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China Could Ship More Than 3.6 TWh of Lithium-Ion Batteries by 2030, Ouyang Minggao Says
Ouyang Minggao forecast that the global lithium ion battery market will exceed 5,000 GWh by 2030 and China’s shipments will surpass 3,600 GWh—about double 2025’s 1,875 GWh level. His roadmap puts safety, AI enabled development and lifecycle management alongside two parallel technology tracks: higher energy liquid to...
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Key takeaways
- Ouyang Minggao forecast that the global lithium ion battery market will exceed 5,000 GWh by 2030 and China’s shipments will surpass 3,600 GWh—about double 2025’s 1,875 GWh level.
- His roadmap puts safety, AI enabled development and lifecycle management alongside two parallel technology tracks: higher energy liquid to solid state batteries, and lower cost, long life LFP and sodium ion batteries.
- China’s 2025 benchmark was 769 GWh of domestic power battery installations, up 40% year over year; Chinese firms occupied six of the global top 10 by installed capacity.
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openai.comCreate a landscape editorial hero image for this Studio Global article: What did Chinese Academy of Sciences academician Ouyang Minggao forecast at the 2026 World Power Battery Conference about China’s and the gl. Article summary: Ouyang forecast that by 2030 the global lithium-ion battery market would exceed 5,000 GWh, while China’s lithium-ion battery shipments would exceed 3,600 GWh—roughly double its 2025 level. [8] - **2025 baseline:** China . Topic tags: general, general web, user generated. Style: premium digital editorial illustration, source-backed research mood, clean composition, high detail, modern web publication hero. Use reference image context only for broad subject, composition, and topical grounding; do not copy the exact image. Avoid: logos, brand marks, copyrighted characters, real person likenesses, fake screenshots, UI text, readable text, watermarks, charts with fa
China’s battery industry could roughly double its lithium-ion shipments by 2030, according to Chinese Academy of Sciences academician Ouyang Minggao. Speaking at the 2026 World Power Battery Conference in Yibin, he projected a global lithium-ion market above 5,000 GWh and Chinese shipments above 3,600 GWh by 2030. These are forecasts, but they are rooted in a large 2025 base and a strategy that treats safety, software, circularity and chemistry choice as equally important parts of scale. 20
The 2030 forecast in context
Ouyang’s Chinese shipment forecast of more than 3,600 GWh is approximately twice the 1,875 GWh of lithium-ion batteries China shipped in 2025. He also put China’s 2025 global shipment share at more than 80%. 20
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The domestic power-battery market was also large: installations reached 769 GWh in 2025, a 40% year-over-year increase. Chinese companies held six places in the global top 10 power-battery companies by installed capacity and accounted for 70% of cumulative installed capacity in that ranking. 25
Those figures describe a highly concentrated manufacturing position, but Ouyang’s message was not simply that more capacity is needed. The next stage, he argued, depends on improving the quality, safety and intelligence of the battery value chain.
What changed in batteries: range, charging, durability and cost
Ouyang described China’s battery progress in product terms: vehicle range advancing from roughly 100 km to around 1,000 km, charging time falling from hours to about 10 minutes, and costs dropping about 90% to roughly RMB 0.3–0.5 per Wh. He also said cycle life had progressed from a few hundred cycles to more than 10,000 cycles. 20
These figures should be read as a high-level account of industry progress rather than a specification for every battery product. Battery life, charge time and cost vary substantially by chemistry, cell design, use case and operating conditions.
Safety is the baseline for the next growth phase
Ouyang identified end-to-end battery safety as a continuing priority. That focus is reflected in China’s GB 38031—2025 electric-vehicle power-battery safety standard, which took effect in July 2026. For fast-charging batteries, the standard requires an external short-circuit test after 300 fast-charge cycles without fire or explosion. 28
The practical implication is clear: higher energy density and faster charging cannot be treated as stand-alone performance goals. They must be developed with pack-level safety, manufacturing quality and in-service monitoring in mind.
AI moves from a tool to an industry-wide R&D platform
Ouyang said the coming five years are a critical window for battery development to shift toward AI-based R&D platforms. He linked AI to battery design and to solving the difficult research and industrialization problems associated with all-solid-state batteries. 22
His wider framing is that AI should extend across the battery chain—from materials and cell design through manufacturing and use-phase management—rather than being confined to a single design or factory task. 21
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That is especially consequential for solid-state development, where material interfaces, manufacturing repeatability and safety must all be resolved before large-scale adoption can be assumed.
Lifecycle management includes batteries reaching retirement
China’s first generations of new-energy vehicles are now beginning to enter the power-battery retirement stage, Ouyang noted. 17
That makes traceability, condition assessment, reuse and material recovery central operational questions—not merely sustainability add-ons. In Ouyang’s framework, lifecycle management sits alongside safety and AI as a core requirement for the sector’s next phase of development.
Two technology routes, not one winner
Ouyang’s most important strategic point was that China’s power and energy-storage battery industries need two technology routes in parallel.
1. High specific energy with high safety
The first route moves from today’s liquid lithium-ion batteries through solid–liquid hybrid batteries toward all-solid-state batteries. Ouyang characterized this as a necessary path for higher specific energy, while stressing that safety constraints become harder as energy density rises. 19
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This is not a claim that all-solid-state batteries will immediately replace existing chemistries. It is a research and industrialization route whose technical challenges remain significant. 22
2. Low cost and long life
The second route centers on lithium iron phosphate (LFP) and sodium-ion batteries, prioritizing lower cost and longer life. Ouyang said this path is equally important for China’s power-battery and energy-storage sectors, and he expects LFP to remain a leading chemistry over the coming decade. 19
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The two-track approach recognizes that high-energy vehicles, mass-market EVs and stationary storage do not require the same battery trade-offs. Rather than betting the industry on a single successor chemistry, Ouyang’s roadmap preserves a role for proven, scalable LFP while pursuing solid-state advances where their performance benefits can justify the additional complexity.
What the forecast means
The headline number is large: more than 3.6 TWh of Chinese lithium-ion shipments by 2030 within a global market above 5 TWh. But the fuller message is more demanding. Growth will depend on whether manufacturers can deliver safer packs, use AI to accelerate development and production, manage batteries through retirement and recycling, and match battery chemistry to the job it must do. 20
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What is the short answer to "China Could Ship More Than 3.6 TWh of Lithium-Ion Batteries by 2030, Ouyang Minggao Says"?
Ouyang Minggao forecast that the global lithium ion battery market will exceed 5,000 GWh by 2030 and China’s shipments will surpass 3,600 GWh—about double 2025’s 1,875 GWh level.
What are the key points to validate first?
Ouyang Minggao forecast that the global lithium ion battery market will exceed 5,000 GWh by 2030 and China’s shipments will surpass 3,600 GWh—about double 2025’s 1,875 GWh level. His roadmap puts safety, AI enabled development and lifecycle management alongside two parallel technology tracks: higher energy liquid to solid state batteries, and lower cost, long life LFP and sodium ion batteries.
What should I do next in practice?
China’s 2025 benchmark was 769 GWh of domestic power battery installations, up 40% year over year; Chinese firms occupied six of the global top 10 by installed capacity.