A 3.6GW pumped hydro project is being built in China to deliver grid services and back-up power at the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing and Zhangjiakou.
To meet the Winter Olympic deadline the $2.78 billion project in Hebei province will be built in two stages.
German auto giant Daimler is investing in a second battery and car production plant in Beijing with its Chinese state-owned automobile partner BAIC.
Daimler told BBB the companies would jointly invest more than CNY11.9 billion ($1.9bn) in the new facility at their Beijing Benz Automotive (BBAC) joint venture making lithium-ion batteries and “high-quality premium vehicles” for Daimler’s Mercedes-Benz brand.
Tesla has formed a new company in China for the research and development of batteries and energy storage devices, according to authorities in Beijing.
The new company has been named Tesla (Beijing) New Energy R&D Co Ltd, with a registered capital of $2 million, according to a document filed with the Chaoyang branch of the Beijing Administration for Industry and Commerce. The document is listed in China’s National Enterprise Credit Information Publicity System index.
Chinese carmaker BAIC Group and US-owned Chinese battery firm Funeng Technology (Ganzhou) are to invest a total of CNY10 billion ($1.2bn) to launch a batteries plant for new energy vehicles in Shunyi, Bejing.
The Shunyi district government said it has given the go-ahead for BAIC and Funeng to manufacture battery cells and battery packs with an annual production capacity of 8GWh.
One of China’s largest state-owned carmakers has stopped production of a sports utility model following a ruling by Beijing that EV batteries must meet certain criteria before they attract State subsidies.
JAC Motors has stopped production of its iEV6s electric sports utility vehicle (SUV), which had been powered by Samsung SDI’s batteries, exclusively chosen by the carmaker.
Korean battery giants Samsung SDI and LG Chem saw shares slump by 10% and 7.1% respectively on news that Beijing will remove subsidies for nickel manganese cobalt (NMC) batteries for electric buses.
“There has not been enough safety verification or product development for new energy electric passenger vehicles,” said China’s Ministry of Equipment Industry Secretary Zhang Xiangmu, who added China had begun research into the chemistry late and could ‘not be sure’ about NMC batteries.
The decision has surprised some.
