2026-30 roadmap seeks 15,000-cycle lithium cells, parts-per-billion defects and a lithium-led mix with sodium and flow batteries
China has issued a development plan for its new-type battery industry covering the 15th Five-Year Plan period, 2026 through 2030. One 2030 line is hard to miss. The document envisions the initial large-scale application of all-solid-state batteries.
Multiple government departments put the plan out, including the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. It sets targets for industrial growth, technological innovation and product quality. By 2030, officials want steady industry growth and stronger innovation across the entire industrial chain.
The materials list is specific. China aims by then to achieve breakthroughs in advanced electrode materials, new electrolytes and high-end auxiliary materials, and to make major progress in the development of new battery systems. Long-life lithium batteries are supposed to reach a cycle life of 15,000 cycles. Product defect rates at leading enterprises are expected to reach the parts-per-billion level.
New-type batteries, in the plan’s wording, are high-efficiency devices or systems for storing and converting electrical energy. Lithium, sodium and flow batteries sit inside that definition. Innovation is supposed to run through new operating principles, materials, structures and manufacturing processes. Not one of those tracks. All of them.
Demand is already showing up in more than cars. Electric vehicles, the low-altitude economy, consumer electronics and humanoid robotics are generating demand for high-performance batteries. Battery-based energy storage is being used to support renewable energy integration and improve power grid stability.
Scale is the backdrop. China’s new-type battery industry saw its output value exceed 1 trillion yuan, about $149 billion, during the 14th Five-Year Plan period from 2021 to 2025, according to official figures.
“This is China’s first dedicated national-level plan for the battery industry,” said Nan Cewen, a professor at Tsinghua University and an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. He said “the plan builds on the country’s industrial scale and supply-chain strengths to guide the industry’s future development.”
Nineteen priority tasks are grouped across five areas. Those areas include innovation throughout the industrial chain, industrial upgrading and development of the industrial system. One measure accelerates the technological breakthroughs needed for industrial-scale production of all-solid-state batteries. Another builds a product supply system centered on lithium batteries and complemented by sodium and flow batteries.
Vehicle packs get their own performance brief. The plan calls for improving the safety and all-climate performance of power batteries for new energy vehicles. Standards work is supposed to move faster on key technologies shared across the industry and on advanced technologies suited to practical use. Intellectual property protection is to be strengthened. Battery life-cycle traceability is to be improved.
The last instructions in the Xinhua account look past the cell plant. The plan calls for faster integration and innovation involving new-type battery technologies, clean energy and end-use applications. It also calls for closer integration of international trade and investment in the industry.
Executives and developers watching materials, yield, software and storage will find the named checkpoints in one place: initial large-scale all-solid-state application by 2030, 15,000 cycles on long-life lithium, parts-per-billion defects at leading firms, and a supply mix that keeps lithium at the center with sodium and flow as complements. Standards, traceability and IP sit in the same document. So does the push to wire cells into clean power and end uses.