Japan’s Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd. (MHI) (7011.T) announced a major step towards entering the lithium-ion battery industry.
The company has decided to build a commercial production verification plant in Nagasaki Prefecture, Japan, in a move toward the company’s full-scale entry into the lithium-ion secondary battery market for heavy machinery.
According to a Reuters report, the company also expressed an interest in Better Place, a California company building charging networks around the world for electric vehicles.
The new plant will serve to verify and improve factors essential for
commercial production, such as operation rates, tact
time, battery performance and cost target. MHI’s lithium-ion secondary
battery business plan calls for the construction of another full-scale
commercial plant once all-out entry into the business is decided. The
company said it will make its decision in 2011 taking the market
situation, future prospects, and verification results into account.
The new plant is expected to cost 10 billion yen ($100 million), and
will have a production capacity of 66 MWh (megawatt hours) of batteries
a year by the end of 2010, which is equivalent to 400,000 medium-size
cells.
The batteries were developed in a 20-year-long joint research and development project with Kyushu Electric Power Co., Inc.
To date MHI has supplied the batteries for sample use, but now it has opted to place them on the market. The company looks to promote lithium-ion secondary battery business through a companywide initiative and will begin by incorporating the batteries into its various products, such as forklift trucks and wind turbine power generation systems. In conjunction with this initiative, MHI said it will launch a new Joint Lithium Battery Operations Department effective October 1.
MHI and Kyushu Electric Power launched joint research and development into batteries for electric power storage in 1988. The batteries are a medium-size cell with energy capacity of 165 Wh (watt-hours), mainly used in vehicles, and a large-size stationary-use battery cell with 350 Wh.
Demand for lithium-ion secondary batteries, which boast superior power storage capability, is expected to increase sharply from 2010 in tandem with further strengthening of environmental regulations. Domestic battery manufacturers will increase their production, expecting demands largely coming from applications in hybrid cars and electric vehicles initially.
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