Source page: McKinsey & Company
Commentary
The highest form of battery
Automotive | Electric vehicles | Sustainability
February 20, 2023 – The push for electric mobility options comes with greater demand globally for the batteries that power them. By 2030, the GWh required for lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries will jump to about 4.7 TWh, compared with about 700 GWh now, say senior partners Mikael Hanicke and Martin Linder and coauthors. The overall Li-ion battery chain, from mining to recycling, may grow by about 30 percent annually by the end of this decade. Click through the interactive to see more details.
Interactive
To read the article, see “Battery 2030: Resilient, sustainable, and circular,” January 16, 2023.
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Visual form
Stacked bar chart.
Layout / body structure
The visible opens on a region view, with three stacked bars for 2022, 2025, and 2030 and a toggle in the top-right corner that switches between region and sector. The reading order is left to right across time, then into the stack composition in each year.
What is being compared
It compares global lithium-ion battery cell demand over time, first by region in the default view and then by sector through the toggle.
Measurement system
The values are gigawatt hours in the base case, with total demand shown at the top of each bar and the internal colored segments showing how that total is distributed across the selected grouping.
Visible structure inside the graphic
The 2022, 2025, and 2030 columns are stacked into region segments for China, Europe, the United States, and the rest of world. A light gray growth wedge behind the bars highlights the steep increase in total demand, and the toggle indicates that the same time progression can also be explored by sector rather than by geography.
Main takeaway from the visual
The chart is built around a very steep growth story: total battery demand expands dramatically through 2030, and the stacked bars show that multiple regions share in that growth rather than one geography supplying the entire rise alone.
Key standout values or extremes
Total demand grows from about 700 gigawatt hours in 2022 to roughly 1,700 in 2025 and approximately 4,700 by 2030. The annotation above the bars marks growth of about 27 percent per year in the displayed region view, while the article text frames the broader battery chain growth at roughly 33 percent annually through the decade.
Controls / sequence, when applicable
The includes a Region and Sector toggle, so the reader can switch from a geographic split to a sector split while keeping the same time horizon and demand totals. That interaction is part of the visual structure because it changes what the stacked segments mean without changing the overall growth path.
Companion media, when applicable
There is no separate companion audio or video; the chart is the full visual on this page.