China's EVE Energy bets big on batteries

A battery plant is not a small add-on to a car factory. One new line is more like pouring a new steel mill, and EVE Energy just approved two more, with 110 gigawatt-hours of annual capacity and an 11 billion yuan price tag announced on April 7. (bloomberg.com) The split shows how China builds this industry now. EVE plans a 50 gigawatt-hour site in Qidong in Jiangsu province and a 60 gigawatt-hour project in Shanghang in Fujian province. (automotiveworld.com) The Fujian plant is not a solo bet. EVE said it will build that 60 gigawatt-hour project through a joint venture with Fujian Longking, with EVE holding 80% and Longking 20%. (automotiveworld.com) Those numbers are huge even by battery-industry standards. EVE shipped 50.15 gigawatt-hours of power batteries and 71.05 gigawatt-hours of energy-storage batteries in 2025, so the new plants together are close to the size of one full year of its recent shipments. (quartr.com) This is not a company expanding from weakness. EVE reported 61.47 billion yuan in 2025 revenue, up 26.44% from 2024, and it told investors first-quarter 2026 net profit could rise 25% to 35% from a year earlier. (quartr.com) (automotiveworld.com) The product mix explains why more factories still make sense. EVE has been pushing hard into energy storage, which means the giant battery packs that sit next to solar farms or power grids and move electricity from one hour to another. (prnewswire.com) That market is growing fast enough to absorb very large plants. EVE said on April 7 that it had signed more than 50 gigawatt-hours in large-format battery deals for energy storage, and in February it announced a 10 gigawatt-hour order tied to its 628 amp-hour storage cell. (prnewswire.com) (evebattery.com) Zoom out and you can see why this keeps happening in China instead of almost anywhere else. In global electric-vehicle battery installations for 2025, Contemporary Amperex Technology and BYD together held 55.6% share, while EVE ranked as China’s fifth-largest battery maker with 2.7% global share. (cnevpost.com) (automotiveworld.com) When a second-tier player can still spend $1.6 billion on fresh capacity, it tells you how concentrated the supply chain has become. The leaders are getting bigger, but the firms behind them are also building at a scale that would define the whole industry in most other countries. (bloomberg.com) (cnevpost.com) And EVE does not look done. Separate company announcements in late March and early April point to roughly 230 gigawatt-hours of planned capacity additions this year, which means the race now is not just to make better batteries, but to own enough factory floor to flood both cars and electric grids with them. (energytrend.com) (finance.biggo.com)