How electric vehicles got their juice

The Indicator from Planet Money

NPR

Business

4.7 • 9.2K Ratings

🗓️ 14 November 2022

⏱️ 9 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

CATL is a hugely important company that a lot of people probably haven't heard of. It's grown from nothing to become the world's largest EV battery supplier — with some strong help from the Chinese government along the way. This story of how EV batteries became cheap kicks off The Indicator's week on the climate crisis — how markets, government and businesses can deal with growing emissions.

Transcript

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0:00.0	NPR.
0:12.0	When the Inflation Reduction Act was signed into law this year, it set big goals to build
0:18.3	a cleaner economy that was made in America.
0:21.2	And that included growing a bigger car battery industry.
0:24.8	Billions of dollars in investment to make electric vehicles and battery and electric
0:29.2	charging stations all across America, made in America, all that made in America.
0:35.0	And if oil defined 20th century economics and geopolitics, electric vehicle batteries
0:41.0	may define the 21st.
0:43.4	And the company that's on the path to be the standard oil of today, the number one battery
0:48.5	company supplying batteries to a third of the world's EVs, from Tesla to Volkswagen,
0:54.7	is a Chinese company that kind of flies under the radar.
0:58.6	It's called contemporary Amperex technology limited or CATL.
1:02.7	CATL is led by a guy named Zheng Yutun, who maybe more than any other single person has
1:09.1	made electric vehicles affordable.
1:12.4	Here's Yutun a few weeks ago saying that there are more than 5 million new electric vehicles
1:17.1	using CATL's batteries.
1:24.7	This is the indicator from Planet Money.
1:26.3	I'm Whalen Wong.
1:27.3	I'm Diane Woods.
1:29.0	This week as world leaders meet in Egypt to confront the global climate crisis, we're
1:34.1	looking at the role of economics.
1:36.4	What can markets, business and governments do to mitigate or even turn this crisis around?
	...

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