Written by / Zhu Lin
Editor/ Zhang Linyu
Design / Shi Yuchao
Source/Autonews, by Lindsay Chappell
In the face of the expanding U.S. electric vehicle market, the Japanese company envision AESC, a power battery company of Envision Technology Group, is preparing to invest $2 billion to build a large-scale battery cell and module factory in Pauling Green, Kentucky. The plant has a planned capacity of 30 GWh and has the potential to expand to 40 GWh.
The plant will supply a newly launched electric vehicle production line in Vance, Alabama, 300 miles away. Shoichi Matsumoto, chief executive of Envision Power Group USA, said on April 13 that they will also sell battery products to other U.S. car companies.
"We will produce batteries for a large number of electric vehicle manufacturers," Matsumoto said, "and we have growth plans in the United States and other parts of the world." ”
The plant will open in 2025 and will employ 2,000 workers when it is in full production in 2027.
Matsumoto declined to say which other automakers the new Kentucky plant will supply. By 2027, its initial production capacity will be able to supply 300,000 vehicles per year.
The company, which is partially owned by Nissan Motor Co., announced in March that Envision Power intends to build a new plant in the United States to support Mercedes. However, at that time, the location of the factory was still not determined.
The plant will produce a new generation of electric vehicle batteries, which Matsumoto said will be 30 percent more energy dense than the current generation due to innovations in chemistry and structure.
The automotive industry and its electronics and energy suppliers predict a major shift in the type of vehicles U.S. consumers buy over the next decade, so they are investing billions of dollars to prepare for this trend.
The Biden administration hopes that by 2030, 50 percent of new cars in the U.S. will be electric. To power all of these electric vehicles, large-scale investments need to be made in a short period of time to bring enough factory capacity for batteries and EV components.
Envision Power's plant is Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear's second multibillion-dollar electric vehicle battery manufacturing project to the state in the past year.
In September 2021, Ford Motor Company and its battery partner SK Innovation said they would invest $5.8 billion to build two battery plants in Glendale, Kentucky, 50 miles south of Ford's big truck business in Louisville and a short drive from Envision Power's new plant.
Both Behill and Matsumoto said they don't see a conflict between the new project and Ford's new battery program in hiring the workforce.
"I think we're going to see clusters like these grow," Behill said, "and they're going to help build a talent pool in this region that makes us the top producer of electric vehicle batteries in the country." ”
Meanwhile, Ford and SK are also investing $5.6 billion in Stanton, Tennessee, to build a joint plant for battery production and truck assembly.
In the same region, General Motors and its battery partner LG Energy are spending $2 billion to build a plant in Spring Hill, Tennessee, to produce GM's Ultium electric vehicle batteries.
Hyundai Motor Corp. revealed on April 12 that it would begin production of two electric vehicles at its assembly plant in Montgomery, Alabama, and Nissan Motor Company said in February that it would introduce two electric models for production at its plant in Canton, Mississippi.
Evan Horetsky, a partner at McKinsey & Company and a former Tesla executive, said in March that there was little historical comparison in the auto industry's current level of investment.
"Basically, it's the scale of the Industrial Revolution." "And we're seeing that we're just at the beginning of this journey of scale," Horeski said. ”
Massive industrialization has also attracted suppliers that were barely known in the automotive industry a decade ago, especially giants from South Korea's SK Innovation, LG Chem and Samsung SDI.
Panasonic, once primarily a supplier of car audio and navigation equipment, has become a top player in the battery space, in part because of its partnership with Tesla.
Envision Power's partnership with Nissan began with the 2008 ELECTRIC VEHICLE LEAF. At the time, Nissan believed that a global battery supply base had not yet been developed, so it partnered with Japan's NEC Corporation and its subsidiary NEC Tokin to establish its own battery production enterprise. Envision Power has built battery factories in Smyrna, Tenness, and Sunderland, England, to supply THE LEAF.
But in 2018, Nissan sold a majority stake in the company to Envision Group. At the time, Nissan officials said they hoped the battery factory in Shimai, Tenness, would also supply batteries to other car companies.
This has never been a reality, but today it seems to be a reality. Envision Power will supply to Mercedes in Alabama through the new plant in Bowling Green, and Mercedes-Benz's new generation luxury pure electric SUV star models EQS and EQE will be equipped with Envision Power's batteries.
In addition to the United States, Envision Power has joined forces with Nissan in July 2021 to build a power battery gigafactory in Sunderland, UK, to produce the latest generation of power battery products.
According to the plan, the gigafactory will have a capacity of 25 GWh by 2030 and has the potential to expand to 35 GWh. Envision Power already has a battery plant with an annual capacity of 1.9 GWh in Sunderland, which was completed and put into operation in 2012.
This article was originally produced by Automotive Business Review
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