China achieves world solar domination with 80% of manufacturing capacity to 2026
China’s astounding solar manufacturing expansion is going to dominate the global solar supply chain – and widen the technology and cost gap.
China invested over $130 billion into the solar industry in 2023. As a result, it will hold more than 80% of the world’s polysilicon, wafer, cell, and module manufacturing capacity from 2023 to 2026, according to Wood Mackenzie‘s recent report, “How will China’s expansion affect global solar module supply chains?”
China is projected to bring more than 1 terawatt (TW) of wafer, cell, and module capacity online by 2024. That means the country’s capacity is sufficient to meet annual global demand through 2032, based on Wood Mackenzie’s forecasts of annual demand growth.
Huaiyan Sun, senior consultant at Wood Mackenzie and author of the report, said:
China’s solar manufacturing expansion has been driven by high margins for polysilicon, technology upgrades, and policy support.
And despite strong government initiatives for developing local manufacturing in overseas markets, China will still dominate the global solar supply chain and continue to widen the technology and cost gap with competitors.
China is the world’s solar powerhouse…
The US, Europe, and other markets have launched unprecedented solar manufacturing pushes. The US and India combined have announced more than 200 gigawatts (GW) of planned module capacity since 2022. The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) drove the surge in the US, and the Production Linked Incentive (PLI) increased solar module capacity in India.
But Wood Mackenzie says they’re still not cost-competitive compared to China’s supply. According to the report, a module made in China is 50% cheaper than one produced in Europe and 65% cheaper than the US.
Sun adds, “Despite considerable module expansion plans, overseas markets still cannot eliminate their dependence on China for wafers and cells in the next three years.”
When it comes to tech innovation, China will continue to lead. It’s announced it will build more than 1,000 GW of N-type cell capacity, the next-gen technology after P-type. (N-type cells have longer carrier life and higher efficiency.) That’s 17 times more N-type cell capacity than the rest of the world.
… But not everything is coming up roses
There’s intense competition and oversupply in the Chinese market, and that’s not expected to change anytime soon. As a result, some expansion plans are being canceled.
Old production lines that manufacture lower-efficiency products, such as the P-type and M6 cells, are where the oversupply problem is occurring. Demand for P-type cells began to decline this year, and Wood Mackenzie analysts expect it to be only 17% of supply by 2026.
Sun said that “more than 70 GW of capacity in China has been terminated or suspended in the past three months.” As a result, China’s solar manufacturing industry is going to have a rough time. Module manufacturers will be forced to take orders at a loss, reduce capacity, or even shut down entirely.
Read more: Solar panel exports are breaking records – now let’s install them
Photo: China News Service
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Thanks to the $10,000 Polestar Clean Vehicle Incentive introduced last week, 2024 Polestar 2 lease prices are now over $120 a month cheaper.
CarsDirect reports that through May 31, the 2024 Polestar 2 Long Range Dual Motor can be leased for $299 for 27 months with $3,299 due at signing.
The auto research portal says that’s a $50 drop in the monthly payment with $2,050 less required at signing. As a result, the effective cost fell $126, from $547 per month to $421 before taxes & fees.
The Polestar 2 Dual Motor – list price $55,300 – is a much better deal to lease than the Single Motor model – list price $49,900 – because amazingly, they have the same lease price. That’s basically a free upgrade to the Dual Motor model.
The Polestar 2 first made its debut in 2019 as the automaker’s first fully electric car. It launched in mid-2020 and the milestone 150,000th car rolled off the assembly line in August 2023.
The Polestar 2 is expected to be phased out in 2027, and company says the Polestar 7 will succeed it.
Click here to find a local dealer that may have the Polestar 2 in stock. –affiliate*
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Elon Musk has given an update with an outline for Tesla’s upcoming Full Self-Driving (FSD) software updates.
With FSD v12 and the upcoming launch of Tesla’s dedicated Robotaxi, there’s a lot of excitement around Tesla’s self-driving effort.
Musk is again in the too-familiar position of predicting that the automaker is close to releasing a true self-driving system, but the path to get there is still far from clear.
Now the CEO is providing some new comments on the upcoming release schedule for FSD:
“12.4 has almost completely retrained models. The final touches are for comfort, as it sometimes accelerates or brakes too fast for most people’s taste.”
Tesla FSD drivers are currently on 12.3.6 and the .4 update is expected to be a bigger step change, which Musk appears to confirm by saying that Tesla “completely retrained” the models.
The CEO recently said that Tesla is no longer constrained by training compute power after bringing more capacity online, giving the FSD team more opportunities to retrain neural nets with increasingly cleaner data.
Musk then continued about Tesla’s upcoming updates:
12.5 and 12.6 are in various stages of testing. We’re getting into rare, complex situations, for example: going down a narrow, one-way road, encountering a road closure and having to reverse out to find a new route. That closure also needs to be communicated to the rest of the fleet, so you don’t get a whole bunch of Teslas stuck down a road.
There’s no timeline for these upcoming updates beyond the fact that they are currently in internal testing, but Musk did say that v12.4 could come to the Tesla fleet as soon next week.
Electrek’s Take
Again, I’ve been impressed with v12.3.3-4. I’ve just got v12.3.6, but I haven’t had time to test it yet. I plan to do that this weekend. Also, I’ve been saying that if I start seeing decent improvements with the upcoming updates, I think I’ll start to see a clearer path to Tesla finally delivering on its promise – or at least a level 4 self-driving system.
However, as usual, when talking about FSD and especially when praising the system, I think it’s important to remind everyone that the keyword in ‘Supervised Full Self-Driving’ is ‘Supervised.’ Drivers need to remain attentive at all times and ready to take control.
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