US battery manufacturing output continues to break records

joe_mamba

Any idea how that compares to Europe?

loeg

"Editorialized" headline. Or rather, the linked page is just data, captioned "Industrial Production: Manufacturing: Durable Goods: Battery." Yes, yes, line go up. This is probably good. But the headline only exists on HN.

diego_moita

I don't have any idea of what this graph means. It seems to be about percentage of the 2017 production. But does it measure value or volume? Does it include lithium-based batteries? I believe they were only introduced to the market in the 1990s, but the graph goes back to 1975. Also, how many of these batteries are lead-acid based car batteries, disposable batteries for electronics, rechargeable or not, etc.

ricardobeat

In numbers (cell production capacity, 2025): [1] USA 70 GWh [2] China 1755 GWh [3] Europe 252 GWh That's excluding small battery production for electronics etc. [1] https://reasonstobecheerful.world/us-grid-battery-storage/ [2] https://english.news18a.com/news/english_224842.html [3] https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/europes-swelling-wav...

skilning

And completely irrelevant since the core materials in them are mined overseas.

SubiculumCode

Good. Even without the COVID dip, the increase is substantial, percentage wise, and is a good sign for national security

lisper

Now if only we could make RAM chips too.

consumer451

This is great news, but damn to we have some catch-up to do in the US and EU. Have you all seen the specs of the new BYD Blade 2.0? https://www.evinfrastructurenews.com/ev-battery/byd-blade-ba...

dlev_pika

It’s crazy how production tanks as the first Trump presidency kicks off, before COVID. Coincidentally, I started doing pushups yesterday, today is the second day in a row I break my high mark Yesterday= 1 Today= 2 (+100%!!!)

saggon

how about this - allow chinese firm build plant in the us - cite security concerns and kinda nationalize it honestly, this is somewhat of a proof it works, you can basically extend it to various sectors

NoLinkToMe

'breaking records' implies a lot more than it is. The amount of breaths anyone takes in their life also continues to break their own personal record, but it's not as impressive as it sounds. Output today is 2x what it was 10 or 20 years ago. Nice but 'record breaking', meh. Especially in global context, it's quite tiny.

MinimalAction

Just looked up Chinese production capacity (~1700 GWh). That's orders of magnitude higher than the rest of the world. What did they do differently?

aetherspawn

The time scale here is a joke. In 2016 nobody with less than a million dollars drove EVs and the production has barely doubled since then, despite EV uptake increasing probably 100x That basically means US batteries aren’t going in anything useful to the EV boom, otherwise there would be proportional increases

Animats

Those numbers include primary batteries, even though it says "durable goods". Energizer, which owns most of the US primary battery industry (Ray-O-Vac, Eveready, etc.) may account for much of that. All those AA cells add up.

ford

Related - "The Electric Slide" [0] from NotBoring (a techno-optimist news letter) talks about production of batteries and other parts of the "Electric Stack", and explains where the US/China are relative to each other and the rest of the world, and why China has such a big lead. [0] https://www.notboring.co/p/the-electric-slide

verdverm

related: Electrostates, Petrostates, and the New Cold War https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLnxzkiB-GI