Battery Makers - September 2014

The Small Ones Are Getting Bigger Edition 

This is looking like another positive year for battery makers, with EV's selling more and more, the demand for batteries just keeps on growing, we still have three months to go, but the numbers are already higher than last year. There are new, ambitious players in the market.

- The leader Panasonic is following the market growth, mainly thanks to battery-hungry Tesla, will 2015 be another leadership year?

- AESC, a joint venture between NEC and Nissan, continues to lose share (36% in '12, 28% in '13 and 23% now), despite the success of the Leaf (Renault is to blame), and with Nissan outsourcing to LG in the future, it looks that the share will keep on going down;

- LG has also been losing share, mainly because the Chevy Volt sales haven't been on the upside;

 - Lithium Energy Japan (GS Yuasa / Mitsubishi), it benefits from the success from the Outlander PHEV, to grow one percent share to 7%;

- BYD is one of this years sales champs, with the success of the Qin propelling sales and doubling share in batteries, from 3% last year to the current 6%; 

- Samsung has a partnership with BMW, and with the bavarian maker plug-in sales getting better and better, Samsung is experiencing a sales surge, it's now #6 with 4% share. 

- Air Lithium, battery supplier for Kandi, is just the tip of the iceberg on a series of chinese battery makers, growing from insignificance to a small player status, AL is now #7 with 3% share, but there are others, like Tianneng in #9 (Chery provider), and Wanxiang in #11 (That's right, those of Fisker deal, they supply batteries for Zotye) . 

A final remark for their chemistry, Li-Ion batteries dominate the market, but now they only own 88% vs 92% the year before, because chinese battery makers prefer LiFePo4 and the cheaper Lead Acid ones.

Pl	Battery Makers	2014	*       2013	%14	%'13
1	Panasonic	1.731	1.700	35	35
2	AESC	1.149	1.289	23	28
3	LG Chem	739	812	15	18
4	Mitsubishi/GS Yuasa	335	293	7	6
5	BYD	274	117	6	3
6 7 8 9 10	Samsung Air Lithium (Lyoyang) ACCUmotive Tianneng Siemens	215 143 71 55 50	N/A N/A N/A N/A 91	4 3 1 1 1	N/A  N/A  N/A N/A 2
	TOTAL	4.939	4.667

* - MWh's

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Markets Roundup September 2014 - Market Volumes Edition

At many families request, here are the Top 10 Markets by volume:

Country	Sep.'14	2014	2013	2012	All Time
USA	10.551	87.369	96.034	54.970	258.742
Japan	3.897	24.340	30.264	26.109	98.811
China	11.991	42.493	17.732	13.292	71.177
France	2.328	10.919	14.971	11.822	42.400
Netherlands	1.143	11.545	23.170	5.583	41.259
Norway	1.528	15.403	8.669	4.338	31.790
Germany	1.076	9.247	6.749	6.492	24.806
UK	3.014	8.256	3.730	2.971	16.334
Canada	522	3.817	3.045	1.969	9.404
Sweden	397	3.714	1.922	1.212	7.107

This shows how many plug-in cars are sold in each market, not the impact they are making, because of the overall market dimension, putting this as an extreme example, despite China buying three times more EV's than Norway, the global auto market in Norway is some 100 times smaller than the Chinese, the impact those 15k registrations make in the Scandinavian country is way more important than the 43k sold in the Asian giant.

Now, with that out of the way, let's look at the numbers: 

- The US market has been on it's own league since a long time (The last time Japan was #1, it was the year 2010), selling two times more than the runner-up and almost doubling sales in each passing year. Now in 2015 things might be different...(See China) 

- Although still #2 in stock volume, thanks to all those #2 (2011 to 2013) won, Japan was passed by awaking giant called China, and with a small yearly growth rate, it looks that Japan will be #3 for a long time;

- China has been considered by many as the crucial market for EV's because of sheer volume, although selling in great numbers over the last years (A consistent #3), the truth is that the impact in the global chinese auto market was still symbolic. Not this year, sales have been piling up and records beaten almost on a monthly basis, with China rising to Second Place this summer (We were in 2010 the last time it did), and last month it has even beaten USA as the largest market for plug-ins!  If this trend goes on, and nothing points to the contrary, the next year could be the first to crown China as the Largest EV Market On Earth;

- Behind these three, we have five european countries with balanced results, resulting in several changes in the Largest Euro EV Market across the years (France in 2012, Netherlands in 2013, Norway in 2014), and even on a monthly basis, with the UK winning for the first time this trophy last month, speaking of stock volume, it looked like the Dutch were going to steal the Euro #1 from France, but a recent sales inversion (Netherlands falling, France rising), made it stay (For now at least) in french territory;

- Finally the last two markets, Canada and Sweden, while the first has been experiencing a steady growth over time, in the second, sales boomed this year, looking like it has reached some kind of tipping point.

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