When Will Africa Get Its First Gigantic Battery Factory?
Early plans to invest $6.4 billion in a Moroccan factory for electric vehicle batteries would be a breakthrough for Africa
A stacking machine used in battery cell production in Volkswagen’s SalzGiga factory in Salzgitter, Germany. So far there are no large-scale battery factories in Africa, even though raw materials are often sourced on the continent.
Photographer: Krisztian Bocsi/BloombergAfrica doesn’t have a supersized battery factory of its own — at least not yet.
The idea of “gigafactories” capable of producing batteries that can store at least 1 billion watt-hours of electricity, or roughly enough to go into 16,000 Tesla Inc. Model 3 electric cars, became popular after Elon Musk used the term for his first sprawling battery facility in Nevada. Today there are hundreds of battery factories at this scale across Asia, North America and Europe.