//evt/batteries
Editorial
The year’s biggest battery announcements: 2026 in review
Solid-state pilots, a €4.1 billion LFP gigafactory, sodium-ion going production-ready — and the national roadmap aiming at 2030. What 2026 actually changed in batteries, and what is still research.
Battery news in 2026 split into two registers: factories being financed and chemistry still in the lab. Here is what mattered, kept strictly in its register.
CATL’s solid-state pilot (2027)
CATL has confirmed it will start small-scale trial production of a sulfide-based solid-state battery in 2027, with lab cells already hitting 500 Wh/kg — alongside a newly published WIPO patent addressing sulfide electrolyte stability. Its chairman, Robin Zeng, rates the technology at “level 4 of 9” on the readiness scale. Pilot, not mass market: this is research with a date, not a product.
China’s 2030 solid-state roadmap
Beijing released a battery-industry roadmap on September 28 targeting large-scale solid-state deployment by 2030, aiming to extend China’s lead in conventional batteries into the next generation. The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology acknowledged the industry’s problems — shortcomings in innovation, imbalances in supply and demand — and CATL itself warns that cost and manufacturing hurdles still stand between solid-state batteries and mass adoption. BloombergNEF forecasts solid-state accounting for just 10% of combined global EV and storage demand by 2035.
Stellantis–CATL: €4.1 billion LFP plant in Spain
Stellantis and CATL agreed to invest up to €4.1 billion in a 50-50 joint venture to build a large-scale LFP battery plant in Zaragoza, Spain — designed to be carbon neutral, with capacity up to 50 GWh in phases, and production targeted to begin by the end of 2026. It will supply Stellantis’ affordable B- and C-segment EVs in Europe. This is the factory register: financed, sited, scheduled.
Sodium-ion goes production-ready
CATL’s Naxtra sodium-ion battery moved from announcement to production-readiness: 175 Wh/kg, more than 90% capacity retention at −40°C, and safety demonstrated in crush and puncture testing — with the first car to use them, a new Changan model, getting around 250 miles of range. Sodium-ion needs no lithium; its fight is against LFP on price per kWh, and its beachhead is cold climates and cost-sensitive segments.
The megawatt charging buildout
The year’s charging-side milestone came from BYD: its Megawatt Flash-Charging network reached 12,165 stations across 341 Chinese cities by October 7 — including 2,111 highway stations — and handled 1.22 million sessions for 540,000 users during the October 1–7 holiday. Batteries and chargers are one system; 2026 was the year the Chinese market started treating them that way.
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How this story was filed
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