Criticality and scale effects in China's power lithium-ion battery system

The rapid electrification of transport has made power lithium-ion batteries (PLIBs) a central resource system for low-carbon mobility. In China, the world's largest PLIB producer and consumer, the key sustainability challenge is not only battery expansion but also whether raw material demand can be secured and managed. However, most assessments of battery resource risks focus on material or technology criticality alone, rather than on how criticality interacts with material demand and technology deployment. This study assesses resource pressure in China's PLIB system from 2010 to 2024 by combining raw material demand with material-level criticality and installed capacity with technology-level criticality. The results show that China's PLIB installed capacity in new energy passenger vehicles increased from 46.7 GWh in 2020 to 486.5 GWh in 2024, substantially increasing the raw material demand. Cobalt, nickel and manganese showed relatively higher criticality, while lowest-criticality graphite exhibited substantial resource pressure because its demand reached 434.3 kt in 2024, over three times that of nickel. At the technology level, NMC chemistries showed higher criticality than NCA and LFP. The transition toward high-nickel NMC reduced cobalt-related pressure but increased exposure to nickel-related resource pressure. Despite its lowest criticality among NMC chemistries, NMC811 exhibited the highest resource pressure after 2021 due to rapid capacity expansion. Although LFP maintained the lowest criticality, its large-scale deployment (320.12 GWh in 2024) still generated non-negligible resource pressure, highlighting the amplifying effect of deployment scale on low-criticality technologies. These findings show that battery technology planning should consider both material criticality and deployment scale.