How China Took Control Of EV Batteries

Added: 2026-05-21

[00:00:00]China's post-dollar strategy is built on five interlocking pillars that most Western analysts treat as separate stories, but which are designed as components of a single architecture.

[00:00:14]Pillar one is battery dominance.

[00:00:17]China produces approximately 80% of the world's electric vehicle batteries.

[00:00:24]The cost of a lithium-ion battery cell has fallen by 97% since 2010, from approximately $1,200 per kilowatt-hour to approximately $50.

[00:00:38]This did not happen through market forces.

[00:00:41]It happened through a coordinated program of government subsidies, state-directed lending, and industrial policy that created scale before the market existed. By the time Tesla needed batteries in commercial quantities, Chinese manufacturers were the only ones with the capacity to supply them at competitive prices.

[00:01:04]Elon Musk understood this. Tesla's partnership with CATL, China's largest battery manufacturer, is a strategic dependency that he has never fully resolved.