EnabledFuture

🔋China has built a battery empire on steroids. The upstream, midstream, downstream, circularity and innovative drive electric models to boot. It has all the biggest speed, strength, and strategic focus of the biggest cat in the jungle. 🐅 It's probably unstoppable.

🦁 With >70% of the global EV battery production capacity, China's growth doesn’t just perturb battery industry dynamics - it dictates them.

🧋When it comes to critical minerals China is in danger of a “milkshake moment”: the straw sucking noisily at air - and desperate for a refill.

It isn’t dysfunction but
success meets desire for more.

📈 Chinese momentum is unmistakable:
🔺️ CATL Q1 2026: Revenue RMB 129.13 billion (+52% YoY) and net profit RMB 20.74 billion (+48% YoY). This week it launched Shidai Resources Group, a new mining subsidiary with RMB 30 billion (~$4.4 billion) registered capital. Its pure mission: secure lithium, nickel and other CRMs to fuel energy transition projections.

🔺️ BYD scaled to ~4.6 million NEVs in 2025 (including ~2.26 million pure BEVs).

🔺️NIO surpassed 100 million cumulative battery swaps, delivering 5.28 billion kWh across its expanding network.

🇨🇳 This dominance didn’t happen overnight and the conditions can't be replicated. Trying to put the brakes on the Chinese battery industry is like hanging on to undercarriage of a Cheetah in a 0-60 mph 3-second sprint towards the tastiest looking zebra in the desert. 🦓

📜 China won early - it success traces back to A123's strategic win in the LFP battery material patent dispute with Hydro-Quebec and partners in 2013, which unlocked low-cost, safe LFP technology for entry-level EVs and mass consumer acceptance. While scaling LFP domestically, China also mastered NCM cells with Asian technology partners — but LFP gave it an unbeatable cost advantage and market access that took out a lot of zebras. 🏹

🔮Global OEMs who caught the e-mobility scale vibe early also thrived:

🔺️Tesla (Shanghai Gigafactory + long-term Chinese deals),
🔺️Toyota (hybrid sales that keep it the world’s largest car OEM),
🔺️Hyundai who just tipped 4 M car sales (now offering a competitively priced ~£25,000 BEV in the UK market).

🦳 European legacy players (VW, BMW, Mercedes-Benz) are now scrambling to invest, source, partner and scale inside China’s integrated ecosystem. But acceleration is not a skill - not when the territory has already been micro-mapped and the prey is surrounded by big cats.

What we have witnessed over Q1- 21C in the battery energy leader's club is strategic entrepreneurship at its finest. 👌

EnabledFuture™️'s take? The West will have to come up with more than hopium if it wants to achieve any meaningful damage limitation.

What does this mean for global supply chains, technology leadership, and the pace of the energy transition? Can China continue to steer around global conflicts? Will the big cat survive? 🐆

Battery Recycling - Achieving Closed-Loop Circularity
Check out
Circularity Newsletter - 3rd edition


https://www.linkedin.com/posts/drmkl_batteries-batteryinvestor-batterycircularity-activity-7444042558793515008-xbWA

Battery Recycling - Achieving Closed Loop Circularity | Dr MK Lynch CChem FRSC Closed-loop battery circularity is moving out of the pilot phase and into the hard test of ex*****on. In my latest newsletter, I look at why rechargeable battery recycling and material recovery has become one of the most important circularity themes of 2026 — not only for sustainability, but for s...

IOM3 Training Academy: Meet the Trainer IOM3 Training Academy: Meet the Trainer Dr Michelle Lynch, CEO of EnabledFuture.https://bit.ly/3XQOE4e