China could be world's leading electric vehicle producer: expert

The Chinese lithium-ion battery industry is growing to be the most powerful in the world, said Simon Moores, managing director of Benchmark Mineral Intelligence.

Infiniti Emerg-E Concept - It has a 48.3 km electric-only range, after which a 3-cylinder petrol engine kicks in to recharge the lithium-ion battery pack Source: Flickr / Mic (CC BY 2.0)

In a recent interview with Xinhua, Moores said that the world are seeing the rise of lithium-ion battery megafactories. "While it was started by Tesla's Gigafactory, 70 percent of this new capacity is being built in China by major producers such as BYD, ATL, and Lishen."

"We are also seeing Japanese and Korean manufacturers migrate to china to build their megafactories," He added.

The capacity of all lithium-ion plants in China currently is 16.4 GWh, and will increase to 107.5 GWh totally by 2020, according to Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, a price data collection and assessment company specialising in the lithium ion battery supply chain. That means China will have 62 percent of the world's lithium-ion battery production capacity by that time.