In July it was announced that LG Chem was working on a potential new billion-dollar US battery cell factory for electric cars. Today in a security filing in South Korea, LG Chem confirmed that investment, and that GM will invest another billion.

Reuters reports that the location is expected to be in the area of Lordstown, Ohio, where GM (pictured in Detroit) recently sold its factory to an EV startup affiliated with Workhorse. This follows news earlier this week that Piedmont Lithium received an important federal permit to proceed with its lithium mine in Gaston County, North Carolina — the second in North America. Looks like Interstate 77 will be America’s hot new lithium corridor.

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In today’s Electrek Green Energy Brief (EGEB):

• National Clean Energy Week Policy Makers Symposium takes place today in Washington, DC.
• GM proposes a battery plant for EVs in Ohio strike talks — but with lower pay.
• Caltech will be given $750 million for green energy research — the second-largest donation ever to a US university.
• Emission-optimized EV charging can prevent a lot of wasted energy.

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Since announcing its plan to build 2 to 3 million electric cars a year and to unveil 30 new models by 2025 – across all its brands (VW, Audi, Porsche, etc.), Volkswagen has been rumored to be planning to build one or more giant battery factory to support this plan.

But the German automaker has yet to confirm any plan to build one, though they now admitted seeing a need for 40 Gigafactory-size battery factories for electric vehicles by 2025. expand full story

Just a few weeks after unveiling its own new battery Gigafactory for electric vehicles in Germany, Daimler is now announcing a new $740 million battery factory project in China.

The new factory will support the production of batteries for electric vehicles under the Mercedes-Benz brand. expand full story

After the ‘Dieselgate’ scandal, Volkswagen has come out as one of the major automakers most committed to electric cars. Earlier this year, the company announced its plan to build 2 to 3 million all-electric cars a year and to unveil 30 new models by 2025 – across all its brands (VW, Audi, Porsche, etc.).

Tesla is aiming for similar volumes and we all know what the company did in order to secure the battery supply to support that kind of electric car production; the Gigafactory. Earlier this year, an insider report came out saying that Volkswagen was about to present to its board of directors a project similar to Tesla’s Gigafactory and build a ‘multi-billion euro battery factory’, but Volkswagen CEO, Matthias Müller, later denied the plan.

VW’s management is apparently now more open to the idea of Volkswagen building its own battery factory following a restructuring of the company announced last week. expand full story

Daimler announced today an important €500 million ($543.5 million) investment in a new battery factory in Kamenz, Germany, through its ACCUmotive subsidiary. The company already has a relatively small battery plant at the location, but it purchased 20 hectares of land adjacent to the existing plant and plans to build a new factory to produce li-ion batteries for the electric vehicles of its Mercedes and Smart brands.

To be clear, two years ago, ACCUmotive invested about €100 million to expand the current plant, which now has 20,000 square meters (~215,000 sq-ft) of production aera, but this new investment is for an entirely new factory of 40,000 square meters (~430,500 sq-ft) of production space. expand full story

Recent pictures of Tesla’s Gigafactory 1 in Nevada have been scarce lately. We were getting regular updates via drone videos, but those stopped and were even taken down. We can’t say it was the cause, but the videos were taken down not long after two journalists from Gannett’s Reno Gazette Journal (RGJ) were involved in an altercation with two Tesla safety managers on the property, while they were trying to take pictures. expand full story

According to a new report from the Reno Gazette-Journal, the Tesla Gigafactory is still ahead of schedule, but it is falling short on job creation and capital investment projections for the project. It would be important to note that RGJ is making these claims based on the most recent data available – dated September 30 and June 30 – while comparing the numbers to the state’s projections for the end of 2015.

In its analysis, RGJ assumes that Tesla is still falling short in the fourth quarter because it was lagging so far behind in September.  expand full story

Panasonic is investing 50 billion yen ($412 million) in China to build a lithium-ion battery factory aimed at the electric vehicle market, according to a new report from Nikkei. The annual capacity is projected to be the equivalent of “around 200,000 electric vehicles”, but we don’t know the average capacity per vehicle. expand full story

Navigant Research recently named LG Chem the #1 leading supplier of batteries for electric vehicles. The company has been a longtime partner of GM for the production of the Chevy Volt and it recently attracted interest from other electric vehicle makers such as Nissan and Tesla.

Those manufacturers plan to introduce several mass market electric vehicles in the coming years and if LG wants to keep its lead, it will need to significantly increase its battery production output. And the Korea-based electronic giant is counting on its Michigan battery plant to keep up with the auto market.  expand full story