CATL to supply Tesla with batteries from July 2020

Shanghai (Gasgoo)- China's top electric vehicle battery maker CATL confirmed on Feb. 3 its partnership with EV manufacturer Tesla, which previously revealed the former has joined the lineup of its battery suppliers.

According to CATL's announcement, the Ningde-based company will provide Tesla with lithium-ion power batteries from July 1, 2020 to June 30, 2022. However, CATL has not mentioned whether cylindrical or prismatic batteries to be offered.

（Photo source: CATL)

As of this writing, the agreement has been signed by CATL and Tesla, Inc., while it still await the approval from Tesla (Shanghai) Co.,Ltd, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Tesla, Inc.

China's installed capacity of power batteries grew 9.2% over a year ago to 62.2GWh in 2019, according to the data offered by the China Automotive Power Battery Industry Innovation Alliance (CAPBIIA), of which 31.46GWh belonged to CATL, whose market share was up by nearly 10 percentage points to 50.57%. The partnership newly forged with Tesla would help it further boost the number.

CATL has now served as the power battery supplier to multiple global automakers, such as Honda, Hyundai, Toyota, Volvo, Volkswagen, Jaguar Land Rover and Daimler Trucks & Buses.

It is noteworthy that the latest agreement does not set any mandatory constraints over the procurement volume for Tesla, thus how the cooperation will affect CATL's performance should depend on the future concrete order volume.

Tesla's CEO Elon Musk revealed at the Q4 earnings call that the purchase volume from CATL is “small at scale”.

For quite a long time, Japan-based Panasonic was Tesla's only battery supplier.