By Kim Yoo-chul
Staff Reporter
SB LiMotive, a joint venture between South Korea's Samsung SDI and Germany’s Robert Bosch, plans to invest 500 billion won (some $410 million) in an electric vehicle battery plant by 2015.
The new plant, which will be built in the southeastern city of Ulsan, South Gyeongsang Province, will produce secondary batteries used in hybrid electric vehicles from 2011, the South Korean company said Thursday.
"The joint venture is targeting a 30 percent share in the global auto battery market by 2015," Kim Soon-taek, CEO of Samsung SDI, said.
The products to be manufactured by the plant will exclusively be supplied to German automaker BMW. SDI executives said the venture sent some samples to other carmakers to expand its client base.
"SDI will additionally invest in Ulsan to produce small-sized secondary batteries for smaller portable electronics products and large-sized storages in a bid to strengthen energy-related product portfolios," Kim added.
SB LiMotive ― a South Korea-based company ― is a one-year-old joint venture with Bosch that specializes in developing, manufacturing and selling lithium-ion batteries.
Producers of secondary or lithium-ion batteries have a prosperous future as the auto industry moves away from the internal combustion engine.
Driven by an ever-more environmentally aware customer base and increasingly rigorous global emission regulations, the world's market for hybrid vehicles is predicted to increase to over 11 million vehicles a year by 2020, around 23 times the market size, last year.
The cost, weight and limited capacity of conventional batteries have impeded the development of electric vehicles with acceptable speed and mileage for decades.