"We are now good friends with Elon Musk because we are
preparing to supply batteries to Tesla very soon," said Lian Yubo, BYD's
executive vice president in an interview with Kui Yingchun, an anchor with
China's state-owned broadcaster CGTN.
BYD and Tesla did not immediately reply to requests for
comment.
BYD, the world's biggest manufacturer of the fleet including
electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids, has been working on to supply batteries
to other automakers including Toyota.
In 2020, BYD officially launched its Blade battery, a less
bulky lithium-iron-phosphate (LFP) battery that its Chairman Wang Chuanfu
believed to be safer than other alternatives in the market and would not catch
fire.
Chinese battery giant CATL is currently the sole supplier of
LFP batteries to Tesla, which has been installing such batteries in cars
manufactured in the Shanghai plant since 2020.
Tesla disclosed that nearly half of the vehicles it produced
in the first quarter were equipped with LFP batteries - a cheaper rival to the
nickel-and-cobalt based cells that dominate in the West.
Panasonic and LG Energy Solutions are the main suppliers of
nickel-and-cobalt based cells to Tesla © Reuters
0 comments:
Post a Comment