China’s CATL and Japan’s Panasonic will construct large-scale production lines in North America to supply cylindrical batteries to Tesla. LG Energy Solution also promoted the establishment of a production line in the United States for the same purpose; however, due to deteriorating situation from inflation, this plan was temporarily put on hold as the business environment worsened. LG Energy Solution, along with Panasonic and CATL, is under the spotlight on its actions as a leading battery supplier to Tesla.
Panasonic recently formalized a plan to build a battery production plant for electric vehicles in the Kansas City. The company plans to invest about $4 billion (KRW 5.26 trillion), and the plant plans to produce cylindrical medium-sized batteries (size 4680) that will be supplied to Tesla. The annual production capacity is estimated to be about 50GWh when considering the investment. The plant will be in Kansas, and the its battery cells will be supplied to Tesla’s plant in Austin, Texas.
CATL, which has the largest market share in the global battery market, is also promoting to build a production plant in North America to supply batteries to Tesla.
CATL is currently looking at two locations in Mexico to build manufacturing facilities to supply batteries to Tesla and Ford according to a recent Bloomberg report. The most likely locations are Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, which is near the Austin border, Texas, and Saltillo, Coahuila.
CATL will produce battery cells in Mexico, and deliver the products to Tesla’s Kentucky plant to assemble them into battery packs. It is planning a $5 billion worth of investment with the goal of building a plant capable of producing up to 80GWh of batteries annually.
In March, LG Energy Solution announced that it would invest KRW 1.7 trillion in Queen Creek, Arizona, to build a new cylindrical battery plant with an annual capacity of 11GWh. However, this has been put on hold due to the recent increase in inflation in the United States.
By Staff Reporter Tae-jun Park gaius@etnews.com