CATL still leads, but the gap keeps closing
CATL installed 32.54 GWh in August, up about 3.6% from July's 31.40 GWh, according to CABIA data published by CnEVPost. Its share fell 0.89 percentage points to 41.45% — not because it shipped less, but because the market grew faster. Total Chinese installations rose 5.9% month-on-month to 79.0 GWh.
BYD was the beneficiary: 16.47 GWh, up roughly 15.5% month-on-month, share up 1.75 points to 20.98%. The gap between the two shrank to 20.47 percentage points — the third consecutive month of narrowing. Together they now hold 62.43% of the Chinese market, up from 61.56% in July. The top five makers accounted for 80.76%, essentially flat on July's 80.85%, so the concentration is happening at the very top, not across the board.
LFP at 85.6%: the number that actually matters
LFP installations reached 67.6 GWh in August, up 7.0% month-on-month, taking 85.6% of the total — the third consecutive monthly record. Ternary batteries fell 1.0% to 11.0 GWh, just 14.0% of the market and their third consecutive decline. In raw capacity, lithium iron phosphate now out-installs nickel-based chemistry by roughly 6.15 to 1.
In the LFP segment CATL leads with 25.17 GWh (37.31%, +0.88 points) and BYD is second with 16.47 GWh (24.41%, +1.79 points) — every kilowatt-hour BYD installs domestically is LFP. Eve Energy moved up to third at 4.67 GWh (6.92%), ahead of CALB at 4.63 GWh (6.87%) and Gotion High-tech at 4.58 GWh (6.78%).
For European readers this is not an abstract trend. LFP is the chemistry behind most of the sub-€30,000 electric cars now on sale in the EU, including the small hatchbacks and compact crossovers that decide whether a family switches. Cheap cells are what make those price tags possible — and the Chinese market is now overwhelmingly an LFP market.
The ternary surprise: LG Energy Solution doubles
Buried in the shrinking ternary segment is the sharpest single move of the month. LG Energy Solution went from 0.73 GWh in July to 1.60 GWh in August — a jump of about 119%. Its overall share rose 1.05 points to 2.03%, and in ternary cells it took 14.50% (+7.93 points), pushing past Svolt Energy's 7.70%.
At the same time CATL's ternary share collapsed from 75.81% to 66.80%, a fall of nearly nine percentage points in one month. A swing that large usually means one large customer changed its pack mix. LGES's Chinese output has historically supplied Tesla's Shanghai plant for its longer-range variants, so it is a data point worth watching for anyone tracking which cells end up in European deliveries.
What 79 GWh a month means per car
Here is a calculation I find more useful than the percentages. If you assume an average usable pack of around 55 kWh — reasonable in a market where 85.6% of capacity is LFP going into compacts and mid-size cars — then 79.0 GWh works out to roughly 1.44 million vehicle batteries in a single month.
Energy per car matters more than gigawatt-hours, though. A car consuming 15 kWh/100 km and driving 12,000 km a year needs about 1,800 kWh annually, or roughly 4.9 kWh per day. That is the same order of magnitude as the 4.23–4.75 kWh/day that TÜV measured for the Aptera solar EV — a useful reality check on how far on-board generation can stretch, and how much of a car's demand still has to come from the grid. Solar bodywork and roof panels like Hongqi's perovskite sunroof can cover part of a commute, not a road trip.
Cost context: at 18 kWh/100 km and €0.40/kWh on a public DC charger, you are paying €7.20 per 100 km. A 6 l/100 km petrol car at €1.60/l costs €9.60. That is €2.40 saved per 100 km, or about €360 a year at 15,000 km. Run your own numbers in our charging cost calculator — and check our cheapest Superchargers list (483 locations in the database) before you assume DC pricing. Cheaper cells do not lower your charging bill; the tariff does. Schemes like the smart charging rollout at 1,500 Dutch public charge points are where that bill actually moves.
Europe: the same cells, but a different rulebook
A meaningful share of this Chinese output is installed in cars that are then exported — including to Europe. The EU's countervailing duties on China-built electric cars, in force since October 2024, apply to vehicles, not cells. That asymmetry is exactly why the industry has pushed cell production into Europe: CATL in Arnstadt and Debrecen, LG Energy Solution in Wrocław, Eve Energy in Debrecen, Gotion in Göttingen. The chemistry split in the charts above will show up in what those plants build.
And from 18 February 2027, the EU Battery Regulation's battery passport kicks in, requiring documented carbon footprint and supply chain data for every EV battery placed on the European market. A market where 85.6% of capacity is LFP is easier to document than one built on nickel and cobalt — an underrated advantage of the iron-based route.
What to watch
Three things in the September data: whether CATL's domestic share falls for a fourth month, whether LFP sets a fourth consecutive record or finally plateaus, and whether LGES holds its ternary gain. Also keep an eye on the bottom of the top-15 table, where sodium-ion and LMFP entries would signal the next chemistry shift. So far, August belonged to iron.
Source: https://cnevpost.com/2026/09/16/top-battery-makers-share-china-aug-2026/
