Vice Chairman Park Jin-soo of LG Chem delivers his speech at a recent ceremony for construction of the No.2 electric car battery plant in Nanjing, China. (Photos: LG Chem)

A view of the ceremony to kick start the construction of No. 2 electric car battery plant in Nanjing, China, for LG Chem with a slew of both local Chinese and Korean dignitaries attending led by Nanjing City Communist Party Sec.Gen. Jang Ningku and Vice Chairman Park Jin-soo of LG Chem.

LG Chem will soon build its second electric car battery plant in Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, in China, at a cost of 2.1 trillion won, the company announced on Oct.23. The company held a ceremony to kick off the huge project with a slew of local dignitaries, including Nanjing City Communist Party Sec. Sen. Jang Ning-ku and LG Chem’s Vice Chairman Park Jin-soo.

Vice Chairman Park declared that they will make the 2nd electric battery plant in Nanjing City to be one of the best in the world. He said the plant will have the latest electric battery production facilities equipped with modern technologies. LG Chem will meet the growing demand for electric car batteries around the world, he said.

The new plant is being built on a site equal to 24 football fields, with a total space of 200,000 square km, in three stories. It is to be completed by 2023. The plant will be the company’s 5th in operation, with other including such cities as Ochang, Korea, the two plants in Nanjing, China, a plant in Poland, and a plant in Holland, Michigan. When all of the plants are in full operation, they will turn out the electric car batteries for 1.5 million electric cars around the world annually, LG Chem said.

The company chose to build its 2nd electric car battery plant at a site only 45 km from its 1st plant in Nanjing to boost synergy in a number of areas of operation, including production and management, in particular, the supply of raw materials.

In addition, the joint-venture firm with a Chinese partner is also located not very far from Nanjing, only 180 km the same distance between Jinju, South Gyeongsang Province and Seoul in Korea, which is also a great advantage for management of those plants in China.

In April, LG Chem set up a joint-venture firm with Hwayu Cobalt, a global level cobalt refining firm in Wushi, Jiangsu Province, China. LG Chem has been able to secure a vertical production process for its lithium-ion car battery production by setting up the j.v. cobalt production company.

Vice Chairman Park said following the establishment of a j.v. cobalt firm, that through a strong vertical production process, “We should make effort s to cut the price of the lithium-ion battery and strengthen the quality of the batteries, urging for a total effort for reform.”

Officials of the company said the plant in Ochang will be a hub for core technologies to produce lithium-ion batteries for LG Chem controlling the production volume of the electric car batteries around the world. The two electric car plants in China will be the supply base for electric car batteries for customers in Asia, while the plants in Poland and the U.S. will take charge of filling orders for those batteries in Europe and North America.

A Bloomberg report suggested that that the sale of electric vehicles will hit 41 million by 2040. This would be almost 90 times the equivalent figure for 2015. The electric vehicle sales for 2015 were up approximately 60% on 2014 at an are estimated 462,000.

The report also highlights that by the year 2022, electric vehicles will cost the same as their gasoline-driven equivalents, the point from where, sale of EVs will takeoff.

The electric vehicle market has big players like BMW, Volkswagen, Ford, Tesla, Toyota, General Motors, Mitsubishi, and Renault-Nissan, among others. And, in order to tap the market further, these companies are investing heavily in projects supporting EVs, which holds huge potential in the coming years.

However, the dynamics of the EV market would most importantly depend on the interplay of oil prices as well as cost of manufacturing the plug-in vehicles.