CATL holds 39.4% of global EV battery market as installations rise 19.7%

CATL supplied 333 GWh of electric vehicle batteries from January to August 2026, giving it 39.4% of a global market that grew 19.7% year on year to 844.2 GWh, according to SNE Research data published on Friday and reported by CnEVPost. Installations rose 25.2% year on year at CATL, faster than the market it leads. Its share slipped 0.5 percentage points from 39.9% in January through July.

BYD held second place with 127.9 GWh and 15.1%, up 6.2% year on year. Combined, the two Chinese manufacturers took 54.6% of the market, unchanged from the seven-month reading and just below the 54.8% they held a year earlier. Seven Chinese companies sit in the top ten, with a combined 73.3% share.

Korea's share slides as North America weakens

The three South Korean makers lost ground. LG Energy Solution ranked third with 68.3 GWh, up just 0.9% year on year, and its share fell to 8.1% from 9.6%. Its North American installations dropped 42.3% to 14.6 GWh, offsetting gains in Europe and Asia, even as it continued supplying Tesla, GM, Hyundai Motor Group and Volkswagen, SNE Research said.

SK On was the only top-ten company to record an outright decline, down 14.5% to 24.9 GWh, with its share shrinking to 2.9% from 4.1%. Samsung SDI was not listed among the top ten in the CnEVPost table. In a separate report, finance.biggo.com put the Korean trio's combined share at 12.7%, down 3.9 percentage points, and Businesskorea framed the same data as CATL widening its lead.

Panasonic ranked sixth with 29.7 GWh, up 1.8% on the strength of Tesla's North American sales, though its share fell to 3.5% from 4.1%. The fastest riser among the top ten was Rept, the report said. Eve Energy grew 53.9% to 29.5 GWh, Gotion High-tech rose 47.1% to 41.5 GWh and Svolt Energy climbed 39.3% to 22.0 GWh. CALB added 32.6% to reach 44.4 GWh.

Chemistries and capacity move at the same time

Behind the shipment numbers, manufacturers are reshuffling what goes inside the cells. GM said on 29 September that its Ultium Cells joint venture with LG Energy Solution will upgrade the Spring Hill, Tennessee plant to mass-produce prismatic lithium manganese rich cells, which the company says deliver 33% higher energy density than LFP at a comparable cost.

Electrek reported that the upgrades begin later this year and finish by 2028, adding 500 jobs for a workforce of 1,700. GM expects its first vehicle with the chemistry in 2028, targeting more than 400 miles of range in trucks and full-size SUVs. Kurt Kelty, GM's vice president of battery and sustainability, said adding LMR "positions us to leapfrog today's more affordable chemistries and deliver lower costs with better performance."

CleanTechnica noted that GM's LFP and LMR investments will total $2 billion by 2030. Battery packs remain the single largest cost item in an electric vehicle, so a density gain at flat cost changes what automakers can build at a given price.

"Storage systems smooth out prices, but they don't generate electricity."

China is pushing further out on the curve. According to CnEVPost, Chinese authorities unveiled a five-year battery plan on 28 September targeting large-scale use of all-solid-state batteries by 2030. BYD executive vice president Stella Li told Carwow.es earlier in September that the company is "in the leading position" in solid-state technology and commercialization, with a first vehicle due in 2027. Electrek reported that BYD's Yangwang brand was spotted testing a roughly 5.5 metre ultra-luxury sedan that Chinese outlet Autohome says will be the company's first with solid-state cells. FinDreams, BYD's battery arm, aims to start limited sulfide-based all-solid-state production in 2027 and scale by 2030.

Grid rules open a second market for the same cells

Batteries are also moving into buildings. On 1 October Germany's grid regulator adopted rules letting storage systems draw power from the grid and feed it back later at lower levies and grid fees, a change that applies to storage without its own generation, pv magazine reported. Reuters covered the same decision.

The same day, pv magazine reported that Frankfurt-based Revolta AG won ERDF funding from the state of Hesse for a plug-and-play sodium-ion AC battery aimed at rental apartments without solar. Hesse's register lists eligible costs of €660,545 and a 40% EU co-financing rate worth about €264,200, running from 1 August 2026 to 31 December 2029. Revolta did not disclose capacity, power rating, price or launch date.

Fraunhofer ISE released a free simulator on 2 October that models how a hypothetical battery fleet would change day-ahead prices in Germany, using real buy and sell bids. Running 2025 data with an added 20 GW of two-hour batteries, the institute found the average daily gap between the most and least expensive quarter-hour would fall 60%, from €130/MWh to €53/MWh, with hours above €200/MWh dropping from 169 to 20. Leonhard Gandhi, project manager for Energy Charts at Fraunhofer ISE, said: "Storage systems smooth out prices, but they don't generate electricity."

Japan shows what happens when connection queues outrun construction. From 1 October, OCCTO requires generators to prove rights to their project sites within two months of grid approval or lose their reservation, pv magazine reported. At the end of December 2025, about 172 GW of grid-scale battery capacity sat at the connection-study stage and 30 GW at contract application, against roughly 0.64 GW actually connected.

In the United States, the picture splits by segment. Rivian issued a recall for its R2 SUV on 2 October after an automated station at its Normal, Illinois plant under-torqued fasteners on the high-voltage battery pack, TechCrunch reported. Around 14 vehicles may be affected, all at service centres, and NHTSA's filing says Rivian is not aware of any customer reports, accidents, injuries or fatalities. It is the second R2 recall, after a backup camera visibility issue fixed by software update.

On the commercial side, worldwide sales of medium- and heavy-duty electric trucks hit a record in the first half of 2026 at nearly 160,000 units, up around 75% year on year, according to BloombergNEF data cited by Canary Media. More than nine in ten were sold in China. The US market has come to a "near standstill," BNEF said, though Tesla began mass production of its Semi at a Nevada factory, with prices between $250,000 and $300,000 described as competitive in BNEF's interviews. CleanTechnica reported FedEx ordered 2,000 electric trucks from California startup Harbinger.

What the numbers do not settle

Europe's position depends on which metric you pick. Transport & Environment analysis published by CleanTechnica says the EU will have enough cells to power all EU-manufactured BEVs covered by the Industrial Accelerator Act by 2030 if all projects materialise, and that more than half the cells in EVs sold in the EU today are already made in the bloc. T&E also found a quarter of announced EU cell capacity since 2022 has been cancelled or shelved, with Germany's 2035 pipeline halved.

That is a direct dispute with the car industry's own numbers, and T&E says it identified methodological flaws in an ACEA-commissioned study claiming a 150 GWh battery gap by 2028. The two sides are not reconciling their figures; they are arguing about assumptions.

For the battery supply chain, the near-term story is simpler. Installations are still growing at roughly a fifth a year, one company controls close to two-fifths of them, and the next fight is over what chemistry sits inside the can.