The Information称中国车企半固态电池商业化领先美国，SES AI等美国固态电池初创被指十年产量可忽略

One of the big Chinese carmakers—SAIC—is already powering two of its EV models with semisolid-state batteries getting up to 440 miles of driving range. SAIC plans to introduce one of the cars, the MG4 Urban, in the U.K. later this year.

The massive commercial EV preparationsunder wayreflect a China poised to leap ahead of the U.S. in the build-out of yet another futuristic technology, according to a congressionally mandatedreport submitted to the Department of Energy earlier this month.

It’s not entirely clear that solid state is one of the critical tech races the U.S. and its carmakers must make a priority: Solid-state systems (or the semisolid-state versions) have been the holy grail of the battery world for decades, but they are expensive to manufacture and may be one of those advances that end up useful only to a small minority of customers (more on this below).

Solid-state batteries have obsessed car and battery makers because they replace dangerous liquid electrolyte with a solid separator. That would allow battery makers to use powerful materials such as pure lithium metal that are ordinarily too volatile, delivering much greater energy without the risk of a fire. EVs equipped with such batteries could drive a lot further, for instance, while drones would fly greater distances and AI-infused electronics would last much longer.

The DOE report projects that such batteries will capture up to 15% of the Chinese EV market in the next four years and 10% of the global market overall. By 2035, the report says, they will power up to a fifth of all EVs sold globally—roughly 15 million vehicles a year, a bit less than the entire sale of new cars in the U.S. last year.

China is not fully there yet: Experts say Chinese companies including Geely and SAIC still have scientific and manufacturing hurdles to overcome before they will be able to deploy fully solid-state systems. For now, they are using an intermediate technology known as semisolid state, which uses a liquid or gel in the cathode but delivers a lot of the same performance advantages as fully solid-state systems.

The U.S. has several publicly tradedand private semisolid-state battery startups, including SES AI, QuantumScape and Factorial Energy, but the report excludes them, arguing that their production over the next decade or so will be “negligible.”

None of the U.S.-made batteries is deployed in a current or announced future EV model. And, unlikeseveral of the Chinese battery companies, none of the U.S. makers has established a plant to manufacture its battery at scale or even assembled a supply chain for the materials it would need if it did have a factory.

The 187-page report,written by the U.S. arm of French technology consultancy Avicenne Energy, has not been released publicly. But Michael Sanders, a senior adviser with Avicenne, delivered a presentation on parts of the report at an industry conference last week. He also described some of it to me.

Sanders painted a grimpicture of current U.S. competitiveness in semisolid-state and fully solid-state batteries. He said the top Chinese semisolid batteries are superior technologically to those made by the U.S. startups. And, he said, the latter would have a hard time catching up, given China’s head start in manufacturing.

He said five Chinese companies are currently building large semisolid-state battery plants, and that there are 106 Chinese companies in this battery segment in all when you include the entire supply chain producing solid-state materials and components.

Qichao Hu, founder and CEO of Massachusetts-based SES AI, said the report is right that the Chinese are out front. A year ago, Hu decided to get out of the EV battery business after his three Western carmaker backers—Honda, Hyundai and General Motors—all declined to use SES’s semisolid battery in their EVs. Instead, he is selling his batteries for drones and electric flying taxis, and has expanded his business into AI. He singled out China’s Contemporary Amperex Technology Ltd.’s dominance. “Of course, the Chinese companies like CATL are leading,” Hu said. “They are among the top five in the world.”

Not everyone agrees with the report’s conclusions, however. For the last several years, Chinese and Western carmakers have favored cheap “good enough” batteries that deliver significant driving range—say, 300 miles, not quite the 500 promised by solid state, but more than sufficient for most trips.

Halle Cheeseman, a next-generation battery expert and former program manager at the DOE’s Advanced Research Projects Agency—Energy, told me that at the same Chicago conference at which Sanders presented his findings, he himself delivered a speech challenging the market need for costly solid-state batteries.

“My presentation was really about what is the use case [for solid-state] and when the heck does cost get to a point where solid state can compete with liquid lithium ion?” Cheeseman said.

The Avicenne report has an answer to that: It concludes that semisolid-state battery costs will drop to the same level as those of conventional batteries by 2035, Sanders said.

The Chinese rush into solid state coincides with a debate in the U.S. over how to address China’s heavy dominance of batteries and the supply chain of metals and components that go into them.

One option for the U.S. would be to build some conventional battery-making capacity and assemble a supply chain to back it up, but mostly stop attempting to upend China’s control of the good enough battery segment. Instead, the U.S. could aim to establish a beachhead in the manufacture of next-generation batteries.

Last month, the Pentagon made a first step toward this approach, awarding a[$1.4 billion conditional loan](https://www.theinformation.com/newsletters/the-electric/trump-puts-pentagon-loan-behind-next-generation-batteries-leapfrog-china?rc=fd9gxc) to next-generation silicon battery anode developer Sila Nanotechnologies to expand its Washington state factory.

The build-out of Sila’s factory would not leave the U.S. ahead in silicon anodes by a long shot—Chinese rivals have been scaling up similar technology. But silicon anodes are only at their nascent stage of commercialization, and the loan could give the U.S. at least a shot at competing.

The Avicenne reportsuggested that the government make a similar bet on the U.S. solid-state battery industry. Sanders said it would be “naïve” to think the U.S. could leap ahead of China in solid-state batteries, but that putting government investment behind industry would help the U.S. “step up and be competitive.”

Silicon anodes with liquid electrolyte deliver much—some say all—of the added EV performance achieved with solid-state systems. Solid-state batteries could, however, prove competitive in other uses, such as in robotics and drones. The U.S. could invest in the manufacture of solid-state batteries at a small scale as a hedge while maintaining its bigger bet on silicon.

“There is a whole series of applications which will consider solid state for one reason or another, because they’re not price sensitive, like medical devices, the military and let’s say very premium consumer electronics, things like smartwatches,” Cheeseman said.

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**Noteworthy**

**Chinese autonomous robotaxi**company Pony.ai is widening its global ambitions. The company said it will put[4,000 self-driving robotaxis](https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/chinas-ponyais-overseas-robotaxi-pipeline-expands-over-4000-vehicles-2026-08-18/) on the roads of Europe, Asia and the Middle East, though it did not say when it would do so. It currently operates roughly 1,750 robotaxis in China, Croatia, Qatar and Singapore.

**AiMoga Robotics, the** humanoid robot subsidiary of Chinese automaker Chery Automobile, will[go public](https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/corrected-exclusive-cherys-robot-affiliate-aimoga-eyes-ipo-targets-overseas-2026-08-21/) in an initial public offering. The move comes after shares in China’s humanoid robot maker Unitree rose sixfold when it went public last week. Chery did not say when the IPO would take place.

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