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US battery manufacturing output continues to break records
- SubiculumCode 4mo agoGood. Even without the COVID dip, the increase is substantial, percentage wise, and is a good sign for national security
- joe_mamba 4mo agoAny idea how that compares to Europe?
- don_esteban 4mo agoOr China?
- epistasis 4mo agoThis FRED series isn't directly convertible into GWh easily, but has the advantage of being having monthly numbers. Actual real world wide numbers are usually behind paywalls. As far as open sources: this March 2025 publication has these capacity numbers (presumably for 2024): - US: 200 GWh/year cell production capacity, 750 GWh/year planned additions [1] - EU: 200GWh/year cell production capacity, 350 GWh/year planned additions [1] IEA estimates 3TWh/year total world cell capacity in 2024 (not production, but capacity). So let's guess that China had ~2.5 TWh/year back in 2024. Actual production is at about 30% of total capacity, worldwide, apparently. [1] https://www.bruegel.org/analysis/transatlantic-clean-investment-monitor-3-battery-manufacturing https://www.bruegel.org/analysis/transatlantic-clean-investm... [2] https://www.iea.org/reports/global-ev-outlook-2025/electric-vehicle-batteries https://www.iea.org/reports/global-ev-outlook-2025/electric-...
- Aboutplants 4mo ago“Actual production is at about 30% of total capacity, worldwide, apparently.” I see this as great news for the future as ramping up production to hopefully meet rising demand should be fairly easy. That is of course assuming demand gets to where it needs to be. Another year or two and the economics should simply provide that boost to demand
- epistasis 4mo agoI think typical factory production rarely gets above 50% of capacity, IIRC. Nonetheless, factories are being built at breakneck speed in the US and other places. The same IEA report that cited 1TWh/year in 2024 expects that number to be 3TWh/year in 2030. And given the IEA's tendency to underpredict, I'd expect 3TWh/year in 2027 at the very latest, if we're not already there.
- CorrectHorseBat 4mo agoNo Korea and Japan? Aren't most of the big non-Chinese battery companies Korean and Japanese?
- epistasis 4mo agoThe Sankey chart from my IEA link above shows "Other Asia" is roughly half the size of the Europe and US blobs, so roughly a 100 GWh/year estimate, making the total sum to 3TWh/year. Asia outside of China does provide a lot of anode and cathode material to battery manufacturers.
- loeg 4mo ago"Editorialized" headline. Or rather, the linked page is just data, captioned "Industrial Production: Manufacturing: Durable Goods: Battery." Yes, yes, line go up. This is probably good. But the headline only exists on HN.
- calvinmorrison 4mo agoseems disingenuous. Battery product seems between 1990 and 2020 about the same with ups and downs. Post COVID its 2.4x the baseline average
- tzs 4mo agoIf you Google you will find that in fact similar headlines exist all over the place. The only problem with the HN headline is that it should have mentioned that the breaking records is for large scale batteries like grid storage and for EV batteries. Most of the many stories about this make it clearer that they are talking about the big batteries. The graph is showing all types of batteries I believe, and that baseline is largely small batteries.
- loeg 4mo agoIt would be totally fine to put one of those articles as the associated URL with this headline, just not the St Louis Fed chart. The HN guidelines call for HN headlines to use the same headline as the linked article, not one made up out of whole cloth. An article using this headline would likely provide additional context and detail that a simple chart does not.
- diego_moita 4mo agoI don't have any idea of what this graph means. It seems to be about percentage of the 2017 production. But does it measure value or volume? Does it include lithium-based batteries? I believe they were only introduced to the market in the 1990s, but the graph goes back to 1975. Also, how many of these batteries are lead-acid based car batteries, disposable batteries for electronics, rechargeable or not, etc.
- JumpCrisscross 4mo ago> But does it measure value or volume? Value, 100 equals 2017 production. Actual figures [1]. > Does it include lithium-based batteries? Yes [2]. Chemistry agnostic. Note, however, that in 2017 “storage battery manufacturing (NAICS 335911) and primary battery manufacturing (NAICS 335912), were combined into a single 2022 NAICS category: battery manufacturing (NAICS 335910).” So comparing across that isn’t straightforward. [1] https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/g17/Current/ipdisk/g17sup_tab1.txt https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/g17/Current/ipdisk/g... [2] [x] https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/g17/revisions/Current/DefaultRev.htm https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/g17/revisions/Curren...
- zamadatix 4mo agoAre you sure that's the data set being used in this graph? Taking 2022's value over 2017's anchored value seems to come out to a ratio far higher than any part of this graph shows for 2022. The description text also says it measures indexed real output and other graphs don't beat around the bush about being value based https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/A35DVS https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/A35DVS
- JumpCrisscross 4mo agoNo, those are weights. One sec.
- epistasis 4mo agoI didn't expect this post to attract interest, as my HN submissions are one of my personal bookmarking tools (and in fact the only one that I've used for more than a few months without forgetting about it). Apologies for the obscurity! This is the physical quantity of battery output, in terms of kWh or number of batteries, probably with some weighting to correlate lithium ion to, say, lead acid batteries (though these days this output is nearly only lithium ion, I would guess). To truly understand what's going on, there are two other series needed which are linked in the related series: - Producers' price index, how much the manufacturers are charging per unit of batteries https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PCU335911335911 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PCU335911335911 - Value (in $) of shipped batteries (roughly price * volume): https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/A35DVS https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/A35DVS (thanks for the correction, laser!) Also note that the time scale for all three are different, as they apparently started recording these at different times. FRED data is super useful for a high level view of what's going on in various industries, I highly recommend playing with it if you're ever looking at investing or other spaces to work in!
- ricardobeat 4mo agoIn numbers (cell production capacity, 2025): [1] USA 70 GWh [2] China 1755 GWh [3] Europe 252 GWh That's excluding small battery production for electronics etc. [1] https://reasonstobecheerful.world/us-grid-battery-storage/ https://reasonstobecheerful.world/us-grid-battery-storage/ [2] https://english.news18a.com/news/english_224842.html https://english.news18a.com/news/english_224842.html [3] https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/europes-swelling-wave-battery-installations-set-hit-barriers--reeii-2026-02-26/ https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/europes-swelling-wav...
- causal 4mo agoOkay then makes me wonder if this recent trend is just one particularly large manufacturer ramping up production? Tesla?
- toomuchtodo 4mo agoFord in partnership with LG is one example. Stationary storage replacing EV demand that did not materialize. Gigafactories intended for EV batteries are now for stationary storage. U.S. battery industry cuts losses, shifts to new ventures amid EV bust - https://www.dallasfed.org/research/economics/2026/0303 https://www.dallasfed.org/research/economics/2026/0303 - March 3rd, 2026
- paulmist 4mo agoAccording to IEA[1] most capacity in Europe is from South Korean companies. [1] https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/share-of-manufacturing-capacity-by-battery-producers-domicile-2024-2030 https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/share-of-manu...
- JumpCrisscross 4mo agoStill physically in Europe. That’s mostly what counts.
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- throe939449 4mo ago[flagged]
- skilning 4mo agoAnd completely irrelevant since the core materials in them are mined overseas.
- SubiculumCode 4mo agoNearshoring as we speak..Venezuela will probably be contributing to that soon, I expect.
- usrnm 4mo agoGood old colonialism, sweet
- schlap 4mo agoi promise that venezuelan business leaders are more than happy to take USD
- haaz 4mo agoNo that's called trade you clown
- libertine 4mo agoEh, at this point that means nothing, let's see: If it's Russia, the biggest colonialist country in the world, using Neo Nazi "PMC", or trying to annex neighboring countries, it's not colonialism, it's "liberation from colonialists". If it's China doing mass acquisitions of state and private assets, it's not colonialism, it's "development". If it's a western country doing what ever, it's colonialism lol it's such a dumb propaganda trope. So the conclusion is that the new western colonialism is actually looking like a pretty good option, and shouldn't have such a bad connotation, perhaps it should be embraced in this new world order no?
- lisper 4mo agoNow if only we could make RAM chips too.
- tartoran 4mo agoYou want expensive memory and chips?
- lisper 4mo agoI want a robust field of competitors that allows supply to rise to meet demand, and I would like the USA to be one of the competitors. I would like the people who do the work to earn a living wage. I do not want to benefit from overseas slave labor. If that means I have to pay more, so be it.
- tartoran 4mo agoUS should do something very advanced domestically. Not sure if the US can compete on RAM and Chips within the current state of affairs.
- hagbard_c 4mo agoThey're already expensive. Increasing production capacity tends to bring down prices, not raise them.
- hagbard_c 4mo agoCould the down-voters explain their votes? In what does the observation of increased production capacity leading to lower prices insult their sensitivities that they felt the need to press that down-vote arrow? Surely you realise that the market works by balancing supply versus demand until some equilibrium is achieved? That demand partly - but not wholly - depends on price? Is it just that you (plural or singular in case of one person controlling more than one down-voting account) can't imagine a domestically-produced good to lead to lower market prices? If not, what else is it that makes my comment so irksome that it needs to be greyed out?
- consumer451 4mo agoThis is great news, but damn to we have some catch-up to do in the US and EU. Have you all seen the specs of the new BYD Blade 2.0? https://www.evinfrastructurenews.com/ev-battery/byd-blade-battery-2 https://www.evinfrastructurenews.com/ev-battery/byd-blade-ba...
- pertymcpert 4mo agoSmall steps taken many times gets you far. At some point the scaling will kick in and ramp up even more.
- giwook 4mo agoThis is true, but it also assumes continued investment and steady progress. We had been making some headway in terms of clean energy before the current administration started undoing a lot of that progress. And there is no telling what the next administration will do.
- KennyBlanken 4mo agoThat's wild that they are doing direct refrigerant cooling instead of liquid and liquid-refrigerant heat exchangers, unless I misread what "direct refrigerant" means.
- CabSauce 4mo agoI've been hearing about some recent sodium ion developments from CATL and BYD. If price estimates are to be believed, things could get interesting.
- pstuart 4mo agoGM is getting into the game too. https://news.gm.com/home.detail.html/Pages/news/us/en/2026/jun/0609-sodium-ion-batteries-grid-scale-energy-storage.html https://news.gm.com/home.detail.html/Pages/news/us/en/2026/j...
- dlev_pika 4mo agoIt’s crazy how production tanks as the first Trump presidency kicks off, before COVID. Coincidentally, I started doing pushups yesterday, today is the second day in a row I break my high mark Yesterday= 1 Today= 2 (+100%!!!)
- saggon 4mo agohow about this - allow chinese firm build plant in the us - cite security concerns and kinda nationalize it honestly, this is somewhat of a proof it works, you can basically extend it to various sectors
- NoLinkToMe 4mo ago'breaking records' implies a lot more than it is. The amount of breaths anyone takes in their life also continues to break their own personal record, but it's not as impressive as it sounds. Output today is 2x what it was 10 or 20 years ago. Nice but 'record breaking', meh. Especially in global context, it's quite tiny.
- tzs 4mo agoWhat is significant is production of batteries for grid storage. In 2020 and earlier domestic production in the US was under 10 GWh per year. Incentives from the Inflation Reduction Act let to a big increase in that. By 2025 it was 70 GWh per year. It will be more than twice that in 2026, and will continue growing. Of particular significance is that it now above the level needed to satisfy all of the US grid storage battery needs from domestic production. Similar growth (again largely due to the Inflation Reduction Act) is happening with EV battery production.
- MinimalAction 4mo agoJust looked up Chinese production capacity (~1700 GWh). That's orders of magnitude higher than the rest of the world. What did they do differently?
- jahnu 4mo agoSomething like the IRA but started years ago. They invest and subsidise and tax-incentivise in their own industry but do use competition within their own market to weed out losers.
- hnthrow0287345 4mo agoCheaper labor, for sure
- pertymcpert 4mo agoMost of the cost of batteries is in labor? So why not outsource them out of China where labor is quite expensive vs developing countries?
- warunsl 4mo agoLabor is expensive in China?
- 4mo ago
- aetherspawn 4mo agoThe time scale here is a joke. In 2016 nobody with less than a million dollars drove EVs and the production has barely doubled since then, despite EV uptake increasing probably 100x That basically means US batteries aren’t going in anything useful to the EV boom, otherwise there would be proportional increases
- standeven 4mo agoOnly millionaires were driving Nissan Leafs and Chevy Volts?
- Rohansi 4mo agoTesla Model S was apparently the best selling electric car then.
- triceratops 4mo agoThat was the first year it overtook the Nissan Leaf.
- supertroop 4mo ago10% of the us population are millionaires. That’s 33 million people. Mostly boomers.
- Animats 4mo agoThose numbers include primary batteries, even though it says "durable goods". Energizer, which owns most of the US primary battery industry (Ray-O-Vac, Eveready, etc.) may account for much of that. All those AA cells add up.
- ford 4mo agoRelated - "The Electric Slide" [0] from NotBoring (a techno-optimist news letter) talks about production of batteries and other parts of the "Electric Stack", and explains where the US/China are relative to each other and the rest of the world, and why China has such a big lead. [0] https://www.notboring.co/p/the-electric-slide https://www.notboring.co/p/the-electric-slide
- verdverm 4mo agorelated: Electrostates, Petrostates, and the New Cold War https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLnxzkiB-GI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLnxzkiB-GI
- nxy 4mo agoI would hope so! Considering we're heading towards the age of ai automation! and reducing our reliance on external forces.
- adjejmxbdjdn 4mo agoFor 15 years I’ve been arguing with people who kept denying the feasibility, and even inevitability, of renewable + storage. Renewable energy has a nearly 30 year history of exponential price improvements and efficiencies of scale hadn’t even kicked in at that point. But storage was inevitable as well. Not because of the energy industry, but because of the cellphone industry. The iPhone changed the game. It brought so many billions of dollars into research into the cutting edge of achieving inexpensive storage density, which meant that non cutting edge storage would only get better/cheaper. The financial pull of the smartphone industry was so strong, that even TSLA, famously prone to over exaggeration, underestimated how quickly storage prices would drop (not immediately for them as much though…they decided to take their storage needs in house instead of riding the overall industry advances, until they abandoned the in house solution).
- pstuart 4mo agoRenewables have unfortunately been heavily politicized by the fossil fuel industry, and millions of Americans are against them because they are "woke". Progress will continue but it will be swimming upstream until that chasm is closed.
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]