[viking79]

http://www.hollandsentinel.com/news...-facility-adding-100-150-jobs-in-holland-area

This is for battery pack assembly, not cell production. It is next to their cell production facility, my guess is frees up space in there for more cells.

Sounds like they are expanding their capacity in MI, must have strong demand for batteries. Although Gigafactory is great, they really aren't necessary to get high battery volumes. A battery factory can come online fairly quickly, maybe 2 years or so.

 

[Dakster]

Neat and good since cars are assembled in the area.. closer to that than the gigga factory.

 

[Tom17]

Great, the faster more batteries are produced, the faster we have more BEV or PEV's on the roads and less pure ICE vehicles.

 

[dcpdx]

neat. do we know who all their customers are? could this indicate bolt sales are taking off?

regarding the giga factory, i think it is brilliantly located: a cheap area with lots of room to expand and an enthusiastic local and state government, near to natural resources, and on a main rail line directly to Fremont, less than 300 miles away

 

[hvacman]

LG Chem is under contract to fabricate the cells and assembles the packs for both the Chevy Bolt EV and the Chrysler Pacifica PHEV, both of which could be big sellers in 2017 and going forward. They make the cells for the Gen 2 Volt and CT6, but I believe GM assembles the packs for those at their own Brownstone MI battery plant.

http://www.mlive.com/business/west-michigan/index.ssf/2016/02/lg_chems_discloses_new_custome.html

 

[viking79]

neat. do we know who all their customers are? could this indicate bolt sales are taking off?

regarding the giga factory, i think it is brilliantly located: a cheap area with lots of room to expand and an enthusiastic local and state government, near to natural resources, and on a main rail line directly to Fremont, less than 300 miles away

I am not saying Gigafactory is a bad idea Definitely makes sense to be located close to the resources. However, it isn't a necessity either, it is easy to transport lithium by rail. They are there because of incentives from the Nevada government. I don't imagine their Europe factory will be near lithium mines.

 

[viking79]

LG Chem is under contract to fabricate the cells and assembles the packs for both the Chevy Bolt EV and the Chrysler Pacifica PHEV, both of which could be big sellers in 2017 and going forward. They make the cells for the Gen 2 Volt and CT6, but I believe GM assembles the packs for those at their own Brownstone MI battery plant.

http://www.mlive.com/business/west-michigan/index.ssf/2016/02/lg_chems_discloses_new_custome.html

Ah, maybe so LG can make complete packs for a different customer. Or maybe help GM, one of the two I guess

 

[viking79]

To comment on location vs resources, I don't really know how much Lithium product goes into a Li-ion battery, but if it is 200 lbs per 1000 lb battery pack and you wanted to sell 500,000 of those a year, that is 50,000 short tons of material. A single train hopper car can hold 100 short tons, so it would only be about 500 train cars per year. That doesn't seem like it would be much of a logistics issue to supply the Gigafactory with lithium product.

 

[dutch husky]

I'm hoping this is in anticipation of Bolt pack assembly being moved from South Korea. hvacman is correct, this facility produces cells for the Volt, but does not assemble the packs. Volt cells are shipped to Brownstown for assembly by GM. But as far as I know, GM does not have plans to take over pack assembly for Bolt from LG (anyone know otherwise?)

This site is about 120 acres overall, and with this new 158k sft expansion, LG will still have only utilized about half the site. They have room for an entire second cell production facility, as well as additional pack assembly plants. Pretty cool to see it happening right here!

For those curious enough to want to download a PDF of the site plan for this project, it's posted on the City of Holland's website. The site plan application indicates the facility will be ready to receive production equipment by August.

http://www.cityofholland.com/planni...n/current-site-plan-and-rezoning-applications

And fwiw, here's an mlive article about the recent announcement:

http://www.mlive.com/business/west-michigan/index.ssf/2017/02/lg_chem_battery_plant_expansio.html

 

[Neromanceres]

Note there are also indications that Nissan might also be going with LG Chem for battery production in the Gen II Leaf. So this might also be in anticipation for North American production

 

[canehdian]

...but what will the Bolt naysayers have as an excuse now??
For the longest time they've maintained that bolt will fail because hard cap at 50k. That LG couldn't possibly expand manufacturing to make more - that's crazy talk!

To comment on location vs resources, I don't really know how much Lithium product goes into a Li-ion battery, but if it is 200 lbs per 1000 lb battery pack and you wanted to sell 500,000 of those a year, that is 50,000 short tons of material. A single train hopper car can hold 100 short tons, so it would only be about 500 train cars per year. That doesn't seem like it would be much of a logistics issue to supply the Gigafactory with lithium product.

It's like 5kg of actual Li in a Bolt-sized battery. It's an extremely small amount - all the other materials make up the weight.

 

[viking79]

I think they use a couple hundred pounds of lithium salts per battery, maybe not of the elemental weight of lithium, but of the weight of the lithium product used for the electrolyte.