Eve Energy to build 50 GWh battery plant in Chengdu

The Chinese battery cell manufacturer Eve Energy, whose customers include BMW, is planning a new production facility with a capacity of 50 GWh per year in Chengdu. The new factory, which will also include a research institute, will be built in two phases with 20 GWh and 30 GWh respectively.

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In total, Eve Energy is investing 20 billion yuan (2.88 billion euros) in the plant in the capital of China’s Sichuan province. Both phases are to cost ten billion yuan each. Since the first phase (including phase 1 at the research facility) includes some basic work for both phases, the installed production capacity there is somewhat smaller for the same investment sum. In the second phase, the research centre will also be expanded.

The report in the CN EV Post does not say when the construction of the two phases will be completed. However, it states that the battery cells are to be used both in vehicles and in stationary energy storage systems. There are no details on the cell chemistry produced in Chengdu.

Eve Energy makes a range of battery types, but specialises in the development and production of LFP cells. In March, it was announced that a 20 GWh LFP production facility would be set up in Jingmen – at the time, the cell chemistry was named precisely. Eve Energy is also an industrialisation partner of the Israeli company StoreDot, which develops extremely fast-charging battery cells with silicon-containing anodes. The planned start of production is 2024.

When BMW announced in September 2021 that it had ordered further battery cells worth billions, Eve Energy was named alongside the well-known BMW suppliers CATL, Samsung SDI and Northvolt. It is not known which cell types Eve will supply for which BMW models. However, there were already rumours in the summer of 2020 that the BMW Brilliance joint venture (which manufactures the iX3 in Shenyang) was negotiating with a subsidiary of Eve Energy.

Update 19 May 2022

The Chinese battery cell manufacturer Eve Energy, whose customers include BMW, is planning another production facility. The new factory in Yuxi in the Chinese province of Yunnan is to have an annual capacity of 10 GWh. Eve Energy has not yet announced a timetable for the factory in Yuxi. At the end of April, Eve Energy had already announced a production facility with a capacity of 50 GWh per year in Chengdu.

cnevpost.com, gasgoo.com, cnevpost.com (both update)