Companies in Ningde

In 2011, when CATL was founded in Ningde, a coastal city in Fujian, most of the world had never heard of the company — and electric vehicles were still a niche curiosity. A decade and a half later, CATL is the world's largest EV battery maker, supplying roughly one in every three electric vehicle batteries on the planet, including those in Tesla, BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Hyundai, and nearly every Chinese EV brand. The company's rise is built on technology leadership: its NCM (nickel-cobalt-manganese) and LFP (lithium iron phosphate) cells set the industry's benchmarks for energy density, and its CTP (cell-to-pack) and Kirin battery technologies squeeze more range into less space. CATL also leads in sodium-ion batteries and is developing solid-state cells — the technology most experts expect to define the next decade. With about 110,000 employees and annual revenue near ¥400 billion (US$55 billion), CATL has globalized rapidly: factories in Germany and Hungary serve European automakers, a plant in Indonesia serves the nickel supply chain, and its battery recycling business closes the loop. For automakers, CATL is both indispensable and strategically delicate — the supplier everyone needs and no one wants to depend on entirely.