Top EV Battery Manufacturers — 2014 Top 10 In Sales

Comprehensive sales figures for EV battery manufacturers in 2014 recently became available, giving us further insight into the fast-growing market. Altogether, the year saw an increase of 54% over the previous year.

As far as the major players in the market, those haven’t changed, yet — BYD has definitely been growing in presence and market share.

With regard to the top of the pile, Panasonic came in with a market share of 38% — still the undisputed market leader. The company saw 2,726 megawatt-hours (MWh) of capacity sold.

Next up was AESC (the joint venture between NEC and Nissan), with a market share of 23% — 1,620 MWh worth of batteries sold. AESC has lost a fair amount of market share since a peak back in 2012 (36%). With Nissan looking more and more to LG, that share will presumably continue to fall.

In third was LG Chem, with a 12% market share — 886 MWh of capacity sold.

BYD took fourth, with the success of the Qin doubling its market share — hitting 6%, up from 3% in 2013. Altogether, BYD sold 461 MWh worth of batteries. The rollout of the Denza means that this share should continue to increase.

Here’s some more from the EV-Sales blog:

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.

Beijing Power Pride (BPP), battery supplier for BAIC, is first on a series of chinese battery makers, growing from insignificance to a small player status, BPP is now #7 with 2% share, but there are others, like Air Lithium in #9 (Kandi provider), Tianneng in #10 (Chery provider), and Wanxiang in #11 (That’s right, those of Fisker deal, they supply batteries for Zotye).

A final remark for batteries chemistry, Li-Ion batteries dominate the market, but now they only own 88% vs 92% the year before, because chinese battery makers (Like BYD or BPP) prefer LiFePo4 (8% share now vs 4% in 2013).

Altogether, an interesting year — and with the completion of the Tesla & Panasonic Gigafactory not really all that far off now, the next few years are looking set to be very interesting as well.