After years of delayed construction, SK Innovation, a South Korean electric vehicle battery technology company, has finally started building its first battery production in China. Its battery plant in Jiangsu Province, China, is breaking ground and will participate in global competition for electric vehicle batteries including competitors such as Panasonic in Japan, Ningde Times in China, and LG Chem and Samsung SDI in South Korea.
On August 22, local time, SK Innovation announced that it has finally selected Changzhou, Jiangsu Province, China as the location of its China's electric vehicle battery factory, and started infrastructure construction. The plant is expected to produce 7.5 GWh of batteries per year, which can be used for 150,000 battery capacity (50 KWh) electric vehicles.
The Chinese government began subsidizing most electric vehicles equipped with local batteries in 2016, and companies such as SK Innovation have waited for years to build a battery plant in China. But then Beijing, China plans to end such subsidies in 2020, and foreign battery manufacturers such as SK Innovation are actively taking actions to announce investment and build factories in China.
In addition to the Changzhou plant, the company plans to expand the capacity of its Seosan battery plant in Chungcheongnam-do, South Korea to 4.7 GWh, and to start construction in March of this year in Komarom, Hungary The plant's production capacity reaches 7.5GWh, and a 20 GWh electric vehicle battery production system will be established by 2022.
SK Innovation has been working with a Chinese joint venture to produce battery packs from the batteries of its Ruishan battery plant and sell such battery packs to global automotive companies such as Mercedes-Benz.