South Korean EV Battery Manufacturers Increase Their Market Worldwide During The COVID-19 Pandemic

While the Coronavirus pandemic resulted in just 53.4GWH capacity from electric vehicle battery makers across the world, the South Korean battery makers actually increased their market share revealed an SNE research. The 3 biggest South Korean companies LG Chem, Samsung SDI and SK innovation actually expanded their capacity, doubling their market share 35.6 per cent worldwide, during January and July 2020. This was a massive increase considering before this their market share was just 15.9 per cent. 

LG chemical supplies components and batteries to Tesla in Germany and China. 

LG Chemical remains the top player in the segment with 13.4GWH of capacity and it has the highest market share of 25.1 per cent. Chinese player CATL is number 2 because it had a 25.5 per cent drop year-on-year and its capacity was reduced to 12.7 GWH.Interestingly Japanese giant Panasonic which was once the market leader for electric vehicle batteries had its share reduced by over 30 per cent to just 10.1 GWH in capacity. 

LG Chem and Samsung SDI are rivals from South Korea

For obvious reasons, LG Chemical has a lot of momentum behind it considering it is involved with Tesla gigafactory in Europe and also has a big partnership with Tesla in China. Samsung SDI benefits from the massive volume of the Audi e-Tron, Ford Kuga PHEV and while SDI innovation supplies to Hyundai and Kia. On the whole, the industry was down by 16.8 per cent as the capacity in 2019 at the same time of the year was 64.1GWH. This drop was witnessed because of COVID19.