Toshiba to Build Another Li Ion Facility in Japan

Here is more good news for EV enthusiasts. The greater the production of EV batteries, the lower the cost will become thus making real EV's affordable to the masses.

From Green Car Congress:

Anticipating strong future demand, Toshiba Corporation will construct a second dedicated production facility for its safe, long-life, rapid charge SCiB battery (earlier post), in the Kashiwazaki Frontier Park, in Kashiwazaki city, Niigata prefecture.

Construction is scheduled to start in April 2010, with a completion date of October 2010. In spring 2011, the plant will start to produce SCiB cells and modules for application in battery-powered electric vehicles (EV). The initial capacity of 500,000 cells a month is expected to rise when the automotive application market takes off in fiscal year 2011, allowing the plant to achieve significant cost reductions through mass production.

The total investment in construction and installation of manufacturing equipment will be in the region of ¥25 billion (US$276 million), and the new facility will have a floor area be approximately 33,000 m².

The market for lithium-ion batteries is expected to see significant demand growth, and to account for a growing share of a lithium-ion battery market scale that is expected to reach sales of approximately ¥2 trillion (US$22 billion) worldwide in fiscal year 2015.

Toshiba anticipates strong demand for SCiB, primarily for application in battery-powered electric vehicles (EV), in a range extending from motorcycles to forklifts through to cars.

Toshiba positions the SCiB as a new business with promising long term growth potential. The company currently produces SCiB for industrial applications at Saku Operations in Nagano prefecture. Establishing a new production facility site will support an operating structure that allows timely responses to increasing demand from the new market for battery-powered electric vehicles (EV) and also for the power storage market that will accompany the coming transition to Smart Grids. The company aims to achieve net sales of ¥200 billion (US$2.2 billion) from the SCiB business by fiscal year 2015.