In April, BYD managed to break into second place in the ranking of the largest lithium battery suppliers

Chinese company BYD developed in parallel with Tesla, but started producing electric cars after it mastered mass production of lithium batteries.
The shutdown of Tesla's assembly line in Shanghai allowed BYD to become the world's second largest producer of traction batteries in April.
The first place is still occupied by CATL with 33.7% of the market.Image source: BYDThe statistics of SNE Research presented by Business Korea traditionally focuses on the business dynamics of Korean battery manufacturers, considering the period from January to April of this year inclusive.
Korean manufacturers have made significant progress in the annual comparison, but Chinese CATL still surpassed them, increasing the volume of supply by 114.1% and securing a little more than a third of the world market.
BYD is in third place with a 224.5% increase in supply volume and has almost doubled its market share to 12.1%.
LG Energy Solution managed to increase battery sales by 19.1% in the first four months of this year, but its share has dropped from 22.9% to 14.1%, although it is still in second place in the world ranking compared to its Chinese competitors.
Korean SK On was awarded only the fifth place, although its sales increased by 141.3%, and market share grew from 5.3% to 7%.
Samsung SDI is on the sixth place with a sales increase of 26.9%, but its share for the year decreased from 5.8% to 4.0%.
Total for the first four months of this year was released by manufacturers of traction batteries with a total capacity of 122.9 GWh.
This represents an increase of 83.4% over the same period last year.
Shipments have grown steadily since the third quarter of 2020.
Japanese manufacturers, including Panasonic, have also reduced their market share this year amid the progress of Chinese and Korean competitors.

The Chinese electric car BYD Seal has a body-integrated battery and a price tag starting at $32,000

For almost twenty years BYD has been producing cars, although before that it specialized in lithium batteries.
Electric cars are now for obvious reasons a strategic direction for her development, and the Seal model on a new platform demonstrates the use of the current principle of integration of the traction battery in the power structure of the body.
Orders for the car have already started at a price of $32,000.Image source: Weibo, BYD AutoAccording to Electrek, this is the first model for BYD, which implies such a layout of the traction battery.
Tesla is just about to introduce such a body structure at a plant that has opened in Germany, although progress is moving faster at the new Texas assembly line.
In the case of BYD, the new layout is claimed to increase volume efficiency by 66 percent, and the body's torsional stiffness is doubled, which has a positive effect on the car's handling.
Safety in frontal collisions is increased by 50%, the manufacturer even claims that the traction battery of this design has a high chance of surviving most road accidents.Image source: Weibo, BYD AutoIn contrast to Tesla, which uses cylindrical lithium batteries, BYD uses plate batteries of its own production.
The Seal electric car's traction battery capacity ranges from 61 to 83 kW‧h, with a range in the conditional CLTC cycle of 550 to 700 km for the rear-drive versions.
The all-wheel-drive variant with a range of more than 650 km, which will be offered for $43,576, stands apart.
There are four options available, three of which will be offered with rear-wheel drive.
Pre-orders for the new vehicle are already being taken, and at first it will be available only on the Chinese market.