LG Energy Solution tops global EV battery market excluding China in H1

South Korea's LG Energy Solution Ltd. in the first half of this year retained its No. 1 ranking on the global market for electric vehicle (EV) batteries excluding China.

Chinese competitor CATL, however, was in close pursuit in market share after doubling its battery use.

The Seongnam, Gyeonggi Province-based SNE Research, a market research company specializing in energy, on Monday said the battery consumption of EVs sold worldwide excluding China in this year's first half was 143.1 gigawatt hours, up 56% from the same period last year.

By company, LG Energy Solution stayed at No. 1 with 41.1 GWh, up 55.1%, though its market share of 28.7% was slightly down from 29.9% in the same half of last year.

CATL saw its battery use jump 107.1% to 38.9 GWh. The company's market share also surged from 20.5% to 27.2% year on year.

Thus LG Energy Solution's market share lead over CATL was slashed from 8.4 percentage points to just 1.5.

Japan's Panasonic ranked third with 22.7 GWh, up 40.1%, and its market share was 15.8%. SK On placed fourth and Samsung SDI Co. fifth.

SK On's battery use of 15.8 GWh was up 15.7% and Samsung SDI's grew 28.8% to 12.5 GWh. SK On's market share, however, fell 3.8 percentage points to 11.1% and that of Samsung SDI dipped 1.9 to 8.7%.

The collective market share of LG Energy Solution, Samsung SDI and SK On fell 5.9 points to 48.5%.

"Select Chinese companies like CATL are showing explosive triple-digit growth even outside of China and gradually expanding their global market shares," SNE Research said.

"With global automakers such as Tesla and Volkswagen recently announcing their adoption of lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries, the tide is tilting toward such batteries because of their price competitiveness."

LFP batteries, which China is focusing on, have lower energy density than nickel, cobalt and manganese or NCM batteries but cheaper manufacturing costs and high stability.

Write to Hyung-Kyu Kim at khk@hankyung.com