(Yicai Global) May 17 -- PowerCo, a battery firm owned by German carmaker Volkswagen Group, will seek Asian partners to build three new battery plants in the next 10 years, to help realize the parent company’s goal of going all electric, The Paper reported today.

The report cited Sebastian Wolf, chief operating officer at the battery unit, who spoke yesterday at an industry forum in Shenzhen, China.

PowerCo will be responsible for Volkswagen’s global battery business, VW announced last July. In addition to battery production, the newly-established company will also take charge of upstream and downstream businesses of the battery industry chain.

According to VW’s plan, PowerCo and its partners will invest more than EUR20 billion (USD2.55 billion) to build six battery plants by 2030. Their annual capacity will total 240 gigawatt hours, enough to support the production of as many as three million EVs a year and generate annual sales of more than EUR20 billion.

At present, PowerCo has plans for three battery plants. These include two 40 GWh factories: one is under construction in Salzgitter, Germany and the other in Valencia, Spain. A 90 GWh plant in St. Thomas city in Canada’s Ontario province is set to break ground next year.

“There are many local battery firms in Europe, but none of them are particularly successful,” the report quoted Wolf as saying. “We hope to be the one that will eventually succeed.

“We have to find partners with more experience,” he said. “We hope to find partners in Asia to realize a win-win situation.”

At present, Chinese battery firm Contemporary Amperex Technology and South Korea’s LG Energy Solution are the major battery suppliers for VW’s EV models, which mostly use nickel-cobalt-manganese ternary batteries.

Gotion High-tech’s subsidiary in Hefei recently received a letter of procurement from VW, the Chinese battery firm said on May 10. The unit will become a designated supplier of lithium iron phosphate power lithium-ion batteries to VW in overseas markets.

Editor: Peter Thomas