HiSonic Establishes US Subsidiary to Address Secondary Battery Volume

HiSonic announced on the 22nd that it will establish a local subsidiary in Atlanta, Georgia, USA, for its secondary battery business.

The company plans to complete the establishment of the US subsidiary within this month and, after various preparations such as equipment ordering and factory facility expansion, aims to start local mass production as early as May. Through strengthening business cooperation with the vendor Envision AESC (hereinafter AESC) in the US, it intends to expand its global secondary battery parts business foundation.

Since Georgia is close to AESC's Tennessee plant as well as the Kentucky plant, it is expected that the ability to respond to secondary battery orders centered on the Tennessee and Kentucky plants will be strengthened in the future.

In 2022, AESC invested a total of $2 billion (2.45 trillion KRW) to start construction of its second US local plant following the Tennessee plant. Full-scale production is scheduled to begin in 2026, supplying global automakers such as Mercedes-Benz. The production capacity (CAPA) of the Kentucky plant is about 30 GWh per year, equivalent to 300,000 to 450,000 electric vehicles.

HiSonic expects the Atlanta local subsidiary to serve as a key forward base for expanding battery business not only in the North American region but also within the United States. The North American market is rapidly emerging as a more important market than any other region due to the implementation of the US government's Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). Global battery companies from Korea's top three battery makers as well as Europe and Japan are also expanding production facilities such as manufacturing plants and joint ventures in the North American region.

A company official stated, “We are swiftly advancing the secondary battery new business, from receiving the can-cap assembly development drawings from AESC to establishing the US local subsidiary,” and added, “As the next step, we plan to build a US production plant, so we expect to achieve concrete results related to the secondary battery business soon.”