SK Energy Co., South Korea's top refiner, said Monday it will build a plant on the country's west coast to produce batteries for hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs) by 2012.
The plant, to be built in Seosan, 151 kilometers southwest of Seoul, will produce 500-megawatt hour (MWh) batteries that can offer power to about 500,000 HEVs, SK Energy said. A megawatt hour is the amount of power used if 1 million watts are used for 1 hour.
HEVs are powered by both batteries and gasoline, while electric vehicles (EVs) are propelled by only electrical power.
SK Energy completed its first battery plant that can produce 100-MWh batteries in Daejeon, 164km south of Seoul, in May.
The company plans to provide batteries for the i10, a high-speed EV to be developed by the country's top automaker Hyundai Motor Co. and its smaller affiliate Kia Motors Corp., by the end of this year. High-speed EVs can travel at a speed of more than 60km per hour.
SK Energy will offer batteries for new EVs that the two automakers aim to launch at the end of 2011.
The company signed a deal with German automaker Daimler AG to supply EV batteries in September 2009.
SK Energy is also producing lithium-ion battery separators (LiBS), a key component in EV batteries. The company broke ground for its sixth and seventh LiBS plants in April, with the aim of starting mass production in 2012.