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Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.

Tesla is no longer the world’s foremost electric vehicle maker — a decline in last-year’s sales, disclosed on Friday, has left it second fiddle to China’s BYD. But cars aren’t the only territory Elon Musk’s company is attempting to stake out. For big batteries, Tesla may be able to put up a stronger fight.

Chinese battery makers have one major advantage: their products get cheaper every year. That’s helped them lap competitors in supplying power sources for electric vehicles: the country produces 75 per cent of the world’s lithium-ion batteries. Then there are the huge rechargeable batteries used by electricity grids. Chinese giants such as CATL have also made inroads there, but their position is not unassailable.

Energy storage systems are becoming a critical part of renewable power rollouts as solar and wind adoption grows. They store electricity when there is excess power on sunny or windy days, and grids increasingly depend on such batteries to stabilise frequency.

These systems used to be a niche business for global battery makers, which derived their fattest margins from making vehicles. But utilities and data centres have been deploying energy storage as core infrastructure. CATL, BYD and Eve Energy have been the biggest beneficiaries of this shift, as have system integrators such as Sungrow and Huawei.

CATL now accounts for nearly 40 per cent of the global market. In Europe, Chinese groups grew their share particularly fast in 2024, up two-thirds year over year, according to Wood Mackenzie data. Sungrow is leading the expansion, more than doubling its market share to 21 per cent.

Yet the US, the biggest customer base after China by installed capacity, has been an exception. Tesla dominates there with a 39 per cent share, despite Chinese rivals having a significant pricing advantage.

The reason for this American exceptionalism is that for grids, hardware is not the full package. Tesla sells a product that bundles kit, software, grid integration and long-term service into a single offering. Grid operators can’t take chances: they are providers of critical infrastructure and have lifespans of around 20 years. That makes warranties and accountability more important than incremental differences in battery cell costs.

Europe’s current openness to Chinese batteries may prove temporary for the same reasons. As storage projects grow in scale and batteries become more embedded, prices may become less important than integration capabilities and the provider’s record. Chinese makers will no doubt focus on warranties and integration too, but political risk works against them.

For now, Chinese makers still have a significant chance to gain more ground. They are improving technology rapidly and benefit from scale. But where electric car buyers seem increasingly willing to go Chinese, unhappily for Tesla, the giant battery market may follow a different path.

june.yoon@ft.com

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free

Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.

Avocado is a faddy fruit. Before being smashed onto every piece of toast, it inspired an era of buttery-green bathroom suites that a generation of boomers have since tried to forget. The trend fell out of favour in the 1990s as homeowners decisively returned to white, but colour has been creeping back and sinks are proving a popular fixture for a whole range of shades. 

“It’s wonderful to see colour re-emerging,” says Sophie Rowell, director and founder of Côte de Folk, who recently mounted a blue Burlington cloakroom basin onto Robert Kime’s Sunburst Green wallpaper in a London home. “It’s nostalgic, yes, but today’s take feels more intentional and sophisticated, and we’re seeing it used to create personality and warmth without overpowering the space,” she says. This is partly thanks to clever colour pairings. In the powder room of her Varese home, Italian fashion designer Marta Ferri installed a tangerine sink to match the orange handpainted de Gournay wallpaper. Meanwhile at Villa Colucci, a 19th-century palazzo available to rent in Puglia, vibrant contrasts include a custom blue Sbordoni basin set against green and yellow walls.

Basins are never just functional objects

The enthusiasm for colour is being driven by a younger customer base. “We are now experiencing an ever-increasing shift towards much younger clients,” says Sam Powell, founder of The Bold Bathroom Company, which has supplied retro fittings for films including Paddington and Avengers: Age of Ultron. “This is the first time they’ve had the pleasure of seeing anything other than plain white bathrooms, and they love it.” Also meeting this demand is The Water Monopoly, which first introduced pastel tones with its Rockwell range in 2015. “It was a slow start,” says the brand’s director Justin Homewood. “Only brave designers were using the colours at first. But in early 2018 it really took off and we’re now seeing people mixing colours too.” The Water Monopoly’s most popular hue is willow green, followed by powder blue and sherbet yellow – a soft shade used by designer Pernille Lind for a private residence in Copenhagen, and Sara Garza of Punch World Studio for her own timber-clad bathroom in Dallas. 

Poland-based Finch Studio packs a punch with The Water Monopoly’s purple sink, deployed as an unexpected visual anchor. “In my work, basins are never just functional objects – I treat them like sculptures, capable of setting the tone for the entire room,” says founder Magdalena Kwoczka. “Clients are intrigued by the idea of making one striking element the focal point, and a sink is a perfect candidate: it has a small surface area, yet completely transforms the mood – richer colours feel dramatic and immersive, while pastels can bring a whimsical touch.”

Colour is not limited to ceramic. Concrete creates a thoroughly modern look, with manufacturers such as Kast and US maker Concretti Designs producing basins in all shapes and shades. For something glossier, lava stone clads entire counters and sinks for a sleek, streamlined finish. “Customers particularly like it for its technical performance – it won’t fade, delaminate or be affected by chemicals,” says Geoff Leach, a representative of Pyrolave, which produces enamelled Volvic lava stone extracted from quarries in the Auvergne, France. From the thousands of Pyrolave colours to choose from, Studio Duggan picked a golden yellow for a curved custom basin at a London house, while designer Dorothée Meilichzon opted for rich reds and olive for the basins at the Cowley Manor Experimental hotel in the Cotswolds. “When I started to work on hotels in 2012, most were covered in white marble, which I found super-boring,” she says. “Lava is the best way to introduce colour while using a high-quality material.” 

The rainbow of tones on offer means bathrooms no longer need resemble globs of guacamole to be fun. “Enough time has passed that we can embrace colour again,” concludes Rowell. “And not as a fleeting trend, but as a design statement that feels both fresh and enduring.”