Porsche Powers Ahead with Electric Vehicle Battery Plant

Written by Martin Lynch, European News Editor for Industrial Info (Galway, Ireland)--Luxury sports car maker Porsche AG (Stuttgart, Germany) is the latest carmaker to join the growing ranks of manufacturers aiming to build an electric vehicle (EV) battery plant in Europe.

The company said it will construct a battery cell plant in Tubingen, Germany. The company joins parent company Volkswagen AG (Wolfsburg, Germany) in building its own battery cell plants in order to reduce its reliance on supplies from Asia. If you subscribe to Industrial Info's Global Market Intelligence (GMI) Industrial Manufacturing Database, click here for Volkswagen and Porsche's battery projects in Europe.

"The battery cells are a core technology for the German automotive industry that we must also have in our own country. In development and in production. Porsche wants to play a pioneering role in this," Porsche chief executive officer, Oliver Blume, told German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung. "Because we want to show that we can manufacture battery cells in a high-wage region like Baden-Württemberg."

Industrial Info is tracking the project, which will see an investment of 250 million euro ($303 million). Porsche said it will also purchase batteries from Volkswagen but that it sees a role for high performance versions. "There will also be a segment for high-performance cells," said Blume. "This is a Porsche domain. Just as we developed high-performance internal combustion engines, we now want to be at the forefront of high-performance batteries."

Earlier this year, Volkswagen said that it aims to build six battery cell plants, alone or in partnership with others, by 2030. The first is in partnership with Northvolt (Stockholm, Sweden) which is constructing Europe's first large-scale lithium-ion battery factory in Skellefteå, Sweden. In 2019, the plant secured $1 billion in equity from a group led by Volkswagen, Goldman Sachs and BMW (Munich, Germany). For additional information, see June 24, 2019, article - Europe's First Giant Battery Plant Gets Funding. It will have an initial capacity of 16 gigawatt-hours (GWh) of battery capacity--approximately 250,000 EV batteries per year. The plant will then be expanded to 32 GWh. Last year, Industrial Info reported that BMW had inked a 2 billion-euro ($2.3 billion) deal for batteries from Northvolt for its big push into the EV sector. Last month, Volkswagen placed a 10-year battery order worth $14 billion with Northvolt.

Volkswagen also is building its first battery plant on a 690-acre site in Salzgitter, Germany, with an investment of approximately 450 million euro ($549 million). Battery cell production at the plant is scheduled to commence in early 2024 with an initial production capacity of 20 GWh. Industrial Info also is tracking a planned 150 million-euro ($182 million) expansion at the site that will double the production capacity to 40 GWh. The company said that its next plant will be built in Spain, France or Portugal in 2026 and another in Poland, Slovakia or the Czech Republic by 2027.

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