More pressing than the self-supply of power batteries is the return on massive investments.
Five years ago, automakers triggered the first wave of battery manufacturing.
In November 2021, Geely landed a 12GWh power battery project in Fuling, Chongqing. In August 2022, GAC announced an investment of CNY 10.9 billion to build an independent battery company, and the Inpow Battery Technology plant officially broke ground at the end of the year.
At that time, the supply of power batteries was tight, and raw material prices were rising. Ensuring cell supply, reducing procurement costs, and mastering key technologies drove a group of automakers into cell manufacturing.
Four or five years have passed, and the investments made back then are beginning to enter a new operational stage.
On October 9, ENERGEE, a subsidiary of Geely, announced a global recruitment of energy storage cell distributors to sell products with specifications such as 100Ah, 159.5Ah, and 314Ah.
The day before, ENERGEE had just signed a five-year framework procurement agreement for lithium iron phosphate cathode materials with Nanjing Liyuan, arranging long-term material supply for future battery manufacturing.
In September this year, the 587Ah large energy storage cell of Inpow Battery Technology, a subsidiary of GAC, was mass-produced and rolled off the production line, and a dedicated 6.5GWh production line was put into operation.
From heavily investing in cell factories to establishing independent products, independent supply chains, and independent sales systems, battery companies under automakers are accelerating their entry into the external market.
The power battery businesses of both companies continue to grow.
The installed capacity of ENERGEE's power batteries has ranked among the top ten domestically; Inpow Battery Technology previously disclosed that its 18GWh power battery capacity is already in short supply.
With the power business still having orders, why continue to invest in energy storage?
The answer may lie in the operational accounts of the tens of billions in investments made five years ago.
Relying on the vehicle orders of the parent group can establish a manufacturing foundation; to further expand the battery business, more markets are needed.
Today, the growth of the energy storage industry happens to provide new opportunities.
The battery manufacturing capacity invested in back then to ensure vehicle supply is now beginning to compete for orders in the professional battery market.
Automakers' battery manufacturing is heading into a new stage.
Increased Power Battery Self-Supply, Amplified Energy Storage External Supply, and Restructuring of Capacity Assets
The manufacturing foundation of ENERGEE comes from Geely's power battery investments over the past years.
In April 2025, Geely integrated battery businesses such as Jidian, Yaoning, and Yaoneng to establish ENERGEE. That year, its power battery installed capacity exceeded 15GWh; in the first eight months of this year, it reached 11.7GWh, continuing to rank among the top ten domestically.
Meanwhile, Geely is still increasing the proportion of self-supplied cells.
In August 2025, ENERGEE disclosed its future battery supply structure: 40% will be provided by ENERGEE, 40% will come from CATL, and the remaining 20% will be supplemented by other suppliers.
Data indicates that from January to July 2026, in Geely's cell supply, ENERGEE accounted for 28.50% and CATL accounted for 63.21%.
From the current supply proportion to the future target of 40%, ENERGEE still has room for growth in the power battery field.
While the power business continues to develop, energy storage has become another key business.
At the very beginning of its establishment, ENERGEE proposed the strategy of "focusing on power, pushing energy storage, facing Geely, and serving the world." Today, this strategy is being gradually implemented into three operational capabilities: independent products, independent supply chain, and independent sales.
First is independent products.
In May this year, ENERGEE completed the rollout of the "Golden Battery" in Ningguo, Anhui, and signed agreements with 10 partners.
ENERGEE has thus formed two major product matrices, Golden Battery and Wushuang, targeting the power, battery swapping, and energy storage markets respectively. The Ningguo base has also carried out production line upgrades for energy storage, hybrid, and commercial vehicle batteries.
Second is the independent supply chain.
ENERGEE has begun to organize raw material procurement as a unified business entity. Procurement demands previously scattered across different bases are gradually shifting towards centralized coordination.
Signing a long-term procurement framework agreement with Nanjing Liyuan also means that raw material security, capacity planning, and cost management are beginning to be incorporated into a unified operational system.
Finally, independent sales.
This distributor recruitment is a clear move by Geely to establish its own global energy storage cell sales network.
From regional customer development and product sales to after-sales service, ENERGEE is extending these capabilities beyond the group's vehicle business to directly participate in the external battery market competition.
From energy storage products and material supply to global sales channels, ENERGEE is building an independent operational system as a battery enterprise.
Even with the increase in its own power battery self-supply and the simultaneous expansion of energy storage, Geely is more prudent about capacity investment.
Geely is reorganizing the battery manufacturing assets invested in over the past years.
Before the integration, the eight major battery bases under Geely had a cumulative planned capacity of over 176GWh. After completing the business integration in 2025, ENERGEE proposed a phased target of forming a 70GWh capacity by 2027.
Subsequently, the plan was further adjusted, with the 2027 target updated to 115GWh (including cells and PACKs). Once all capacity under construction and planned is put into production, the long-term scale will reach 150GWh.
It can be seen that Geely has begun to uniformly arrange the construction pace of each base, and some original production lines have been shifted to advance according to market demand.
In September this year, the 18GWh power battery project under construction by Chongqing Yaoning was transferred to CATL Geely, the joint venture platform of Geely and CATL, continuing the reallocation of existing manufacturing assets.
Today, the focus of Geely's battery business is shifting towards how to make good use of capacity and generate profits.
Independence is the Beginning of Growth, but Development Must Pass the Operational Test
For battery companies under automakers, stepping into the independent market faces a difficult hurdle—profitability.
On September 15, a senior Geely insider disclosed that the group is further reorganizing its battery enterprises. In the long run, it may merge the battery group into the Geely Automobile listed company, but it needs to wait for the battery group to meet the profitability conditions.
This capital arrangement reveals another requirement Geely has for the battery business. After producing batteries and forming an installed scale, Geely still needs to answer whether this business can make money.
Inpow Battery Technology, under GAC, is facing the same question.
In 2022, GAC launched the Inpow Battery Technology project with a planned total investment of CNY 10.9 billion.
Today, Inpow has built an 18GWh mass production capacity, and its domestic power battery installed capacity reached 5.3GWh from January to August this year, ranking twelfth.
In addition to supplying models under GAC, Inpow has also entered the supply chains of external vehicle customers such as BAIC.
But even within GAC, Inpow needs to compete for orders with other professional battery suppliers.
Inpow's increased investment in energy storage is not because the original power battery capacity is idle.
In an interview with GGII in April this year, Xu Junhai stated that the 18GWh power capacity is already in short supply, and the demands from the two major customers, GAC and BAIC, exceed the existing capacity.
Under the tight orders for power batteries, Inpow still independently built a 6.5GWh large energy storage cell production line.
In March this year, Inpow released the 587Ah large energy storage cell, including liquid and hybrid solid-liquid versions. In September, the 587Ah cell was mass-produced and rolled off the production line, and the dedicated 6.5GWh energy storage production line is fully operational.
After truly entering the energy storage market, it will face direct competition with battery enterprises in terms of cost, products, and customers.
Inpow has been considering market adaptation and manufacturing costs since the product definition stage.
First is the choice of the 587Ah specification. Aligning with the industry's mainstream specifications can reduce system adaptation costs and enter the customer procurement system faster; the two routes of liquid and hybrid solid-liquid target large-scale energy storage and data centers with high safety requirements respectively, expanding the range of potential customers.
On the manufacturing side, Inpow is promoting production line compatibility for the two types of cells to reduce equipment modification investment and production takt time loss.
Xu Junhai admitted that for hybrid solid-liquid cells to achieve costs close to those of liquid cells, process efficiency is the key.
However, cautious in action but optimistic in expectation. Inpow hopes that by 2027, the capacity of large energy storage cells will exceed 20GWh, and by 2030, it will reach over 100GWh. In future new investments, energy storage may get a larger share.
SVOLT Took Seven Years to See Profitability, Energy Storage Opens a New Path for Latecomers
How difficult is it for automakers to achieve profitability when making batteries themselves?
SVOLT took more than seven years to achieve quarterly profitability for the first time.
When automakers make batteries and enter the supply chain of another automaker, they naturally face more complex business relationships. Besides product quality, cost, and delivery capability, they must also consider the vehicle competition relationship behind the supplier.
This means that for battery companies under automakers to do business with other automakers, establishing an independent market identity is particularly important.
SVOLT made its choice very early on.
In 2018, Great Wall Motor transferred 100% equity and related technical assets of SVOLT, detaching it from the Great Wall Motor listed company system to independently carry out market-oriented operations, taking a substantial step in corporate operation and external customer expansion.
But market breakthroughs take time.
In 2020, the main business revenue of SVOLT from Great Wall Motor and its subsidiaries still accounted for 98.68%.
After years of customer development, by 2024, the proportion of Great Wall Motor in SVOLT's customer structure dropped to 28%, Geely Automobile reached 24%, Spotlight Automotive accounted for 14%, Stellantis accounted for 10%, and Leapmotor accounted for 9%.
From highly relying on Great Wall to entering the supply chains of multiple domestic and foreign automakers, SVOLT has gradually opened up the external market.
But it was not until the fourth quarter of 2025 that SVOLT achieved quarterly profitability for the first time.
Today, the market conditions faced by ENERGEE and Inpow are different.
For SVOLT, going out independently was a must; today's latecomers have caught up with the large-scale growth of the energy storage market.
When SVOLT became independent in 2018, the energy storage market was still very limited. Data from GGII shows that China's energy storage lithium battery shipments were only 3.2GWh that year.
By the first half of 2026, China's energy storage battery shipments had reached about 485GWh, a year-on-year growth of over 80%.
Today's energy storage has grown into an independent market with broader imagination space than power batteries. This provides another way of growth for battery companies under automakers.
ENERGEE and Inpow do not need to completely replicate SVOLT's early path of mainly relying on entering the supply chains of other automakers to expand business, nor do they need to be detached from the parent group's equity system first.
Power battery business and energy storage business can develop in parallel, and some R&D, quality management, and supply chain resources still have the opportunity to form synergies.
For groups like Geely and GAC with huge vehicle businesses, this is an operational combination worth paying attention to.
However, the energy storage market solves the problem of customer space, but cannot solve the profitability problem of battery manufacturing itself.
In energy storage, ENERGEE and Inpow Battery Technology still belong to the latecomers. Professional enterprises such as CATL, EVE Energy, and Hithium have formed mature product and manufacturing systems.
Energy storage gives latecomers the opportunity to take a detour in finding the market, but whether they can make money still needs to be tested by the professional battery industry.
SVOLT has proven that automakers can cultivate enterprises that participate in the professional battery market competition, and has also illustrated the cost of this business with a long profitability cycle.
Both Paths of Self-Developed Batteries Have Their Costs
In September this year, automakers such as Xiaomi, XPeng, and Li Auto successively disclosed new battery technologies and supply chain arrangements.
They are delving into battery product definition, material, and cell R&D, but large-scale manufacturing is still mainly handed over to professional battery enterprises.
This is different from the choice made by Geely and GAC a few years ago to heavily invest in cell factories. Today, the scale advantages of professional battery plants have further expanded, and automakers have more choices for joint development and commissioned manufacturing.
Also self-developing batteries, behind them are already two different business purposes.
One is to enhance the vehicle supply chain capability.
Automakers lead battery technology and product definition, leveraging the manufacturing system of professional battery plants to improve vehicle competitiveness and reduce capital investment in direct factory construction.
But this form also determines the capability boundary of automakers.
Even if automakers can independently develop cells, from material formulation to stable mass production, there are still process development, equipment calibration, yield ramp-up, and consistency control in between. Lacking their own manufacturing system, it is difficult to fully accumulate these key experiences, and technology iteration, mass production costs, and capacity arrangements also need to be coordinated with suppliers.
The other is to genuinely operate a battery enterprise.
Geely and GAC have invested for several years to build their own R&D, manufacturing, and supply chain systems.
While gaining manufacturing capabilities, they have also taken on manufacturing risks.
The GAC Inpow project has a planned total investment of CNY 10.9 billion. SVOLT, from independent operation in 2018 to achieving quarterly profitability for the first time in the fourth quarter of 2025, took more than seven years.
Especially today, when professional battery manufacturers have formed a manufacturing scale of hundreds of GWh, automakers' self-built capacity also has to face long-term pressures of technology iteration, equipment depreciation, and capacity utilization rate.
Making batteries themselves is not necessarily cheaper than external procurement; having built a battery factory, they must be independent and make money.
This also explains the changes happening to ENERGEE and Inpow.
The self-supply of power batteries continues to grow, while energy storage has become another business facing the external market. The manufacturing resources invested in the past for vehicle supply are beginning to participate in broader market competition.
Automakers are further becoming competitors of battery plants from being their major customers.
The self-supply rate can no longer measure the success or failure of automakers making batteries; today, some automakers also need to hand in the answer sheet of external orders and operational profits.
For the entire lithium battery industry, the major customers once served by battery plants are now entering the battery market to compete for business with their own manufacturing capabilities.