Chinese car and battery maker BYD, 10 per cent owned by US billionaire Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway, will invest 22.5 billion yuan ($3.3bn, £2bn)) over five years to build China's largest solar power battery plant, according to reports in the Chinese press.
Shenzhen-based BYD, which aims to sell 800,000 vehicles next year, will build the plant in China's Shaanxi province, according to a report in the South China Morning Post.
The plant will have capacity to produce a total of 5,000MW of batteries. In December, BYD received 15 billion yuan in credit from the Bank of China.
BYD chairman Wang Chuanfu has said that the carmaker is aiming to become the world's largest automaker by 2025. BYD's F3 sedan was the best-selling car in China in the first 11 months of 2009, and the firm plans to start selling its first electric car, the e6, in the first quarter of 2010.
The e6 sedan is powered by a Lithium-ion battery that can be quick charged to 50 per cent of capacity in 10 minutes and fully charged in an hour and will mainly be supplied to government, the civil service and taxi fleets.
By year's end, BYD also plans to begin selling the e6 in the US at a price expected to be about $40,000.
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