CATL develops pick-up truck batteries for US despite trade barriers
Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
CATL has developed a new battery technology for American vehicles despite the Chinese group being mostly shut out by US trade barriers amid security concerns and tense relations between Washington and Beijing.
Zhu Lingbo, chief technology officer of CATL’s international business unit, said the world’s biggest battery maker has developed “tall” batteries specifically for America’s lucrative pick-up truck market. He said the batteries had already been tested by US carmakers, although he did not specify which companies.
The comments came as US Treasury secretary Scott Bessent and his Chinese counterpart He Lifeng are scheduled to meet in New York ahead of a high-stakes summit in Washington between presidents Donald Trump and Xi Jinping.
The leaders of the world’s two most powerful economies, who last met in Beijing in May, are expected next week to discuss AI, access to the Chinese-dominated supply chain for rare earths and the expiry in November of the trade war truce.
CATL dominates the market for electric vehicle batteries and has been aggressively pivoting to batteries for energy storage and data centres.
The group, alongside large swaths of the Chinese EV and battery industry, has for years been knocking on the door of the American auto and energy sectors with low-cost, high-tech cars and batteries.
However, the Chinese groups face high tariffs, requirements for localisation as well as the threat of bans on national security concerns from Washington. CATL was last year designated by the Pentagon as having alleged military links; the company denies the claim.
Sales of EVs in the US have plummeted after the end of EV tax credits and Trump’s rollback in regulations to cut vehicle emissions. According to research group Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, the penetration of EVs and plug-in hybrids in the US is expected to remain less than 10 per cent this year, compared with 65 per cent in China.
Taken together, the barriers make it almost impossible for Chinese groups to competitively export EVs or their batteries to the US or invest in US factories.
Zhu, speaking on Sunday at the company’s headquarters in Ningde, in the south-east of China, said “even with this kind of very intense geopolitics” the US market holds the potential to be “huge business”.
He said CATL could potentially license the new battery technology for US groups to manufacture on American soil. This would be a similar arrangement the group already has with Ford and Tesla for EV battery production in the US.
Ford has recently widened its relationship with CATL to produce energy storage batteries, which has angered members of Congress and fellow Detroit automakers.
Industry groups representing the US auto industry sent a letter to Trump last week, calling for the government to maintain its policy to keep Chinese carmakers and supply chains out of America. The letter came after Trump recently said he would “be OK” if China wanted to build car plants in the US as long as they hired American workers.
In Europe, CATL is developing new battery factories in Hungary and Spain, alongside its German plant. It is also building battery-swapping stations for electric lorries in Europe.
The company is also actively scouting new European locations for production facilities, Zhu said, without naming which countries. He added that CATL would require Beijing’s sign-off for any further European investment.
