Envision AESC is looking beyond Nissan for customers for its newly announced UK battery cell factory. The Chinese company is in talks to supply cells to a number of automakers in the country, including Jaguar Land Rover, Envision CEO Lei Zhang told Automotive News Europe.
Envision announced on Thursday it would build a 7.5-gigawatt-hour factory next to Nissan’s factory in Sunderland, England, to supply the Japanese automaker cells and battery packs for a new electric crossover.
Production is set to start “before 2025,” Zhang said.
The plant could expand to 35 gWh by 2030, taking investment to 1.8 billion pounds ($2.5 billion) and mirroring the investment the company is making to build a new cell plant in Douai, France to supply Renault.
The Douai plant will have an initial capacity of 9 gWh in 2024, with the aim of reaching 24 gWh by 2030, similar to the Sunderland plant. “Two plants in Europe would give us a very good foundation,” Zhang said.
Envision's plans for the Douai site could go beyond Renault. Its building permit application is for a capacity of 43 gWh by the end of the decade, a goal that Zhang said could be achieved if deals are reached with other automakers.
Envision will supply Nissan with batteries for a new electric crossover that company sources said would replace the long-running Leaf.
Nissan plans to make 100,000 units of the car annually at Sunderland. In addition to fulfilling that contract, Envision will target other automakers to help absorb its addition capacity.
Assuming a battery pack size of up to 60 kilowatt hours, Envision would be able to build packs to supply 125,000 cars with 7.5-gWh factory. That number rises to 150,000 at the plant’s highest initial capacity of 9 gWh.
Talks with JLR, LEVC
Zhang said Envision had received UK government money to help fund the plant but wouldn’t say how much.
JLR, the UK’s second-largest manufacturer and the biggest without a long-term battery deal, is in talks with Envision, Zhang said.
“Potentially, we can work closely with them too,” he added.
The company is also looking to mirror a deal it has with Zhejiang Geely Holding-owned LEVC to supply batteries to Chinese built versions of the plug-in hybrid London taxi starting next year.
“That could give us another potential customer in the UK,” Zhang said. LEVC’s
UK-built plug-in taxi and van currently use batteries from South Korea’s LG Chem.
Zhang is also interested in supplying another Geely-owned brand, Volvo, despite the company’s recent partnership with Swedish battery maker Northvolt to develop and produce batteries together.
“Let’s see what will happen. Suppliers are racing each other. You have to pick the best horse,” Zhang said.
Long relationship with Nissan
The company, which was created after China’s Envision Group bought Japanese battery manufacturer AESC, is 20 percent owned by Nissan.
The company currently runs a 1.7-gWh plant at the Sunderland facility that supplies battery packs to the Leaf and Nissan’s soon-to-be discontinued e-NV200 electric van.
It also runs a similar sized battery cell factory at Nissan’s U.S. assembly plant in Smyrna, Tennessee.
In addition Envision has a 5-gWh plant near Shanghai, China, that it plans to expand to 15 gWh next year. That plant supplies LEVC among others.
UK’s growing battery network
The investment by Envision is good news for the UK, which had been lagging in terms of battery cell production investment compared with the rest of Europe.
The factory will only be less than 50 kilometers away from Blyth, northeast England, where home-grown battery hopeful Britishvolt has said it will build a cell factory later this year.
Britishvolt plans to start making battery cells in late 2023.
Zhang described cell making as “the new coal mining” in reference to the region's industrial past. The region’s prosperity was strongly linked to coal before Nissan built its Sunderland plant in 1985.
Envision appears to narrow Britishvolt’s options to market its cells, but Zhang downplayed any rivalry.
“This a blue ocean,” he said. “We don’t see them as competition. We are comrades.”
Britishvolt said it welcomed the announcement of what it called the “second” gigafactory after its own.
“It reinforces the need for multiple cell manufacturing supply for UK/European automaker on the transition to electrification,” it said. “The news further validates the Britishvolt strategy of creating competitive battery cell manufacturing.”
UK auto lobby group the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders warned last week that the country needed to achieve 60 gWh of battery capacity by 2030 or risk losing tens of thousands of jobs.
