CATL

Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. Limited (CATL) is a Chinese battery manufacturer whose scale makes it relevant to electric-vehicle industrial policy and supply-chain security. CATL's 2025 annual report, released in March 2026, reported 661 gigawatt-hours of lithium-battery sales and cited SNE Research for a 39.2 per cent global power-battery share in 2025. The market-share figure is provider-defined and should not be projected backwards to 2022 or forwards beyond its reporting period.

United States list treatment

On 7 January 2025, the United States Department of Defense announced a revised list of Chinese military companies under section 1260H of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2021. The Federal Register notice included Contemporary Amperex Technology Co., Limited. A further notice published on 10 June 2026 listed Contemporary Amperex Technology Co., Ltd. The current determination therefore concerns that named legal entity, not the CATL brand or every affiliate.

Section 1260H is not the Office of Foreign Assets Control Specially Designated Nationals List or the Bureau of Industry and Security Entity List. The listing does not itself create a general asset freeze or export prohibition. Its consequences must instead be traced to the relevant procurement statutes, implementing rules and effective dates, including later provisions that reference the list. CATL may request reconsideration, so current status and the exact entity name still require publication-day verification.

Claims that CATL supplies every major Western carmaker are too broad. Customer, licensing and factory relationships must be named and dated. The analytical issue is narrower: governments seeking battery independence can remain commercially dependent on a firm that another part of the state treats as a security concern.

That tension can produce licensing partnerships and local production alongside procurement exclusion. Each arrangement must be assessed on its own ownership, technology-transfer and control terms.

See also

Advanced battery and energy-storage manufacturing | Entity List (15 CFR Part 744) | Friend-shoring and de-risking | Supply-chain resilience

Sources

• United States Department of Defense, 2025 Section 1260H list announcement, 7 January 2025.
• Office of the Federal Register, 2025 Section 1260H list notice, January 2025.
• Office of the Federal Register, 2026 Section 1260H list notice, 10 June 2026.
• CATL, "Zero-Carbon Technology Powers All-Domain Growth: CATL Releases 2025 Annual Report", 10 March 2026.