In 2025, China's lithium battery shipments reached 1,871.9 GWh. According to estimates by MIR Research, China's lithium battery shipments will exceed 2 TWh for the first time in 2026. By 2030, it will further surpass 4 TWh, with a compound annual growth rate of approximately 20.06% from 2025 to 2030.
More noteworthy than the total volume is the structural shift in the lithium battery industry. Over the past few years, the fundamental driver of growth in the lithium battery industry has been new energy vehicles (NEVs), with power batteries once accounting for over 60% of shipments. However, starting in 2025, the growth rate of this engine has significantly slowed down, and the increase in penetration rate has entered a bottleneck period. In contrast, energy storage batteries, driven by the surge in demand for grid-side peak shaving and integrated photovoltaic, energy storage, and charging systems, will take over from power batteries to become the next growth engine for lithium batteries. Meanwhile, new technology routes such as large cylindrical cells, semi-solid-state, and sodium-ion batteries are flourishing across multiple fronts, posing unprecedented demands on the precision, efficiency, and flexibility of production processes.
A lithium battery production line involves dozens of processes, from coating, die-cutting, stacking/winding, and welding to final PACK assembly, with each step relying heavily on precision motion control. As lithium battery manufacturing evolves towards high speed, high precision, and flexibility, motion control is gradually shifting from the traditional "rotary servo motor + ball screw/belt" to technical routes such as direct drive and magnetic drive.
01. Direct Drive Market Steadily Expands, Domestic Substitution Continues to Deepen
China's direct drive system market has entered a stage of high-quality growth.
Data from MIR Research shows that in 2025, the overall market size of China's direct drive system was approximately CNY 6.209 billion, a year-on-year increase of 8.4%, ending the adjustment trend of the previous two years and returning to positive growth. From the demand side, the lithium battery industry is one of the fastest-growing downstream sectors; from the supply side, linear motors occupy the largest market share due to mature technological accumulation and broad application scenarios, and their costs are expected to continue declining. It is estimated that by 2028, the price difference between direct drive systems and traditional servo systems will narrow to 1.3 to 2 times, gradually opening up more application scenarios, and the market size is expected to maintain steady growth.
Localization has been the most prominent development theme in the direct drive industry in recent years.
Relying on the demand from downstream sectors such as lithium batteries, electronics, and laser processing machines, as well as the advantages of local supply chains and rapid response service capabilities, domestic brands have continuously broken through technological barriers and steadily increased their market share. In 2025, the localization rate of direct drive systems has reached 69%, and it is expected to reach 74% by 2028. Meanwhile, foreign brands are gradually focusing on high-end segmented fields and global customers. Some leading foreign manufacturers are enhancing their competitiveness by strengthening localized production, while more small and medium-sized foreign brands are sticking to their advantageous segmented tracks. Overall, the market has formed a competitive landscape characterized by diversified complementarity and domestic leadership.
Looking at specific market performance, different manufacturers have formed distinctive development paths in various segmented fields of direct drive systems based on their own technological accumulation and downstream advantages. Companies such as Akribis and Zhiying continue to expand the application of direct drive system products in fields like semiconductors, electronics, and lithium batteries; manufacturers such as Hengchuan, Techbello, and Dekonwell mainly rely on linear motor products to continuously cultivate downstream markets such as lithium batteries and electronics. At the same time, as lithium battery equipment increasingly demands high precision, multi-axis coordination, and complex motion control, manufacturers with accumulated servo and motion control technologies are also accelerating their expansion into the direct drive field. Taking Step Electric as an example, it has achieved rapid growth in the field of lithium battery direct drive drives in recent years. Its related products have been applied to mid-to-back-end assembly equipment as well as high-end process equipment such as stacking machines and winding machines, and have entered the supply systems of leading battery enterprises including CATL.
As the application of direct drive technology in lithium battery equipment continues to deepen, the focus of equipment manufacturers is no longer just on the performance of the motors themselves, but on whether the direct drive system can better adapt to the structural and process requirements of specific equipment. Especially in equipment such as stacking and winding machines, gantry structures are widely used, which puts forward higher requirements for master-slave axis synchronization, motion stability, and system debugging. In response to such applications, Step Electric has carried out corresponding solution optimizations in its Ω6 series direct drive drives. Among them, the Ω6-W integrates dual-axis control and power output for gantry applications, enabling master-slave axis control to be completed by a single drive, simplifying the control architecture of traditional gantry solutions. At the same time, the Ω6 series adopts a unified direct drive control platform, compatible with DDR torque motors, linear motors, and voice coil motors, and unifies the parameter system and debugging software. This allows equipment manufacturers to flexibly select direct drive motor types according to different process requirements, and also helps reduce the switching and debugging costs between different solutions.
02. Direct Drive Solutions Implemented in Core Lithium Battery Manufacturing Scenarios
The lithium battery industry is the most important driving force for the direct drive system market. In 2025 alone, the market size of direct drive systems in the lithium battery equipment field reached CNY 746 million, with a year-on-year growth rate as high as 24.3%, far exceeding the industry average.
The lithium battery manufacturing process is long and involves numerous procedures, from slurry preparation and coating, rolling and slitting, to stacking/winding, welding and casing, and finally to formation and packaging. Each step has its own specific requirements for motion control. Among these processes, linear motors, with their characteristics of high precision and high acceleration, account for more than 60% of the direct drive system market share.
Taking the stacking machine as an example, the precision and speed of Z-shaped stacking directly determine the cell quality and production efficiency. The stacking platform needs to drive the separator for high-speed reciprocating motion, which places extremely high demands on the acceleration, positioning accuracy, and operational stability of the actuator. Traditional servo solutions have gradually reached their performance ceiling, making linear motors the standard configuration for high-end stacking machines. As the stacking takt time continues to improve, the application proportion of linear motors is still growing.
In the laser welding process, full laser welding of the top cover is a critical process for cell sealing. It requires the laser head to move smoothly along a preset trajectory to achieve uniform and consistent weld seam quality, placing strict demands on multi-axis interpolation accuracy and motion smoothness. Relying on the characteristics of non-contact transmission and zero backlash, linear motors can achieve precise linear and circular interpolation, ensuring the continuity and smoothness of the welding trajectory, making them the mainstream choice for high-end laser welding equipment.
Similar challenges also appear in sealing nail welding machines and film-wrapping and casing all-in-one machines. These two types of equipment have different requirements for absolute positioning accuracy, but without exception, they all put forward higher requirements for acceleration stability and gantry synchronization performance. The sealing nail welding machine requires multi-axis circular interpolation and high-precision synchronization, while the film-wrapping and casing all-in-one machine has strict requirements for the repeatable positioning accuracy of single-side homing of the gantry and the crossbeam deviation correction of the master-slave axes.
In these applications, control algorithms are becoming an important factor affecting the actual performance of direct drive systems. Taking Step Electric's application in sealing nail welding equipment as an example, its direct drive control solution combines functions such as vibration suppression, load adaptation, and intelligent tuning. It optimizes the problem that direct drive systems are easily affected by load changes and high-speed operation, improving operational stability while also reducing the complexity of equipment debugging.
In the casing pre-welding machine, Step Electric addresses the synchronization control requirements of the gantry structure by correcting the crossbeam position deviation through methods such as master-slave axis data sharing and offset compensation, and combines vibration suppression and load adaptation algorithms to enhance the stability of the equipment during high-speed operation.
03. Magnetic Drive Conveyor Lines: The Next Stop for Flexible Manufacturing
As an extended application of direct drive technology, magnetic drive flexible conveyor lines are also experiencing rapid popularization in the lithium battery industry. In 2025, the market size of China's magnetic drive flexible conveyor lines reached CNY 1.3 billion, a year-on-year increase of 82.5%, of which the lithium battery industry accounted for approximately CNY 700 million, taking the largest share of 53%. The demand for magnetic drive conveyor lines in the lithium battery industry multiplied in 2025, mainly driven by the strong demand for energy storage batteries and the delivery of historical orders. Leading battery manufacturers are applying this product in batches in new projects.
From the perspective of the competitive landscape, domestic manufacturers have already occupied an absolutely dominant position in the field of magnetic drive conveyor lines. In the lithium battery industry, the market share of domestic brands exceeds 90%. In recent years, a group of domestic manufacturers have deployed magnetic drive conveyor lines, mainly focusing on product forms such as circular conveyor lines, and continuously expanding applications in industries such as lithium batteries and electronics. As the market gradually matures, the application of magnetic drive conveyor lines is also beginning to extend from single equipment to system integration and coordinated control.
In addition to the conveying equipment itself, electronic control links such as driving, control, and encoder feedback also affect the overall performance and application flexibility of the system. Motion control enterprises like Step Electric focus more on the electronic control solutions for magnetic drive conveyor lines. Based on its own technological accumulation in servo drives, controllers, encoders, and host computer software and hardware, it integrates core electronic control links, covering different applications such as circular lines and docking lines. At the same time, relying on a unified control architecture, the system can further coordinate with equipment such as robots, vision systems, and dispensing machines to achieve linkage between different process units.
From this perspective, the value of magnetic drive conveyor lines is extending from simply improving conveying efficiency to flexible production line scheduling and multi-equipment coordination. For lithium battery manufacturing, this also means that the conveying system is gradually transforming from an independent link in the production line into a motion control foundation connecting different process units.
Conclusion
Looking ahead, with the continuous expansion of the lithium battery market size, the continuous release of downstream manufacturing upgrade demands, and the continuous iteration and cost optimization of domestic direct drive and magnetic drive technologies, the application space for direct drive and magnetic drive conveyor line solutions in the lithium battery industry is still expected to further expand. For domestic motion control manufacturers, including Step Electric, continuously improving direct drive technological capabilities around core lithium battery processes, and further expanding applications such as magnetic drive conveying and multi-equipment coordination, will also become an important direction for future market competition.