As it expands its electric vehicle (EV) line-up, China’s Geely announced Monday it plans to invest $5 billion to build a battery factory.
The factory will be located in China’s eastern city of Ganzhou and have a planned annual production capacity of 42 gigawatt hours (GWh). For comparison Tesla’s Giga Nevada has a capacity of about 35GWh last year before Panasonic announced plans to expand their production lines.
The announcement comes on the heels of other EV related deals made by Geely in January as it attempts to take on Tesla in the world’s biggest car market.
Tesla’s sales in China have been steadily rising since Giga Shanghai opened last year. In February the automaker recorded over 18,000 sales, an increase of more than 18% compared to January. The numbers were particularly impressive because there were only 28 days in the month. It was further shortened by Chinese New Year celebrations.
Source: Reuters
