Attention-grabbing Messaging Conflict Relating to CATL in China

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One thing attention-grabbing is happening in China, and I’m not precisely certain what to make of it.

Sometimes, I don’t see a number of rival narratives in Chinese language media. One story is usually lined the identical throughout the trade, and there’s not a ton of competing narratives arguing with one another. Nonetheless, there’s a form of messaging warfare effervescent within the nation relating to CATL, the world’s largest battery maker.

I noticed a headline previously week or so about automakers shifting away from CATL, shifting away from a reliance on the corporate’s batteries. For these of us who’ve been following the EV trade and the associated battery trade for a very long time, we will most likely keep in mind when CATL wasn’t on the high of the charts. There was LG Chem, there was Samsung SDI, there was SK Innovation, there was BYD itself, and a few others. Then CATL began rising and rising, profitable increasingly huge contracts with notable automakers. Ultimately, it climbed into the #1 place, after which it put a number of house between itself and others. Whereas it was nonetheless removed from a monopoly, it appeared nobody might actually compete with CATL.

So, it was a bit of shocking to see this information pop up of a transfer — inside China even — away from CATL. Had CATL gotten too dominant? Was it making issues too robust on consumers?

Properly, now information comes out (of state media company China Every day) that this media hype in opposition to CATL is incorrect, deceptive, or no less than misguided. ”

“A Chinese language media outlet affiliated with the Ministry of Trade and Info Know-how, China’s high trade regulator, revealed an article on Tuesday calling the current hype round ‘de-CATLization’ in China’s NEV trade a ‘media farce’,” China Every day writes. “A WeChat account run by the MIIT Information and Publicity Heart stated that automakers adjusting provide chains, including suppliers, and creating in-house batteries are regular market behaviors. But, they’ve been packaged as ‘de-CATLization’ — a time period referring to efforts by carmakers to scale back their reliance on CATL, or Modern Amperex Know-how Co Ltd, China’s largest and the world’s main EV battery maker — and even portrayed as confrontation between automakers and battery makers.” Hmm…. Interestinger and interestinger.

There’s additionally part of the article centered on battery costs that’s a bit odd. “What’s extra, the article warned of a concurrent pattern: worth competitors is spreading upstream by the economic chain. It confused that batteries are not any peculiar standardized element — they straight have an effect on automobile security, reliability, lifespan, and person expertise.

“Citing NielsenIQ analysis, the article famous that the majority shoppers worldwide can understand variations in know-how and high quality amongst battery manufacturers and deal with batteries as a key buying issue. Value discount issues, however low costs should not be equated with low prices, nonetheless much less with sacrificing high quality.”

Is the state information company arguing that any strikes away from CATL (which apparently aren’t actually a giant deal) must be seen rigorously and skeptically as a result of it’s not nearly price with batteries, it’s additionally about high quality? (Type of jogs my memory of individuals claiming consumers shouldn’t transfer away from the most important Korean battery makers as a result of the Chinese language choices had much less expertise and fewer of a monitor report for top of the range.)

No matter is happening with this, it appears there’s important controversy over in China about what is occurring within the battery trade, what is occurring at CATL, and whether or not it’s one thing we must always take note of or one thing we shouldn’t take note of. I’ll admit that I’m a bit confused by all of it.