BYD Builds Battery Plant

Chinese vehicle maker BYD has opened a 24 GWh power battery factory in Western China’s Qinghai province and said it plans to increase total production capacity to 60 GWh by 2020. The factory, which is equivalent to the size of 140 football (soccer) fields, will be the largest in the world after its construction is completed in 2019, said the company. It is BYD’s third battery factory in China after Shenzhen and Huizhou.

“Electrification is a done deal as several countries have announced a deadline for the sale of internal combustion engine cars to end,” said BYD President and Chairman Wang Chuanfu. “Electric vehicles are on the cusp of another boom.”

The Qinghai factory uses smart logistics and driverless automatic guided vehicles and a seamless information integration system.

In addition to applications in new energy vehicles and rail transportation, BYD said its battery products are used in solar power stations, energy storage power stations and many other new energy solutions.

With more than 23 years of development, the company offers a wide variety of battery products, such as consumer 3C batteries (computers, communication and consumer electronics), power batteries, solar cells and energy storage batteries and has a complete battery ecosystem.

“All our batteries come with a unique identification code,” said BYD battery division CEO He Long. “We can troubleshoot any problems simply by scanning the QR code on the battery as this gives us the battery’s technical specifications and necessary manufacturing information.”

BYD is present in more than 200 cities in 50 countries and regions and said it was the world’s leading supplier of electric vehicles between 2015 and 2017.

Qinghai is a lithium-rich province where lithium mining, battery production and electric vehicle production now takes place. BYD said it has mastered the process of extracting lithium from the province’s Qairhan Salt Lake.