Recently we reported on a billion dollar deal that BMW struck with CATL. Turns out, that deal was actually a bit bigger than we originally thought.
The contract is now worth 4 billion Euros ($4.7 Billion) over the next few years and divided into two parts:
- 1.5 billion Euros from their German plant, which will be in Erfurt, close to their Leipzig plant
- 2.5 billion Euros from Chinese plants
BMW will need batteries in both countries as their current (and possibly future) i-series cars are made in their Leipzig plant, and their upcoming iX3 will be made in China.
The new CATL factory will reach a production of 14GWh by 2022. CATL as a whole reached shipments of 12 GWh in 2017.
CATL will now be BMW’s second battery supplier after Samsung SDI. But, BMW says that if that is still not enough, a third supplier can be added as they are in talks with eight different suppliers currently.
Source: Reuters