China's traction battery technology roadmap: Targets, impacts and concerns

In Oct 2016, China released its most up-to-date traction battery technology roadmap, which reflects the Chinese perspective, or even the global perspective to some extent, on the future technology development of traction batteries. In this paper, the technology targets specified in the technology roadmap, including the energy density, cost, power density, and durability, are reviewed and compared with previous projections from other countries. It is found that China's pre-2020 targets are generally in line with previous projections. The 2020–2030 targets are quite ambitious and aggressive. If the battery technologies evolve as projected, electric vehicles will have similar market competitiveness with conventional vehicles by around 2020, implying a mass market penetration of electric vehicles. This will impose very broad impacts on China's urban environment, oil security, rare metal security, climate change mitigation and charging infrastructure deployment. On the other hand, it should be fully noted that the technology roadmap is more market demand-oriented than technology capacity-oriented. The technology uncertainty issues did not receive adequate emphasis in the technology roadmap, which might result in over-optimism in the future of battery technologies and electric vehicle market penetration. - Highlights: • China's most up-to-date traction battery technology roadmap is reported. • Electric vehicles are expected to have similar market competitiveness with conventional vehicles by 2020. • Broad impacts on China's energy, resource, and environment are expected. • The technology uncertainty issues did not receive adequate emphasis.