SK Innovation’s car battery plant in Seosan, 150 kilometers south of Seoul. (image: SK Innovation)
SEOUL, Sept. 7 (Korea Bizwire) — SK Innovation Co., a South Korean manufacturer of electric vehicle (EV) batteries, is considering building its third battery plant in Hungary to meet growing demand for EV batteries amid the global race for zero-emissions cars.
“We have launched certain processes, such as looking for a candidate site” for the proposed plant, SK Innovation said in a statement.
Currently, SK Innovation runs a plant with an annual capacity of 7.5 gigawatt-hours (GWh) in the northwestern Hungarian city of Komarom.
SK Innovation has also been working to build its second plant with a capacity of 9.8 GWh next to the first plant.
Komarom is home to assembly lines of German carmaker Audi and is not far from a plant of another German automaker, Daimler AG, which owns Mercedes-Benz.
The EV battery market has been on a roll as global automakers race to go electric due to tightened regulations on greenhouse gas emissions, which scientists say are to blame for global warming.
SK Innovation is South Korea’s top oil refiner, but it has been moving into the electric vehicle battery business since 2008 as part of efforts to find new revenue sources.
(Yonhap)
