Chinese battery manufacturer EVE held a groundbreaking ceremony for its production plant in Hungary on May 30. The plant is located in an industrial park in the north part of the city of Debrecen. It is also adjacent to a vehicle production plant operated by BMW. Hence, it is highly likely that the EVE’s plant will supply the batteries for BMW’s electric cars.
Earlier on May 9 of this year, EVE announced that its wholly-owned sub-subsidiary EVE Hungary formally acquired a piece of land in the industrial park and would be building a plant for the manufacturing of cylindrical NEV power batteries.
Even earlier this March, EVE disclosed that it will be setting up battery production capacity in Debrecen. Furthermore, this overseas plant will be outputting a new type of cylindrical NEV power battery. There are speculations that EVE will be making series-46 cylindrical cells or large-sized cylindrical cells in Hungary. The company has been bullish about this large-sized cylindrical batteries. Liu Jincheng, chairman of EVE, said that his company will begin production and shipments of the type-4695 cylindrical cell within this year.
EVE has developed its own fabrication process for large-sized cylindrical cells. The pilot production line is currently in operation. The company intends to deploy this fabrication process at its production sites in Chengdu (China’s Sichuan Province), Shenyang (China’s Liaoning Province), and Debrecen. The company’s planned production capacity for large-sized cylindrical cells is projected to reach above 100GWh per year by 2025.
Regarding potential buyers, EVE received a supply confirmation letter from Dayun Motor in April 2022. Then, BMW sent a supply confirmation letter to EVE as well in September 2022. BMW specified that EVE would be providing large-sized cylindrical Li-ion battery cells for its Neue Klasse series.