China's plan to conquer $40B electric car battery market

Chinese battery companies are on the path to be the biggest battery factories in the world, per the Financial Times.

Why this matters: Lithium batteries power electric vehicles, and Goldman Sachs estimates by 2025 China will dominate the market, which will be worth $40 billion by then. By 2020, Chinese battery companies plan to have the capacity to produce 121 GWh of batteries, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance.

For context: Tesla's gigafactory with Panasonic plans to reach full capacity next year at just 35 GWh. A single GWh can power 40,000 electric cars to each travel 100km.

What to watch: China did this with solar power by driving down costs and prices, too. This time around, China's ascent could knock aside South Korean and Japanese production, which have been leaders in battery production since the 1980s, as well as U.S. and European production. Tesla and Panasonic did not return requests for comment.