Lithium-ion Battery Manufacturers in China : BYD

Industry Overview: BYD is a company founded in 1995 as a battery manufacturer in China’s Guangdong Province that has since expanded into the automotive business.
Today, BYD is a diversified company with four businesses including batteries, automobiles, solar power, and railroads (monorail), and is ranked second in the world in the field of automotive batteries after CATL.

The global market share of EV batteries in 2023 is estimated to be about 16-17% (CATL and the two companies together account for more than half of the global market share).
In China, BYD ranks second with a share of about 24.7% in 2024.

BYD manufactures and sells its own EVs (passenger cars, buses, and trucks), and the explosive growth of these new energy vehicles (NEVs) is driving the expansion of its battery business.

Main Products: BYD’s battery division (brand name: FinDreams Battery) mainly produces automotive batteries for EVs and PHEVs.
The company is particularly well known for its uniquely designed “blade battery,” which was unveiled in 2020 and features LFP battery cells in the form of long, thin blades to increase the space efficiency of the entire pack.

The blade battery is said to overcome the weakness of LFP, namely low energy density, while also improving ignition safety, and is currently used in many of BYD’s EVs (Han, Tang, Qin PLUS EV, etc.).

In terms of ternary-cell (NCM) batteries, BYD has been focusing on cobalt-free batteries for some time and is also developing high nickel-based technologies.
By application, the majority of sales are for EVs and PHEVs, but BYD also provides large batteries for energy storage systems (ESS), and has participated in large-scale energy storage projects overseas.

BYD also has a battery business for electronic devices (formerly BYD Electronics, now an independent company), supplying lithium batteries for smartphones and laptops to Apple and other Chinese smartphone companies.
Major customers/partners: BYD’s automotive batteries are basically installed in own-brand vehicles
The company has become the world’s largest manufacturer of electric vehicles, selling a total of 1.86 million pure EVs and PHEVs (= 1.86 million passenger cars) in 2022

This vertically integrated model has made the company cost-competitive through synergies between its battery and vehicle businesses.
In recent years, however, the company has also been active in external sales, establishing an EV battery joint venture with Toyota (Shenzhen BYD Toyota EV Technology) and supplying blade batteries to Toyota.
BYD’s batteries are also used in Toyota’s bZ3 EV for China.
Furthermore, BYD is reported to be supplying batteries to Hyundai and Tesla, and there are reports that BYD batteries have actually been installed in some models at Tesla’s European plant (although this has not been officially confirmed, it is considered a strong possibility in the industry).

In the commercial vehicle field, electric buses and trucks equipped with BYD batteries are being used in public transportation in Europe and the United States, and BYD batteries are spreading around the world in the form of exporting batteries for each vehicle.

Recent Trends: BYD is expanding at a furious pace, with annual sales expected to exceed 3 million units by 2024, and is expanding battery plants around the world to keep up with vehicle production.

On the technology front, BYD has announced an improved version of its Blade Battery, which is thinner and has higher energy density, as well as its work on sodium-ion batteries.
In 2023, BYD, along with CATL and CALB, will participate in a solid-state battery research consortium led by the Chinese government, and will be part of a coalition of Chinese manufacturers in the development of next-generation all-solid-state batteries.

BYD’s battery division is also being discussed for a future listing, and the company is further enhancing its presence as “BYD, the battery manufacturer.

Translated with DeepL.com (free version)