2023-10-02 22:21:24
Chinese outpost in Germany: The new battery cell factory of the world’s largest car battery manufacturer, CATL, near Arnstadt. Image: Picture Alliance
The Chinese dominate the battery market for electric cars. When they start production in Germany, China’s experts will be the development helpers.
The Chinese company CATL’s first European battery plant still seems shrouded in mystery. Near Arnstadt, on Autobahn 4 between Gotha and Erfurt, CATL has just started ramping up production of battery cells. And CATL, founded in 2011 in the small city of Ningde (population three million) by Chinese standards, halfway between Shanghai and Hong Kong, is now the world’s largest manufacturer of car batteries and stationary storage batteries for the energy industry, with around 100,000 employees. Construction of the battery cell factory in Ichtershausen near Arnstadt began in 2019. There are currently 1,000 employees working in this production facility and at a second nearby location, and this number is expected to increase to 2,000 in the foreseeable future. In cell production, a production line is already running at half capacity; in the future, six highly automated production lines will deliver 120,000 battery cells every day, 30 million a year. Clean room conditions therefore apply to around 70 percent of the newly built hall, 500 meters long and 200 meters wide.
The management team of the new factory doesn’t want to share a lot of details about the factory. Nevertheless, the doors were opened a crack for participants in a conference on car batteries. The organizer, the Duisburg Center for Automotive Research, ultimately chose nearby Weimar as the conference location because of a visit to CATL. However, those of the 400 congress participants who worked on their own battery production were not accepted as visitors by CATL.
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