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The world’s biggest electric-vehicle battery maker has hit back against accusations it poses a national security threat after the Chinese company’s technology was cut off from a US military base.
“Accusations about CATL batteries posing espionage threats are false and misleading,” said the company in a statement on Thursday. “Our products have passed rigorous safety and security reviews including those by US authorities and businesses.”
CATL’s statement follows an open letter on Friday from Republican senator Marco Rubio and other lawmakers to US defence secretary Lloyd Austin, which alleged the battery maker was close to the Chinese leadership and that its presence on a military base in North Carolina was “inexcusable”.
“The [Chinese Communist party’s] pattern of espionage leaves little room for doubt that CATL products pose a threat to national security at any base where they are installed,” said the letter.
Duke Energy, a US utility company, said on Wednesday it had disconnected CATL batteries on the military base, Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune, as a result of the concerns.
CATL, one of the groups behind China’s rapid shift towards EVs and renewable technology, is the latest company hit by rising geopolitical tensions between Washington and Beijing that have cast a chill over business relations on both sides of the Pacific.
The Federal Communications Commission, Washington’s top telecommunications regulator, barred China’s Huawei and ZTE from selling equipment in the US last year, citing national security concerns.
In July, CATL reported total revenue of Rmb189bn ($26.6bn) for the first half of 2023, posting year-on-year growth of 67.5 per cent. EV batteries accounted for more than 70 per cent of the total amount. CATL said its sales of storage batteries were rapidly increasing, but did not give details.
The company said on Thursday that the energy storage products it sold to the US were “not equipped with communication interfaces that may enable CATL to control the sold products”.
CATL said it had a large western investor base, including companies such as JPMorgan Chase and UBS. A representative of CATL also said “we respect the actions of our end customers”.
In a statement, Duke Energy said the CATL batteries it used “were not connected in any way to Camp Lejeune’s network or other systems” and that they acted “solely as an energy storage device and were connected to Duke Energy’s system with our robust network security and safeguards fully in place”.
It added: “As an American energy company, we welcome the ability to use American manufactured batteries. Given the rapidly increasing demand for electricity, we support more domestic manufacturing to help expand energy resources in the United States and accelerate the energy transition”.
Duke Energy expanded its battery storage capabilities in North Carolina in late March and has begun commercial operation of the state’s largest battery system, according to a previous statement from the company.