The city of Hefei in central China has become one of the most aggressive cities in the new energy vehicle industry chain. It has NeoPark, a joint development with Nio, and the city also has an economic demonstration park, which has just welcomed a big player.

On June 23, power battery maker Gotion High-tech officially started construction of its battery material base in the park, which is planned to cover an area of 2,280 acres with a total investment of RMB 12 billion ($1.85 billion).

The project covers the front-end raw materials for lithium-ion power batteries and the back-end battery recycling and secondary utilization.

The project is located in the eastern part of Hefei, about 1.5 hours drive from NeoPark in the western part of Hefei.

It will be built in phases, with the first part of the project expected to be operational in 2022.

Gotion installed 0.49 GWh of power batteries in China in May, ranking fifth with a 5 percent market share in China, according to the China Automotive Battery Innovation Alliance.

From January to May, it ranked fifth with 2.13 GWh of power batteries installed in China and a market share of 5.1 percent.

Gotion aims to be able to provide 100 GWh of power battery raw material supply by 2025 and to effectively address lithium recycling and gradient utilization.

(Source: Gotion High-tech)