lg to open europe\'s biggest car battery factory next year

WARSAW (Reuters)-
South Korea LG Chemical will be the largest lithium in Europe-
With the region\'s auto industry accelerating the mass production of electric vehicles, the ion battery plant in Poland next year.
Falling battery prices and increasing pressure to reduce exhaust emissions have led automakers to embrace electric vehicles.
Volkswagen Group manufacturers (VOWG_p. DE)
For Volvo Cars, Daimler and BMW are planning to launch a series of new electric models in the coming years.
But Europe is not big.
Therefore, these components are mainly imported from China and South Korea.
While Asian producers have a huge lead in development and scale, the region\'s call to develop its own battery industry to maintain employment and profits is growing.
LG Chem plans to spend 5.
9 billion zlotys ($1. 63 billion)
According to ARP, the Polish national industrial agency, the plant is located near the southwest city of frozwaff.
It\'s 190 kilometers in Florida. 118 miles)
From the border with Germany, Volkswagen plans to invest 20 billion euros ($24 billion)in zero-
3 million vehicles were manufactured by 2030 (EVs)a year by 2025.
LG Chem said in a statement on Thursday that Poland is expected to produce up to 100,000 electric vehicle batteries a year from next year.
2,500 people will be employed in the factory.
LG Chem, a subsidiary of South Korea\'s LG company, did not list possible customers, but said they would include top auto companies.
\"The company chose Poland as the most competitive production location to meet the needs of European and global auto makers,\" Chang said . \"
Beom Kang, vice president of LG chemistry.
It is not clear whether the factory will produce all the basic batteries from scratch, or import some components, but the website will include a research and development center, the statement said, hire \"about 400 engineers in different specialties such as automation, electronics, chemistry and IT \".
When asked about the sources of lithium and other raw materials, a representative from the local department of LG Chem said that they would first import from South Korea\'s parent company and then hopefully import from Polish suppliers.
The planned capacity of the plant is only a small part of the expected future demand.
Based on a typical capacity
Market compact cars like Nissan Leaf, with 100,000 car batteries each year equivalent to 4 GWh.
This means that the capacity of the plant may be slightly higher than 10% of Tesla\'s US plant. S.
The company, headquartered in \"Gigafactory\", will launch in 2018.
The cost of the battery has been prohibitive but is falling rapidly.
Analysts at Barclays said the average cost of batteries had dropped from $1,000 per kilowatt hour in 2010 to about $227 in 2016.
In 2016, only 0.
Of the new passenger cars sold in Europe, 2% are fully electric.
But Britain and France say they will ban the sale of new gasoline and diesel cars and stop using fossil fuels from 2040 to reduce air pollution --
High-Energy internal combustion engine.
LG\'s Polish factory may not be keeping Europe\'s largest car battery factory for a long time.
In September, ABB, the Swiss engineering group, said it had joined a project to build Europe\'s largest lithium battery.
Ion battery plant in Sweden with the goal of producing batteries equivalent to 32 gigawatts per year
In the hours ended 2023, Tesla\'s gigabit plant targeted more than 90%.
The project, called Northvolt, is led by a former manager of Tesla, and the company also plans to build a gigabit plant in Europe, although it does not say where it is.