A senior executive from Contemporary Amperex Technology (CATL), the world’s largest producer of batteries for electric vehicles (EVs), urged authorities on the mainland to intervene in the price war that is roiling the market for new energy cars.

Ni Jun, CATL’s chief manufacturing officer, on Wednesday said the brutal discount war would not end if Beijing remained on the sidelines.

“One big player cannot always lower prices [to gain market share] while driving out all other small rivals,” he said at the World Economic Forum in Tianjin. “If it continues to do so without proper [regulatory] oversight, all of its rivals will not survive.”

Ni did not name the “big player”, but BYD – the world’s largest EV builder – kicked off a fresh round of price cuts in May. The EV giant offered discounts of 10 per cent to more than 30 per cent on 22 of its battery-powered and plug-in hybrid models, which prompted other firms to slash prices on 70 models in May, according to the mainland business publication 21st Century Business Herald.

CATL, which for the first four months of 2025 had a 38.6 per cent share of the global EV battery market, raised US$5.22 billion in its Hong Kong share listing last month, the world’s largest initial public offering this year.

Ni’s remarks at the forum were the latest warning from an influential industry player about the prospects for the mainland’s EV sector, which despite its troubles was considered to be at the global vanguard for electric cars.

Earlier this month, Li Shufu, chairman of Geely Auto, the mainland’s second-largest carmaker, said some producers’ pricing moves were detrimental to the industry and consumers because EV safety and quality could not be ensured.

He said Geely would avoid building excess capacity and instead focus on improving its technological capabilities.

Chinese carmakers offered an average discount of 16.8 per cent on their cars in April, up from 8.3 per cent a year earlier, JPMorgan Chase said in an April report. And only half of the nation’s EV production capacity, or 20 million units, was put to use in 2024, according to Goldman Sachs.

To date, only three Chinese EV makers were profitable: BYD; Li Auto, Tesla’s nearest rival in China; and Aito, backed by telecoms equipment giant Huawei Technologies.

“CATL, as a key supplier to many of the carmakers, has reasons to call for a ceasefire as the price war is likely to cripple more EV assemblers in the future,” said Gao Shen, an independent analyst in Shanghai. “Indeed, several companies are already under pressure to sustain their businesses.”

According to a document recently published on the National Enterprise Bankruptcy Information Disclosure Platform, a court in Jiaxing, in eastern China’s Zhejiang province, was reviewing a bankruptcy case involving Shanghai-based Hozon New Energy Automobile after Shanghai Yuxing Advertising filed a lawsuit against the EV maker for non-payment of dues.

On May 31, China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology said authorities would punish carmakers that slashed vehicle prices to vie for market share, though it did not detail the measures that Beijing planned to take.