I’ve been nerding out on batteries for last few weeks, compiling a list of companies that have invested more than $17 billion in R&D to innovate the next generation of energy storage devices.

Whenever I bring up the project in the real world, people automatically want to start talking to me about Tesla. Elon Musk has done an amazing job at convincing us that he’s the Tony Stark of the green economy, and will bring us amazing batteries that look cool and smell nice. What’s interesting about the partnership between Panasonic and Tesla to build a $5 billion gigafactory to pump out batteries is that Panasonic is the one supplying all the batteries. 

The new Tesla Powerwall is literally a Panasonic battery cell in Tesla packaging.

In fact, Panasonic supplies the batteries for all of Tesla’s cars. As I did my research, I noticed that car companies don’t make their own batteries. Here’s a graph from Lux Research that shows energy storage partnerships in the electric vehicle market:

Investors that want to bet on the rise of electric vehicles might be better off finding good battery manufacturers rather than investing in the car companies themselves.

Here’s a list of the top 10 companies who are investing in energy storage R&D:

If you want to learn more about the energy storage market, check out the latest Green Transition Scoreboard research report: http://www.ethicalmarkets.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/GTS-Fall-update-2015-batteries-and-storage-FINAL.pdf