SK Innovation’s joint venture partner in China, Eve Energy, will be supplying batteries to autogiant BMW for electric vehicles (EV).
Eve Energy’s subsidiary Hubei Jinquan will be supplying batteries to BMW Brilliance, the car makers Chinese joint venture, the company said on Thursday.
The specifics of the deal wasn’t announced and Eve said the two parties were in talks.
It will the Chinese battery maker’s first to BMW. It makes both prismatic and pouch batteries and the German car maker mostly uses prismatic batteries.
Eve’s batteries will likely be used for SUV iX3, which is going to be wholly produced in China.
BMW has previously secured the majority of its battery supply from Samsung SDI. China’s CATL was added as a supplier in 2018. CATL signed a 7.3 billion euro deal with BMW for battery supply last year, over double the amount of Samsung SDI’s.
BMW also signed a 2 billion euro deal with Sweden’s Northvolt for batteries. It now has four batter suppliers, including Eve.
The German car maker is likely papering for pure EVs. It has been slower than Volkswagen, Audi, Mercedes-Benz and Volvo in launching EVs. It has only launched the i3 model. It will likely expand the number of models following iX3.
Samsung SDI will now aim to diversify its own client and improve its battery performances as its main offering, prismatic batteries, is also made by Chinese rivals that offer it more price competitively.
The South Korean battery maker is planning to produce its 5th generation batteries with NCM (nickel, cobalt and aluminum) anode and stacking process applied at its factory in Hungary.
Eve Energy has a joint venture with SK Innovation. They are building a new factory called Blue Sky United Energy at Yancheng. The plant will have an annual production rate of 20GWh to 25GWh. SK Innovation has provided 579.9 billion won and Eve 620 billion won for the operation.
