Hi guys,
this news if confirmed could be a game changer for lithium-ion batteries supply chain investing, it confirms again my insight that over the next months-years we will be going through a serious spherical graphite supply shortage, due to the chinese using domestically their production to go into the batteries they will be producing en masse.
It is now more or less confirmed that Tesla will be building a gigafactory in China (at least 50 GWH up to 150 GWH capacity), but now Apple seems to put its huge cash reserves (200 Billion $ mind you !) to work in the field of batteries by partnering (with CATL) and building another huge battery plant in China ! If confirmed this may accelerate the demand growth of spherical graphite faster than any analyst is predicting today.
This is not only huge, this is a game changer ! Big money is finally coming to Batteries !
Fasten your seatbelts ! the sector is moving at a faster pace than the most optimistic analysts were able to predict !
“The Cupertino-based tech titan is working with Contemporary Amperex Technology Ltd. (CATL), a battery manufacturer in China’s Fujian province, on a scheme based on a confidentiality agreement. The parties are working together in the field of batteries, sources involved with the cooperation said.”
Neither Apple or CATL commented on the report.
If true, it would mean that Apple’s Project Titan could be working more toward a fully electric car and not just a self-driving system that can be integrated into other vehicles, like what Alphabet’s Waymo is doing with other automakers.
Apple partnering with CATL would be a significant development for the project since battery production is often seen as a bottleneck in the electric vehicle industry and that’s a problem the company is trying to solve.
CATL tripled its lithium-ion battery production last year and plans to reach 50 GWh by 2020, which would make it the second biggest li-ion battery producer in the world behind Tesla/Panasonic if they all manage to deliver on their production goals.
If Apple wants to get into electric cars in a big way, CATL is among only a handful of potential partners that can make it happen on the battery front. Apple is already a big battery consumer due to its iPhones and Macbooks, but electric cars are on a completely different scale. One Tesla Model S represents roughly the same battery demand as 4,000 iPhones.
CATL’s batteries, which are primarily using LiFePo and NCM chemistries in prismatic cell formats, have been mostly going to electric bus production, but they recently signed a supply contract with SAAB successor National Electric Vehicle Sweden (NEVS) in order to enable the production of hundreds of thousands of electric cars per year.
Source :
https://electrek.co/2017/07/20/apple-electric-car-battery-catl/