Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

Thank you, Mr. Air, a netizen of CTOnews.com, for your clue delivery! CTOnews.com, September 23 (Xinhua)-- Ningde Times, the world's largest maker of electric car batteries, is considering building a third plant in Europe, according to Bloomberg.

"We are considering this issue, but there is no clear decision or activity yet," said Matthias Zentgraf, president of Ningde Times Europe, and internal discussions are still under way.

CTOnews.com has reported that Ningde Times announced in August that it plans to build a second European plant in Hungary, which will work with Mercedes-Benz with an investment of about 7.3 billion euros and a planned power battery capacity of 100GWh, far exceeding the 1.8 billion euros and 14GWh that the company built in Germany in 2019. The factory will supply Mercedes-Benz, Volkswagen, BMW and Stellantis NV.

Ningde Times said it expected it to be ready within five years.

In addition, the Ningde era signed a pre-purchase agreement in the eastern Hungarian city of Debrecen on September 5, marking the official launch of the Hungarian factory project, the second plant in Europe in the Ningde era.

"if there is no future for product demand, we will not build a third factory," Zentgraf said on a video call at the IAA transport conference in Hanover, Germany. However, Zentgraf declined to comment on whether Ningde Times would supply batteries to Tesla's new plant in Berlin.

Ningde era has established several production bases in China and subsidiaries in the United States, Japan and Europe. It spent 27 billion yuan on two battery projects in China's Shandong and Fujian provinces.

The battery maker has also been looking for factories in Mexico and the United States to supply Tesla, Ford and other companies, although the process has been delayed, Bloomberg reported in August.

CATL will start producing batteries at its first European plant in the central German city of Erfurt later this year, Bloomberg said. But there is a challenge at this time, namely the energy crisis in Europe and the rising price of natural gas, after all, more than half of Germany's natural gas imports come from Russia.

According to Bloomberg, Germany has about three months to save itself before the winter gas crisis.

"We are affected by the shortage of natural gas, which is very important for the battery production process because we need a lot of energy," Zentgraf said. Natural gas accounts for about half of the energy needs of German factories.

"We are working hard on alternatives. We already have a very promising idea that we can replace natural gas to buy renewable energy," Zentgraf said. He said that if the supply of natural gas is insufficient or the cost is too high, the contingency plan will enable the plant to keep operating in the winter.

He also believes that the EU should use more flexible funding differences to promote cutting-edge technology. Zentgraf called on the EU to provide more flexible state assistance to help localize and expand the battery supply chain for electric vehicles and to supplement billions of dollars in investment by battery manufacturers. In particular, "focus the subsidy money on building the overall supply chain of the battery business," he said.

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