CATL's Hungarian Gigafactory Enters Trial Production as eVTOL Battery Clears Key Safety Hurdle

CATL began trial output at its 100 GWh Debrecen plant and passed a key eVTOL battery safety test, as Shenzhen shares closed 0.2% above their 52-week low.

CATL has cleared a pair of operational milestones that extend well beyond the electric-car market it dominates, even as its Shenzhen-listed shares hover within a hair of their yearly floor.

In Debrecen, Hungary, trial production has officially begun at the company's newly built cell plant after all regulatory requirements were satisfied, CATL announced Tuesday. With a projected annual capacity of 100 gigawatt-hours, the facility is slated to become the group's largest manufacturing site outside China. The move is central to management's push to build local capacity overseas, reducing reliance on the home market and allowing direct supply to major customers on their doorstep.

Separately, CATL's aerospace battery system for crewed electric vertical take-off and landing aircraft (eVTOL) has passed a decisive safety test. The review confirmed that a thermal runaway does not propagate to neighboring cells. According to the company, it is the world's first aerospace battery system using prismatic cells to reach this safety threshold at an energy density of up to 350 watt-hours per kilogram. During testing, overheating was triggered simultaneously in two adjacent cells without setting off a chain reaction within the pack — a benchmark the aviation industry treats as a critical gate for certifying electric aircraft.

Home-Market Pressures Mount

The twin advances land against a shifting customer landscape in China. Automakers are increasingly pursuing greater independence or bringing in additional cell suppliers. Li Auto has said it will move to self-developed batteries across the group, meaning the new generation of its Li Mega model will no longer carry CATL cells. Electronics group Xiaomi, for its part, agreed on September 4 to partner with rivals CALB and Sunwoda for its Pengcheng vehicles. Premium models from many Chinese manufacturers continue to rely on CATL cells, but volume-model contracts are increasingly going to competitors.

Chief technology officer Lin Jiubiao struck a calm tone Monday on China's consumer tax on batteries, which took effect September 1. While the company has seen volume cuts and fluctuations on individual orders, it has simultaneously opened up new demand potential, he said. Business for the current year remains unchanged overall, with the effects so far contained. His remarks followed a stretch of noticeable market jitters: in mid-September the stock logged its sharpest multi-day decline in more than a year, driven by speculation over production cutbacks and growing investor caution ahead of the third quarter.

Buyback, Charging Network and a Norwegian Beachhead

CATL has been putting capital to work at home as well. On September 11, it acquired 604,293 of its own A-shares on the Shenzhen exchange for a total of exactly 199,978,827.46 yuan.

To shore up its market position, the group is widening its ecosystem around battery charging and swapping. Yang Jun, who heads CATL's battery-swap business, presented a network of combined fast-charging and swap stations. The installations share transformers and charging modules, cutting electricity losses by more than 13 percentage points compared with conventional stations. Together with partners such as Nio, the company aims to establish uniform national standards for swap stations.

International service is advancing in parallel. CATL's new facility in Norway — its largest customer-service site outside Asia to date — arrives in a market where pure electric cars accounted for 98.7 percent of new registrations in August. The Norwegian operation is designed to handle complex repairs within 48 hours.

On the energy-infrastructure front, a mandatory filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission shows the company signed a cooperation agreement with the VNET Group on August 18. The partners plan to jointly build a three-tier ecosystem linking computing power and electricity supply at gigawatt scale.

Shares Stay Pinned Near the Low

None of the operational news has lifted the stock. In Thursday trading, the shares fell 2.5 percent in Shenzhen to close at 293.50 CNY, leaving them just 0.2 percent above their 52-week low.