Envision Group to Invest $7.5B in Hubei Power Battery Plant

The official website of the Shiyan Municipal People’s Government in China’s central province of Hubei published an article Wednesday saying that it had signed a strategic agreement with Envision Group. According to the plan, the company will invest 48 billion yuan ($7.58 billion) in five major construction projects in the local area, including a high-end power battery plant, an intelligent power exchange network and equipment manufacturing for commercial vehicles, key materials and precision components for lithium batteries.

In addition, CEO of the company Zhang Lei said that a new production line of high-end power battery manufacturing is planned to be commissioned before the end of the year.

Envision Group has three main sections: Envision AESC Group, Envision Energy and Envision Digital. Among them, the power battery business belongs to Envision AESC, Envision Energy focuses on wind power and energy storage technology, while Envision Digital’s business is about the intelligent Internet of Things.

According to statistics from South Korean market research institution SNE, the company’s installed capacity of power batteries was 4.2 GWh in 2021, ranking ninth in the world. Contemporary Amperex Technology Co., Limited and LG Energy Solution ranked among the top two on the list, with shipments of 96.7 GWh and 60.2 GWh, respectively.

Envision AESC was born out the power battery business of Nissan Motor Co., Ltd., called AESC, and is the battery supplier of Nissan Leaf. In 2018, the industrial fund led by Envision Group acquired 80% equity of AESC and renamed it as Envision AESC.

According to data disclosed by Envision AESC itself, it has laid out seven battery production bases in China, Japan and the U.S. It is estimated that its battery capacity will exceed 200 GWh by 2025.

Last year, the company announced that it would build major new factories in France and the U.K. to provide power batteries for Renault and Nissan.

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At the beginning of this month, the second phase of the company’s battery manufacturing base project in Wuxi, Jiangsu Province started. With a planned production capacity of over 15 GWh, the base is planned to be completed and put into use in 2023. The plants of the project’s first phase were mass-produced last year with a production capacity of 5 GWh.