SEOUL, KOREA – It turned out that LG Chem’s medium- and large-sized secondary battery production lines remained idle last year probably due to overinvestment. This year, increased orders from LG Chem’s existing customers and the scheduled supply of batteries to Renaut are expected to slightly raise LG Chem’s battery production lines’ utilization rate.
Of the seven production lines (3.2GWh in combined capacity) at LG Chem’s factory in Ochang, the utilization rate of battery production lines that roll out batteries for the GM Chevrolet Volt and HEVs (hybrid electric vehicles) manufactured by Hyundai and Kia fell short of 20% (0.6GWh) in 2012.
LG Chem’s factory in Ochang is capable of churning out batteries for 200,000 Chevrolet Volt units, but LG Chem sold about 25,000 batteries for the GM Chevrolet Volt and about 60,000 batteries for Sonata Hybrid and K5 Hybrid.
An official from LG Chem said, “Though we mainly produce battery systems for the GM Chevrolet Volt, there are numerous car models running on our batteries which we cannot name publicly. It is true that large-scale investment in the Ochang factory was made upfront, but the factory is expected to grow remarkably this year as the electric vehicle market last year grew threefold from the year before.”
Sean Chung (hbpark@etnews.com)
**Article provided by etnews [Korea IT News]
[Reference] : http://english.etnews.com/electronics/2715655_1303.html