China to build many gigafactories’ worth of electric-car battery plants

Tesla Gigafactory under construction

While the United States federal government threatens to backslide on renewable energy, California and China continue to move at an aggressive pace to lead the world in zero-emission vehicles.

However, there's another piece to the electric-car puzzle that China seems poised to lead as well: battery production.

As the global market for electric and plug-in car grows, battery production will need to increase dramatically to match demand.

It's expected that electric-vehicle batteries will become a $240 billion industry, and China has already begun to cement itself as a leader in battery production.

In China alone, there are 140 electric-vehicle battery makers, and in the next 20 years, they'll likely reap the rewards of early adoption, according to a Forbes report.

Combined, they have already led global battery cell manufacturing production to produce 125 Gigawatt-hours (1 GWh is equal to 1 million kilowatt-hours) worth of cells last year alone.