A battery for the 2015 Chevrolet Spark EV at Brownstown Battery Assembly in Brownstown, Michigan. LG Chem ships cells from its Holland, Michigan plant to Brownstown for assembly. (Photo by John F. Martin for General Motors) (credit: GM)
Batteries are big business. The demand from consumer tech and automotive applications for energy storage has sparked an enormous amount of investment into novel chemistry, cell design, and manufacturing. Notably, Tesla is building a well-publicized Gigafactory in Sparks, Nevada which will have the capacity to meet expected demand for the company's forthcoming Model 3 electric vehicle (EV).
But Tesla's rivals aren't content to let the company have things its own way. Chevrolet is planning on beating Tesla to the punch with its Bolt, a 200-mile EV that should cost around $30,000 here in the US. And now Navigant Research has suggested that LG Chem, which supplies batteries to Chevrolet (for example in the new Volt), may beat Tesla to the first gigafactory with its plant near Lake Michigan.
The LG Chem factory has already built more than a million batteries for GM to date, and Navigant thinks it could beat 1 GWh before the end of 2016. Knowing Tesla, this news may just spur it on even harder in its plan to fundamentally change the automotive world.
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