China Battery Industry Report, 2014-2017 forecasts that, driven by the demand from emerging downstream sectors like electric vehicles and energy storage equipments, the market size of Chinese battery industry will grow at a rate of over 8% over the next couple years.
The most used chemical batteries in China are lead-acid battery, lithium battery, nickel-metal hydride battery and nickel-cadmium battery, of which lead-acid battery and lithium ion battery have stable downstream demand and huge market size, while the last two have limited space for market enlargement due to their performance, environmental issues, prices, etc.
China's lead-acid battery output was up to 205 million KVAh in 2013, up 15.4% from a year earlier. In 2013, Opinions on Promoting the Regular Development of Lead-acid Battery and Secondary Lead Industries, which was jointly issued by five ministries (Ministry of Industry and Information, Ministry of Environmental Protection, Ministry of Commerce, National Development and Reform Commission and Ministry of Finance), labeled the lead-acid battery and secondary lead industries as the major ones with backward production capacities to be eliminated, and stated that the outdated capacities that had not passed environmental scrutiny and do not comply with access conditions must be eliminated by the end of 2015. Therefore, China lead-acid battery industry will enter final stage of consolidation in the future.
In 2013, China's lithium battery shipment reached 4.768 billion units, rising by 18.6% year on year. Thanks to its high specific energy and being free from heavy metals like lead and cadmium, lithium battery is considered as green product, and, because of this, it is vigorously promoted by various countries and widely used in electric vehicles and energy storage equipment. However, in the long run, the technological advances and falling cost will be crucial to widespread application of the lithium battery. In 2013, China shipped 810 million pieces of nickel-metal hydride batteries, down 5.3% from the year before. Most nickel-metal hydride batteries produced in China are small ones, which will undergo a decline in shipments affected by substitution of the lithium battery.
