LG Chem Quietly Surges in Battery Race

December 14th, 2015

Awake Goy

LG Chem Quietly Surges in Battery Race

December 14th, 2015

Three years ago, LG Chem’s $303 million battery plant garnered unwanted attention when news reports revealed workers were watching movies and playing cards rather than building batteries.

As the facility sat idle, LG Chem was shipping lithium ion batteries from South Korea to power General Motors’ Chevrolet Volt — an embarrassment since the Michigan plant had been built with the aid of federal grants.

The slow days are now gone. Two of the three assembly lines operate 24 hours a day, and the plant is adding a fourth production line for an as-yet-unnamed customer. The plant also is expected to produce batteries for GM’s next electric car, the Chevrolet Bolt, although LG Chem has not yet confirmed that.

Add it all up, and LG Chem appears likely to beat Tesla to the punch as the operator of North America’s first battery “gigafactory,” the name Tesla has given to the giant battery plant it is building in Nevada.

Tesla’s plant has drawn headlines, but LG Chem quietly has positioned its Holland plant to be a formidable competitor and possibly the market leader. Navigant, a research firm based in Chicago, estimates the LG Chem factory could account for as much as one quarter of North America’s total EV battery capacity by 2017.

The plant produces 650 megawatt-hours worth of battery cells annually, according to Navigant — a production rate that could rise to 3 gigawatt-hours within a couple of years. If so, the Holland plant will be North America’s biggest EV battery plant.

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