Battery for ‘Chinese Tesla’
According to battery industry sources on September 19, LG Chem, one of the world’s largest electric vehicle (EV) battery makers, has reportedly struck a large supply deal with Faraday Future, the EV business arm of Chinese internet firm LeEco.
Faraday Future, which debuted earlier this year at the CES 2016 in Las Vegas, unveiled an EV prototype boasting a top speed of 320 kilometers per hour, emerging as a competitor for Tesla Motors, the world leader in electric cars. The company is headquartered in California but it is a firm invested by LeEco, one of the largest online video companies in China.
The industry expects that LG Chem will supply lithium-ion batteries to power a mass-produced model of the LeSEE, an electric sedan released in April by LeEco. Faraday Future will reportedly manufacture the vehicle on behalf of LeEco. In this regard, an official from LG Chem said, “We cannot clarify our customer information of EV batteries.”
LG Chem completed a EV manufacturing factory in Nanjng, China, in October last year, establishing the foothold to supply a large amount of batteries to China’s EV firms. The plant currently can roll out 50,000 EV units per year. The company now plans to expand the annual production capacity to 200,000 units by 2020. Faraday Future intended to construct a fully assembled car production plant in the U.S. earlier but failed to do so. Accordingly, the company is reportedly planning to build a new EV plant in Huzhou, Zhejiang Province of China.