If energy and transportation planners stop seeing their sectors as separate markets for batteries—a World Resources Institute researcher argued last week—there will be more than enough energy storage to go around. “An electric vehicle, because of the battery, is really both a mobility asset and an energy asset,” said Camron Gorguinpour, WRI’s global senior manager for electric vehicles, “and so we really want to start looking at the duality of electric vehicles rather than really just trying to focus on one thing.” Vehicle-to-grid technology is not a new idea—China jumped on it early—but it looks like an increasingly promising idea as electric-vehicle adoption takes off. The International En
SHANGHAI—A little-known Chinese company has become the world’s biggest maker of electric vehicle batteries. Beijing engineered a scenario that didn’t give the world much choice. China is by far the biggest EV market, and to boost its standing in the fast-growing industry, China began pressuring foreign auto makers to use locally-made batteries in the country several years ago. One company—Contemporary Amperex Technology Ltd., known as CATL—was the only shop capable of producing them at scale. Auto makers weren’t pleased, but they fell in line. During a visit to CATL headquarters in 2017, three Daimler AG executives displayed their irritation shortly after the meeting started, recalled Jiang
