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LFP battery maker taps Arizona for $1.2B gigafactory

A rendering of American Battery Factory's planned gigafactory in Tuscon, Arizona. ABF said it plans to invest more than $1 billion in the facility over the next decade. (Courtesy: American Battery Factory)

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A manufacturer of lithium iron phosphate battery cells has chosen Tuscon, Arizona, for its first gigafactory, representing an estimated capital investment of $1.2 billion.

American Battery Factory said the site will be its first in a network of gigafactories based in the U.S. Initially, the 2-million square foot Tuscon facility will support 300 jobs with the ability to scale up to 1,000 over time, ABF said in a press release.

Paul Charles, ABF's CEO, announced that Tuscon will also serve as the company's headquarters. The company plans to have its headquarters, R&D center and initial factory module built within the next 18 to 24 months, they said.

“This investment represents a generational opportunity both for us as a company and for Tucson as a community as a means to truly make energy independence a reality for everyone,” Charles said in a statement.

ABF aims to capitalize on the growing demand for energy storage and electric vehicle market while providing an alternative to traditional lithium battery technologies. ABF's LFP battery cells don't require the use of cobalt, which has ethical sourcing issues.

ONE Circle property in Van Buren Charter Township, Mich. Credit: ONE

For industry and geopolitical reasons, there's momentum surrounding the onshoring of battery cell manufacturing, which primarily exists in China.

In October, Our Next Energy (ONE) announced plans to invest $1.6 billion in a new battery cell manufacturing facility in its home state of Michigan.

The facility is expected to have an annual capacity of 20 GWh by the end of 2027, equivalent to 200,000 electric vehicle battery packs annually. State incentives worth $236 million are pending approval by state lawmakers.

The company said it plans to onshore its supply chain and integrate materials refinement with its Massachusetts-based partner 6K Energy into its manufacturing processes. 6K Energy has an ongoing relationship with Albemarle, a global supplier of lithium.

And in November, Norway-based FREYR Battery said it acquired a site in Coweta County, Georgia, for its planned $1.7 billion Giga America battery plant. The company said it plans to launch detailed project engineering in the coming months.

The first phase is planned to be a cell production module with around 34 GWh of capacity, based on the next-generation of 24M’s U.S.-based SemiSolid production platform. 

The company said it is evaluating other cell production lines that could bring total capital investments to more than $2.6 billion through 2029. 

The recent passage of the Inflation Reduction Act raised expectations that U.S. demand for ESS, passenger EV and other electric mobility applications will “grow rapidly over the next decade,” said FREYR’s co-founder and CEO Tom Einar Jensen.

The SemiSolid electrode technology was invented in the MIT lab of Dr. Yet-Ming Chiang, and mixes electrolyte with active materials to form a clay-like slurry. The slurry enables the manufacture of thick electrodes with less volume, mass and cost while enabling a simpler manufacturing process. 

By John Engel -12.7.2022

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