VinES Energy Solutions Joint Stock Company (VinES), a member of VinGroup, and Gotion High-tech, officially broke ground at the joint venture battery factory in Vietnam.
This new plant will be crucial to support VinGroup's VinFast ambition to produce and sell electric cars globally at scale.
The joint venture, of which 51% belongs to Gotion High-tech, while the remaining 49% is held by VinES, is located in Vietnam Ha Tinh Economic Development Zone. The total investment is estimated at 6,329 billion VND ($275 million).
Production is expected to begin at the end of 2023 with a target capacity of 5 GWh of lithium-ion battery cells (LFP) annually. That's the equivalent of about 100,000 battery packs (50 kWh each).
VinGroup already started construction of the VinES Battery Manufacturing Factory, envisioned for battery packs (up to 100,000 per year). The new project comes on top of that, bringing in-house also battery cell production and potentially expanding the output up to 1 million packs annually at some point in the future.
VinFast currently offers two electric car models - VF 8 and VF 9 - in Vietnam and it just started export of the VF 8 model to the US. So far, the company collected more than 65,000 global orders, including the recent 2,500-unit order from Autonomy, the US’ largest electric vehicle subscription company. In the pipeline, there are also three other EVs: VF 5, VF 6, and VF 7 in the A, B, and C segments.
For Gotion High-tech, the partnership with VinFast is another step in its strategy to expand battery manufacturing output to 300 GWh annually (200 GWh in China and 100 GWh overseas).
VinES and Gotion High-tech battery JV in brief:
- joint venture: Gotion High-tech (51%), VinES (49%)
- location: Vietnam Ha Tinh Economic Development Zone
- size: 14 hectares (34.5 acres)
- construction start: November 2022
- production start (target): by the end of 2023
- production capacity: 5 GWh/year or approximately 30 million battery cells
- battery chemistry: LFP
- jobs: 500
