SKI plans to invest US$10 billion globally to increase battery processing
According to Autonews, SKInnovation CEO Jun Kim announced that the company has increased its planned investment to $5 billion. Just 4 weeks ago, the company just promised to spend $1.67 billion to build a battery manufacturing plant in Georgia. SKI's Georgia Commerce plant will start construction this year, one hour's drive northeast of Atlanta. When completed, it will employ 2,000 workers to process lithium-ion batteries equivalent to 9.8 gigawatt hours per year. The plant is expected to be completed in 2022. Bloomberg reported that JunKim told the media at the CES show last week that the company plans to invest $10 billion globally. By 2025, it is expected to process 100 gigawatt hours of batteries per year. NE view: SKI is a battery supplier for Mercedes-Benz, Hyundai and Kia. Volkswagen has also incorporated SKI into the battery supply chain of its upcoming electric vehicle ID brand. There are many potential big battery customers in the southern United States. In addition to Hyundai, Mercedes-Benz, and Volkswagen, Honda has a vehicle assembly plant in Alabama; Mazda and Toyota's joint venture plant in the state has broken ground. Volkswagen's processing base in Tennessee is only 240km from the new SKI plant. Out of cost and customer considerations, the location of the battery plant is generally located near the vehicle assembly plant. The original vehicle factory is also trying to attract investment from the battery factory. It is understood that Volkswagen intends to support SKI as its important supplier. Just like GM and LG Chem, CATL and BMW, the cooperation between battery factories and automakers can achieve mutual results. After the promotion of electric vehicles, lithium-ion batteries showed an exponential upward trend. BloombergNEF's latest report found that the demand for lithium-ion batteries for electric buses and passenger cars in 2017 was 44 gigawatt-hours, and by 2030, the demand is expected to exceed 1,500 gigawatt-hours per year. According to the data of UBS, any viable solid-state battery with more than lithium-ion technology can occupy an advantage in the market of electric vehicle batteries. By 2025, the automotive lithium-ion battery market will reach approximately US$84 billion, and it is currently approximately US$23 billion. Ouyang Minggao, academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and executive vice chairman of the my country Electric Vehicle Association of 100, pointed out in the recent meeting that lithium-ion batteries have the potential and prospects to become the mainstream technology of power lithium batteries, but the bottleneck is the safety of high specific energy power lithium batteries. sex. With the use of high nickel, the thermal stability of the battery will become worse, and the safety risk will be greater in the future, so measures must be taken to prevent safety problems. Starting from improving the safety of the battery itself, it is necessary to develop a new type of solid electrolyte battery. At present, there are some solid-state batteries in China, but they are not all-solid-state batteries. The large-scale commercialization of all-solid-state batteries is estimated to be realized in 2025-2030 (later).