BYD Co (比亞迪) is building what would become the world’s largest vehicle-battery factory next year in an effort by the Chinese electric-car maker to increase capacity and help revive earnings growth.
The plant is to have an annual capacity of 24 gigawatt-hours (GWh) when it is fully in use next year, enough to equip 1.2 million BYD Tang electric cars, according to the manufacturer backed by Warren Buffett.
Covering 1 million square meters — equivalent to about 140 soccer fields — the factory unveiled yesterday would help meet BYD’s plan to boost its battery-making capability almost four-fold to 60GWh by 2020.
Photo: AP
“We have reason to believe there will be further explosive development in the new-energy vehicle industry,” BYD chairman Wang Chuanfu (王傳福) said at the facility in Qinghai. “There is huge potential in the lithium industry.”
China’s biggest manufacturer of new-energy vehicles has differentiated itself from other automakers with its self-sufficiency in battery supplies and strength in battery-production, starting with its roots as a maker of mobile-phone batteries.
BYD is also expanding production to sell batteries to other automakers to broaden its income sources after posting profit declines in five of the past 10 years, and plans to spin off the business.
The new factory, which Wang called the world’s largest power-battery factory, would be a fully automated facility, with about 100 robots handling logistics and manufacturing.
BYD is to face competition for the crown.
Tesla Motors Inc is expanding its gigafactory in Nevada to reach output of 35GWh, according to its Web site.
The company headed by Elon Musk also plans to build a gigafactory in China.
Rising ownership of electric-powered vehicles in China, where the government has thrown its weight behind the industry’s growth, has spurred the expansion of battery makers, such as BYD and Contemporary Amperex Technology Co (CATL, 時代新能源), whose rapid production ramp-up turned it into the nation’s biggest maker of battery cells for electric cars.
Like BYD, CATL is also building a 24GWh factory.
That is scheduled for completion about 2020 and help CATL expand its production capacity to 88GWh by that time.
MediaTek Inc (聯發科), the world’s biggest smartphone chip supplier, yesterday said it plans to double investment in data center-related technologies, including advanced packaging and high-speed interconnect technologies, to broaden the new business’ customer and service portfolios. The chip designer is redirecting its resources to data centers, mainly designing application-specific integrated circuits (ASIC) with artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities for cloud service providers. The data center business is forecast to lead growth in the next three years and become the company’s second-biggest revenue source, replacing chips used in smart devices, MediaTek president Joe Chen (陳冠州) told a media event in Taipei. “Three or four years
Until US President Donald Trump’s return a year ago, when the EU talked about cutting economic dependency on foreign powers — it was understood to mean China, but now Brussels has US tech in its sights. As Trump ramps up his threats — from strong-arming Europe on trade to pushing to seize Greenland — concern has grown that the unpredictable leader could, should he so wish, plunge the bloc into digital darkness. Since Trump’s Greenland climbdown, top officials have stepped up warnings that the EU is dangerously exposed to geopolitical shocks and must work toward strategic independence — in defense, energy and
Motorists ride past a mural along a street in Varanasi, India, yesterday.
For the second year in a row, a Brazilian movie has wowed international audiences and critics, securing multiple Oscar nominations and drawing fresh interest in the Latin American giant’s film industry. Experts say the success of The Secret Agent, which has won four Oscar nominations, a year after I Am Still Here won Brazil its first Oscar, is no fluke, with a bit of a push from the country’s political climate. “This is neither a coincidence nor a miracle. It is the result of a lot of work, consistent policies, and, of course, talent,” Ilda Santiago, director of the Rio International Film
RSS