The 2023-2025 CIBF editions mirror the development trajectory of the global battery industry. In 2023, the fair covered 240,000 square meters with 2,527 exhibitors. Following strategic adjustments in 2024, the 2025 event returned to Shenzhen and achieved new breakthroughs with an exhibition area of 300,000 square meters and over 3,200 exhibitors. It attracted more than 10,000 overseas visitors from over 70 countries, among whom decision-making visitors took up 38%. Technical discussions have advanced from separate thematic researches to systematic research centered on solid-state batteries and digital twins, becoming a key node for restructuring the global battery value chain.
Behind the exhibition data, Chinese power battery enterprises held over 70.4% of the global market share in 2025. CATL and BYD firmly stay at the top, while second-tier enterprises forge ahead through differentiated development. By contrast, local European battery manufacturers suffer systemic decline. Chinese enterprises have built an integrated layout covering battery factories, material plants and recycling bases, forming a sound industrial ecosystem in Europe. Cooperation between automakers and battery firms has also upgraded from simple supply ties to ecological communities for joint technological research.
Technically, the industry is transitioning from optimized liquid lithium-ion batteries to solid-state batteries. Liquid batteries keep making breakthroughs via structural innovation and material iteration, with LMFP and high-nickel ternary batteries becoming mainstream. Three solid-state battery routes including sulfide, oxide and polymer are being developed to solve industrialization difficulties, and 2025-2026 marks the starting year of their engineering verification. Sodium-ion batteries have realized mass production by virtue of cost and resource strengths. Key materials and technologies such as silicon-based anodes and dry electrodes are leading manufacturing reforms.
On the global policy front, the EU New Battery Regulation implements full-life-cycle supervision and the battery passport system. The U.S. boosts supply chain localization, India enforces local production rules and Japan adopts flexible guidance policies. A new pattern where compliance equals core competitiveness has taken shape worldwide, urging enterprises to build green closed-loop systems and accelerate local layout.
In the future, the battery industry will see three major trends: diversified technologies, expanded application scenarios and green circular development. Solid-state batteries will achieve phased commercialization, sodium-ion batteries will focus on the energy storage market, and CTP & CTC technologies will be continuously upgraded. Energy storage will become the second growth engine, and electric aviation as well as AI data centers will emerge as new application fields. The proportion of recycled power batteries and recycled materials will rise greatly, and carbon emission intensity will drop substantially.
China’s battery industry has completed the transformation from follower to leader, yet it still faces challenges such as geographically concentrated resource distribution, gaps between technological R&D and industrialization, and fluctuating policies and standards. Only by consolidating core competitiveness with independent original technologies, gaining voice by participating in the formulation of international standards, and building a resilient ecosystem featuring globalization, localization and circular economy, can China’s battery industry evolve from a global manufacturing base into a global driving force, and steadily propel the global green energy transition.