Battery Assault
Lithium-ion batteries show similar economies of scale to solar panels.
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Remember when Tesla's Gigafactory was going to be the world's biggest lithium-ion battery plant? By the time it reaches full capacity in 2020, it will be producing 35 gigawatt hours of cells each year -- more than the whole world manufactured in 2013. Impressive, huh?
Well, as Gadfly pointed out in July, there's a contender for Elon Musk's crown: BYD, the Chinese electric carmaker that already has about 23 percent of the market for large-scale batteries and is planning to ramp up to 34 gigawatt hours in 2019.