A On Friday, there was no official confirmation that the Chinese company CATL actually pulls up a factory for electric car battery cells in Thuringia. But only the statements of the BMW boss Harald Kruger In a newspaper interview, the Munich automaker had awarded a billion contract to CATL and the company wanted to build a plant in Europe, provided for reactions. The share price of CATL rose on the stock exchange by nearly 6 percent. Whether the investors’ hope that pays off remained open. CATL has long been involved in battery cell manufacturing in Europe, said a company representative of F.A.Z. in response to Kruger’s speech. Now CATL is in the final decision phase between a location in Poland, Hungary or Germany.
For German automakers, however, Chinese cell production in Europe is likely to change the current situation in the market for battery cells. Whether Audi, BMW , Mercedes or Volkswagen – all are currently purchasing battery cells for their electric cars and hybrid vehicles from Asia. In the case of the soon-to-be-produced Audi E-Tron, the cells come from the Korean companies LG Chem and Samsung from Korea. Volkswagen works together with Samsung, LG Chem and Panasonic from Japan for its E-Golf or E-Up models. The cells for the Mercedes models B250e or E 350e come from several providers, including CATL, as a spokesman said.
Should a cell supplier such as CATL now move closer to production in Europe, this would have advantages for the manufacturers, because, among other things, transport costs fell away. BMW manufactures its car batteries in Dingolfing, Daimler operates for the so-called packing of the cells to manufacture batteries the subsidiary Deutsche Accumotive in the Saxon town of Kamenz. The closer the cell production is to these factories, the better.
This is another reason why manufacturers are watching closely the development of CATL. “We are constantly looking for new opportunities and potential business partners,” said a Volkswagen spokeswoman. To do this VW talks with various companies. The Daimler spokesman said his company was “in partnership with all our suppliers, of course, with the suppliers from China,” which includes CATL. It is the strategy of the Stuttgart-based company to buy raw materials or parts where the cars are produced.
The fact that Asian cell suppliers are investing in Europe, while German competitors such as Bosch or Continental shy away from it, is ahead of the Asians for some market observers. “The energy prices for battery cell production in Europe can be dealt with relatively quickly,” says Wolfgang Bernhart, partner of Roland Berger. “The challenge for cell production in Europe is more likely to get good utilization of our own cell factories as quickly as possible.” For this, it would be important to have experience in production. “In addition, Asian cell manufacturers are in a better position as far as raw material prices are concerned because they are already losing a large amount of lithium and cobalt worldwide.”
This lead is also shown by the shares in the global car battery market. According to SNE Research, Panasonic from Japan, whose batteries are used in the electric cars of the American manufacturer Tesla, is still in first place. But Panasonic’s market share is shrinking, from one-third to one-fifth. Meanwhile, the Chinese catch up, and fast. CATL, the manufacturer, who now wants to pull up his work near Erfurt, is already in second place, behind is BYD, also a Chinese company. It follows LG Chem from South Korea.
The fact that China’s battery manufacturers could soon occupy the top five places, however, is due to a fact that the German Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU) is well aware. Although Europe needs to catch up with regard to battery cell production, Merkel has repeatedly demanded it. “China’s planned economy” is not a role model, Merkel said.
The word planned economy is an important part of the answer to the question, why now just a manufacturer from China has to do the job, the German industry representatives can not do or want to do, because they shy high investment costs. Battery construction, so it is in the industrial policy master plan “Made in China 2025” of the Chinese government, is the official state rationale in the People’s Republic. State-owned banks and funds provide manufacturers with generous subsidies, along with generous subsidies for electric car buyers, who have averaged 12,000 euros over the past few years. The industry association China Passenger Car Association estimates the total subsidies, which flowed into the Chinese electric car industry in 2016 and 2017, at 83 billion yuan, equivalent to almost 11 billion euros.