Jaguar reportedly signs important 5 GWh cylindrical battery contract with Samsung for upcoming EVs

Jaguar is planning to launch new electric vehicles and it could be in a much bigger way than with the new I-Pace.

The British automaker has reportedly signed an important 5 GWh cylindrical battery cell contract with Samsung for upcoming electric vehicles.

The Korea Times reported that Samsung SDI won the contract to sell 5 GWh of 21700 battery cells from its Hungary factory per year:

Samsung SDI fiercely competed with other battery makers including LG Chem and Panasonic to win a contract from the British carmaker since last year. The company declined to confirm, saying “we cannot offer information related with our customer companies.”

Samsung is reportedly going to start supplying the new cells for Jaguar Land Rover’s new electric vehicles in 2020.

Electrek’s Take

There are a few interesting things here.

First off, Jaguar is currently using pouch cells from LG Chem for the I-Pace. It is a big battery architecture change to go from pouch cells to cylindrical cells.

Only Tesla and a few EV startups have been using this architecture while established automakers have been preferring the simpler pouch cell-based architecture.

Secondly, 5 GWh per year represents an important increase in electric vehicle production for Jaguar.

Based on a 90 kWh battery pack (the current I-Pace battery pack), it would be over 55,000 all-electric vehicles per year, which is about twice the expected production capacity for the I-Pace.

It is an encouraging sign for increased electric production capacity for the electric automakers.

That said, it is still a fraction of what Tesla and Panasonic are producing at Gigafactory 1 or what automakers like VW and BMW have contracted with battery cell manufacturers.

As we have often emphasized, securing battery cell supply is a great sign of an automaker being serious about mass producing electric vehicles.

In my opinion, this is a second great EV move from Jaguar in just a few weeks after they also confirmed production of the all-electric version of the E-type.