check out this presentation.