American Battery Factory lines up equipment partner for Tucson 'gigafactory'

American Battery Factory Inc. is partnering with one of China’s biggest battery-production equipment makers to equip its first battery “gigafactory” near Tucson International Airport.

Under a partnership announced Monday, Wuxi Lead Intelligent Equipment will collaborate with American Battery Factory to build a fully automated production line for its proprietary lithium-iron phosphate battery cells at Pima County’s Aerospace Research Campus.

The company, a spinoff of Utah-based battery pack maker Lion Energy, plans to invest $1.2 billion in capital investment and hire about 1,000 new jobs at full buildout of its Tucson factory complex at the research campus, where it broke ground on the first-phase factory in October.

Being built under a lease-purchase agreement with Pima County approved in December 2022, the battery factory is expected to employ about 300 workers initially and generate $3.1 billion in economic impact to the state over 10 years.

The partnership agreement marks a key milestone in develop of the factory, since many design decisions are based on the production-line design, and triggers a “robust construction effort” on the Tucson plant.

With a targeted completion in 2025, the first ABF gigafactory will include the company’s headquarters, a research and development innovation center as well as an initial factory module capable of producing 20 gigawatt-hours worth of battery cells annually, the company said.

Under the partnership, Lead Intelligent Equipment (LEAD) will collaborate with American Battery Factory to build and install a fully automated production line to handle every key step of the battery cell manufacturing process.

Founded in 1991, LEAD is one of the world’s biggest suppliers of battery-making equipment, with 16 subsidiaries and 50 service outlets across Europe, America and Asia and customers including Panasonic, Sony, Samsung, LG Chem and Volkswagen.

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ABF said it also is working with several U.S.-based companies to secure additional equipment, building controls, software, programmable logic controllers, cyber systems and other resources.

The company has previously announced partnerships with Honeywell, First Phosphate, Anovion, Celgard, FNA Group and Lion Energy to provide products and services including digital platforms, lithium sourcing, anode and separator materials and battery-pack integration.

ABF plans to eventually build a network of its gigafactories, which are designed as sprung-fabric structures that can be erected quickly.

The company says it plans to make cells for lithium iron phosphate batteries for uses including energy storage and electric vehicles.

Also known as lithium ferrous phosphate or LFP, lithium iron phosphate batteries can outperform nickel-cobalt lithium ion batteries commonly used in consumer products as well as EVs, without the related concerns over sourcing of such materials and their propensity to heat up and catch fire, the company says.

ABF says its batteries will be designed to perform more than 10,000 life full charging cycles, far exceeding the average performance of most other cobalt-based, lithium-ion batteries.

And though LFP batteries can’t match the range nickel-cobalt lithium batteries can provide for EVs, they are used in many EV models in China, where range isn’t as big of an issue, and U.S. carmakers including Tesla and General Motors are looking at using LFP batteries for shorter-range EV models.