{"id":36211,"date":"2018-03-28T11:55:33","date_gmt":"2018-03-28T10:55:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.climatechangenews.com\/?p=36211"},"modified":"2018-07-04T17:21:06","modified_gmt":"2018-07-04T16:21:06","slug":"europes-gigafactory-boom-mapped","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.climatechangenews.com\/2018\/03\/28\/europes-gigafactory-boom-mapped\/","title":{"rendered":"Europe’s coming gigafactory boom, mapped"},"content":{"rendered":"

The race to electrify Europe is on.<\/strong><\/p>\n

By 2020\u00a0at least\u00a0seven new gigawatt-size battery\u00a0factories\u00a0are\u00a0scheduled to start operating on the continent, with another\u00a0three developments rumoured.<\/p>\n

Within a decade, these facilities will be churning out 80GWh a year. More than three times the 2017 global production capacity<\/a> of lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles.<\/p>\n

‘Gigafactories’, a term coined in the US by Elon Musk’s Tesla, produce batteries on the scale of more than 1GWh per year. Until this year, Europe had no factories of that size.<\/p>\n

But\u00a0with\u00a0demand for electric vehicles\u00a0on the continent predicted to surge\u00a0(Dutch bank, ING, predicts<\/a> that all new vehicle sales in Europe will be electric by 2035), a new battery infrastructure is coming for Europe.<\/p>\n

Of the five leading global manufacturers of lithium-ion batteries, three are planning, or have begun building, gigafactories\u00a0in Europe: LG, Samsung and the Tesla\/Panasonic partnership.<\/p>\n

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Norway\u2019s electric car demand<\/strong> is outstripping supply – with lessons for the EU<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The push from these\u00a0established US, Japanese and South Korean\u00a0players\u00a0has prompted a number of European companies to invest in the construction of their own regionally-based gigafactories.<\/p>\n

Car manufacturer Daimler\u00a0has two planned facilities in its home country of Germany. Daimler is also working on plants in\u00a0the US, China and Thailand.<\/p>\n

A spokesperson for the company, which owns Mercedes-Benz, told\u00a0Climate Home News the company\u00a0would be investing more than \u20ac1 billion\u00a0in a global battery production network.<\/p>\n

“The local production of batteries is an important success factor for the electric offensive of Mercedes-Benz Cars and decisive for flexibly and efficiently meeting the global demand for electric vehicles. The production network is thus very well positioned for the mobility of the future,”\u00a0she said.<\/p>\n

European start-ups have caught on to the EV business opportunity. Swedish company Northvolt plans to spend $4.7bn on a Nordic plant and Germany\u2019s TerraE has announced two plants at undisclosed locations in Germany.<\/p>\n

Browse our interactive map<\/strong> to see how European demand for electric car batteries will be met.<\/p>\n