CATL and COMAC are dreaming of big electric airplanes. The first company has made some recent battery breakthroughs, and the second has recently brought China’s biggest jet airliner to market. CATL. Contemporary Amperex Technology Ltd., is a behemoth. According to TheInformation.com, “The company spent $124 million to acquire a lithium mine in China’s Jiangxi province, an operation that would feed into a $2.1 billion battery factory it was building nearby. And in October, it spent $3.6 billion to buy 25-percent of a cobalt operation in the Democratic Republic of Congo. This year, CATL has spent $1 billion on a lithium brine operation in Bolivia, $885 million for lithium rights in China’s Xinjiang province and $920 million for lithium rights in the Chinese province of Sichuan.” This globe-girdling spate of acquisition indicates the seriousness of China’s move to dominate world battery markets. With recent news of CATL’s 500 Watt-hour-per-kilogram cells and their possible use in large aircraft, the need to compete …
