(Yicai Global) Sept. 2 -- The acute dearth of electric car batteries is likely to last until 2025 as the rapid growth of the new energy vehicle sector means that demand continues to outstrip supply, the chairman of battery maker Svolt Energy Technology told Yicai Global recently.

“At the moment, the gap between supply and demand is between 30 percent and 50 percent,” Yang Hongxin told Yicai Global. And the shortage has caused the price of raw materials to soar.

“But the biggest challenge facing Svolt right now is that it cannot even buy raw materials,” Yang said.

The EV battery-making offshoot of Chinese auto giant Great Wall Motor is racing to hike capacity 14-fold. It is simultaneously building five new factories – four in eastern China and one in the west of the country. These will raise output to 96.5 gigawatt hours a year from 6.5 GWh. It expects to reach 200 GWh by 2025, the firm said earlier.

Svolt will also continue to invest in upstream companies, including cathode, anode and electrolyte suppliers as well as mining and lithium salt plants, in order to ensure the supply of raw materials, Yang said. The Wuxi, eastern Jiangsu province-based company aims to have positioned itself across the entire industrial chain by the end of next year.

China produced 92.1GWh of electric car batteries from January to July, over three times more than a year earlier, according to the China Automotive Power Battery Industry Innovation Alliance. Installed capacity nearly tripled to 63.8 GWh.

Editors: Tang Shihua, Kim Taylor