How China won the world's EV battery race

In 2005, China only had two EV battery manufacturers. Twenty years later, it produces more than three-quarters of the world's lithium-ion cells. How did it happen?

At the 2008 Beijing Olympics, athletes, journalists and officials from all over the world were transported by a fleet of sleek buses sporting a white, blue and green design as they zipped between different venues in the Chinese capital.

Different from the diesel-powered vehicles that ruled Beijing's streets at the time, the Olympic buses, numbering around 50, ran on lithium-ion batteries to help Beijing host a "green and high-tech" Olympic Games. It also marked the country's first foray into creating a lithium-ion battery industry for electric vehicles (EVs), laying the groundwork for China's ascension to world leader of this technology two decades later.