Recently, the Argonne National Laboratory in the United States released the latest forecast, stating that the production capacity of electric vehicle power battery factories in North America will expand significantly in the coming years, laying the foundation for large-scale electrification.

According to the latest forecast from Argonne National Laboratory, by 2035, North America will achieve commercial-scale supply of battery components; by 2030, the total output of lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles in North America will exceed 1200 gigawatt-hours per year. This is a 20% increase from the 1000 GWh predicted a year ago and represents the sum of investments in battery factories that have been announced.

 

In comparison, the production capacity of electric vehicle power batteries in North America this year is expected to be about 300 GWh, which means that the industry will double in about six years.

Assuming an average battery capacity of 100 kilowatt-hours per vehicle, 1200 gigawatt-hours of batteries would be enough to produce about 12 million new pure electric vehicles; if the vehicle has an 80 kWh capacity, it would be enough to produce 15 million electric vehicles.

The sales volume of pure electric vehicles in the United States in 2023 was only 1.1 million, which means that the U.S. electric vehicle market will expand by 10 times.

According to statistics from the Vehicle Technologies Office of the U.S. Department of Energy, the concentration of battery investment in the United States is in the Midwest and the Southeast, close to the location of vehicle assembly. The proximity of battery production and vehicle assembly is crucial for minimizing transportation time and costs.

 

In addition, the institution also predicts that by 2030, the installed capacity of power batteries in the United States for General Motors, Ford, Tesla, Stellantis, and Volkswagen will all exceed 100 GWh.

However, these are just the current announced plans for battery production capacity by 2030. The planned capacity may be adjusted with the changes in the electric vehicle demand market and expectations of investment profitability. Whether the United States can truly build a domestic supply chain and achieve a rapid transformation to electrification remains to be verified by the market.