Comment by epistasis | Hacker News Reader

Comment by epistasis | Hacker News Reader

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This 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-investm...

[2] https://www.iea.org/reports/global-ev-outlook-2025/electric-...

“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

I 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.

No Korea and Japan? Aren't most of the big non-Chinese battery companies Korean and Japanese?

The 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.

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