China’s BYD Co Ltd is planning to triple its production of electric batteries this year, in “a bid to take on Tesla Motors in the race to boost energy storage”.

The Shenzhen-based car maker said that it became the sixth-biggest battery maker for hybrid and plug-in vehicles in 2014 and intends to add 6GWhr of global battery production in each of the next three years.

The car maker said that this means it could reach about 34GWhr of battery production by the beginning of 2020.


BYD recently announced that it will open a new factory in Brazil at the end of the year; towards the end of 2014, it opened two manufacturing plants in Southern California for the production of electric buses.

The electric-battery market is expected to grow to $1.5 billion by 2019, from $128 million in 2014.