Part 4/12:
From 2022 to 2024, over 700 projects, each worth over a billion dollars, were hastily started, totaling an investment of 3.5 trillion yen. This led to an even greater surplus, with China's lithium battery production capacity reaching 3.3 times the demand in 2023. Capacity utilization dropped from 76% in 2022 to just 50% in the first half of 2024.
The Cascading Crisis
The lithium battery industry is now facing a full-blown crisis, impacting the entire supply chain from upstream raw materials to downstream demand. The crisis first showed up in the upstream raw material market, with lithium carbonate prices plummeting by 80% from their peak in November 2022.