worlds largest battery plant BYD Opens Largest Battery Factory in the World.

[G. David Felt]

BYD has opened up the world's largest battery plant in the world with production at 24GWh of battery production and will ramp as demand needs to 60 GWh of production by 2020.

The plant is the size of 140 football fields and is open in China's lithium rich province of Qinghai. This is BYD's 3rd battery plant and biggest to date but also could be the map for an equal size plant that they are looking to open in Europe to supply Europe's battery needs.

BYD is backed by legendary investor Warren Buffett. Currently starting capacity of battery packs for the auto industry is that by 2019 they will be able to produce enough to support 1.2 million EVs. 

To quote the CEO of BYD:

“Electrification is a done deal as several countries have announced a deadline for the sale of internal combustion engine cars to end. Electric vehicles are on the cusp of another boom,” said BYD President and Chairman Wang Chuanfu.

Bloomberg reports BYD has immediately surpassed Tesla, yet Musk has responded that their Gigafactory will be producing 35GWh of battery packs by the end of 2018 and the second Gigafactory is being built in China for the local market. BYD has stated that this factory will reach 48 GWh of production by the end of 2019 with 60GWh of production in 2020 as markets demand.

Another Chinese company CATL is building a 24 GWh battery factory to be completed in 2020 which will allow CATL to have 88 GWh of battery production by the end of 2020. The battle is on as the Chinese government has chosen to consolidate their bloated auto industry with a few established world leading auto component and automakers urging incentives to automakers to move forward sooner rather than later with higher density / longer range battery packs aiming to flip the auto industry in a 10yr time span to 100% electric from ICE.

BYD News Release

Bloomberg Story