History

20162020 Consolidated Supply-Chain Control Through Policy and Scale

2016 Beginning in late 2015, China's battery "whitelist" limited NEV subsidies to approved domestic suppliers, explicitly excluding Japanese and Korean leaders such as Panasonic, Samsung SDI, and LG Chem. By its end in 2019, Chinese firms had moved into the global first tier, led by CATL and BYD

2016 CATL leveraged the protected domestic market to become the world's largest EV battery manufacturer by 2017. By 2020, Chinese firms collectively controlled nearly 75% of the world's lithium-ion battery production. NCM batteries gained dominance as subsidy policies favored longer-range vehicles.

20172018 China's charging-infrastructure plan targeted over 120,000 stations and 4.8 million outlets by 2020, underscoring the state's push to build the ecosystem needed for large-scale EV adoption. China's Dual-Credit policy shifted NEV growth from subsidy-driven to market-driven. It required automakers to earn "NEV credits" amounting to 10% of their ICE vehicle sales in 2019 and 12% in 2020, forcing both domestic and joint-venture brands to accelerate electrification and providing long-term, stable demand for power batteries

20172018 Tesla used Chinaʼs 2018 policy opening to build Gigafactory Shanghai and worked with local suppliers like CATL to become part of Chinaʼs EV and battery supply chain

Source: China Decade of Dominance in EV Batteries, How China Beat the US in Electric Vehicle Manufacturing

20192020 EV subsidies originally ended in 2020 were extended to 2022 to offset COVID impacts, with a ¥300,000 price cap limiting support to mass-market models, except battery-swapping vehicles

20192020 BYD launched LFP Blade Cell with a cell-to-pack design that significantly improved safety and energy density. This marked the industry pivot back toward LFP chemistry from NCM/NCA. Following the Made in China 2025 plan (launched in 2015, Chinese firms secured near-monopolies on midstream processing, controlling 95% of battery-grade graphite and over 70% of cathode precursor production by the end of this period

Extracted from the PDF; charts and images may read imperfectly.