LG Energy Solution said on Monday that it will spend 4 trillion won, or approximately $3.07 billion, up until 2026 to expand its electric vehicle (EV) battery production in South Korea:
The funds will go into expanding and building new battery production facilities at the Ochang industrial zone located in Cheongju, the capital city of North Chungcheong Province southeast of Seoul. LG Energy Solution already operates a cylindrical battery production facility at Ochang.
Additional production lines to be built there will adopt the latest smart factory solutions such as logistics automation, remote support, and intelligent manufacturing, the South Korean battery maker said.
The local governments of North Chungcheong Province and Cheongju said they will provide financial and administrative support to LG Energy Solution for the plan. The move by the company is expected to create around 1,800 new jobs.
Previously: Honda and LG are Investing $3.5 Billion in New Ohio Battery Factory
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It has a planned capacity of 40 GWh/year of lithium ion cells by end of 2025:
A key component of the revised electric vehicle tax credit is a requirement for an ever-increasing amount of domestic content in those EVs' battery packs. Automakers and battery manufacturers were already in the process of setting up US manufacturing to be closer to locally built EVs, and that trend has accelerated ever since.
At the end of August, Honda and LG Energy Solutions announced that they were forming a joint venture to build a US battery factory. And on Tuesday, the pair announced that the factory would be in Fayette County, Ohio, about 40 miles (64.4 km) southwest of Columbus.
Honda and LG will spend $3.5 billion on the new plant after regulatory approval. Assuming that happens relatively rapidly, the plan is to begin construction in 2023 and finish the building work by the end of 2024. Honda said that by the end of the following year, the factory should have an annual capacity of 40 GWh. Honda and LG also said the factory should create 2,200 jobs in the area.
[...] The cells that the plant produces will be used in Honda's new "e:Architecture" platform. The first EVs to use e:Architecture should go on sale in the US in 2026 and will be built in North America.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 21, @09:11PM
Read the link, which talks about LG joint ventures with several different car companies. But, there was no mention of cell size -- will this new plant include equipment that can make larger cell sizes (as Tesla has started to do)?