Technology Gap between Korean and Chinese Battery Makers

A GAC Aion S destroyed by a fire

A series of fires broke out from electric vehicles loaded with batteries from China's No. 1 battery maker CATL, raising safety concerns.

The fires broke out from the Aion S of GAC, a Chinese carmaker, on Aug. 12 and 23, foreign media outlets said on Aug. 26. The same model caught fire on May 18.


So far, GAC has not announced the cause of such fires, but the latest fire is known to have been sparked off by batteries. The GAC Aion S is loaded with CATL batteries. CATL's nickel cobalt manganese (NCM) 811 batteries in the Aion S are also supplied to BMW and Geely Motors.

NCM 811 is a product where nickel takes up 80 percent of battery anode materials. A higher proportion of nickel increases mileage but makes batteries less safe. "CATL's factory yield is known to be only 45 to 55 percent," said a battery industry insider. "Safety issues may have arisen while trying to increase nickel content."

Experts note that the CATL has focused on lithium ferrophosphate (LFP) batteries with high safety but low energy density. They suggest that the company has not yet accumulated enough NCM technology. On the other hand, Korean battery makers have already commercialized NCM 811 products. LG Chem supplied NCM 811 products for electric buses in 2018 and will also supply them for some of Tesla's Model 3 distributed in China.


SK Innovation produces NCM 811 batteries at its plants in Seosan of Korea, Changzhou of China and Komarom of Hungary. The company will supply NCM 811 batteries to Hyundai Motor for the Kona Electric and China's Beijing Automotive Group for the Arcfox Mark 5. It plans to commercialize NCM 91⁄21⁄2 batteries in 2023.

Samsung SDI will use an NCA (nickel, cobalt and aluminium) anode material with nickel content increased to 88 percent or more for 5th-generation electric vehicle batteries that will be released in 2021. The batteries will be used in BMW's next-generation electric vehicles. The contract value is estimated at four trillion won.

Global battery market shares in the first half of this year was 24.6 percent for LG Chem, 23.5 percent for CATL and 20.4 percent for Panasonic, according to market research firm SNE Research. Samsung SDI ranked fourth with 6 percent and SK Innovation sixth with 3.9 percent. Of the top 10 companies, only the three Korean battery makers and China's CALB enjoyed year-on-year growth.

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