BYD to build new battery plant in Zhejiang
BYD is planning a new production facility for its blade batteries in Taizhou in the Chinese province of Zhejiang. Production capacities for 22 GWh per year are to be created there on an area of around one million square metres.
The new factory is scheduled to start production of its first production line in the first half of 2023. Construction of the entire project is expected to be completed by the end of June 2024. This is reported by Gasgoo, citing the WeChat account of Xianju County, where the city of Taizhou is located. The administration of Xianju is also part of the cooperation agreement between BYD and the city government. Nearly 6,000 jobs are to be created there.
BYD plans to use the batteries produced in the new factory in Taizhou primarily in its models with the DM-i plug-in hybrid system. As reported, the Chinese manufacturer now only produces electric cars and plug-in hybrids – the last pure combustion engine left the assembly line in February.
For BYD, this is the third announcement of a battery project this year. In January, it was announced that BYD and FAW would build a joint blade battery plant with a capacity of up to 45 GWh in northeast China. Also in January, BYD signed a framework agreement with the municipal government of the city of Xiangyang in the Chinese province of Hubei to build an industrial park where, among other things, traction batteries for electric cars will be produced. This is in addition to a 15 GWh battery plant in Fuzhou in China’s Jiangxi province, which was announced in December 2021.
The blade battery is LFP cells in a special, elongated format. The elongated cells are directly inserted into the battery pack; there is no intermediate step via modules. This increases the energy density at the pack level.
The demand for battery cells is not only high at BYD itself; in March, the company sold 104,878 New Energy Vehicles, more than ever before. But third-party customers are also being supplied with blade batteries: It is confirmed that FAW’s Hongqi E-QM5 uses BYD’s LFP battery. There are also persistent rumours that Tesla has ordered blade cells.
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