South Korea’s LG Electronics Inc. is expected to register 2 trillion won ($1.7 billion) in its auto parts sales for this year while its battery-making affiliate LG Chem Ltd. is anticipated to maintain the sharp growth, thanks to the car parts and batteries to be supplied for the Chevrolet Bolt, the electric vehicle by U.S. automaker General Motors Co. (GM).

According to multiple industry sources on Sunday, LG Electronics’ vehicle components division posted sales of 674.9 billion won in the third quarter ended September 30, rising 41 percent on year and 5.5 percent on quarter. The January-September sales reached 1.9 trillion, exceeding full-year sales of 1.8 trillion won of last year. The auto parts sales have been on upward trend for seven straight quarters including the third quarter this year.

LG Electronics is scheduled to supply 11 different auto parts such as motor, power inverter, and battery packs for the Chevrolet Bolt, the all-electric vehicle GM will be releasing later this year. The electronics maker has invested up to 400 billion won on auto parts business this year for the deal.

Moreover, its LTE-based vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communication technology was chosen as the global standard by the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), a global standardization partnership, earlier this year, raising the chance for the company’s technology to be adopted in a wider variety of auto parts.

The sister battery maker LG Chem is anticipated to post full-year sales of 1.2 trillion won in electric vehicle (EV) battery business, jumping 70 percent on year from 700 billion won last year. The EV battery maker during a recent conference call discussing the third quarter earnings said its 2017 EV battery sales are expected to reach up to 2 trillion won, jumping 60 percent from this year.

LG Chem earlier this month started building an EV battery manufacturing plant in Poland, investing about 400 billion won, in a bid to expand its share in the growing European EV market. The plant that is scheduled to be completed by the end of 2018 with an aim to start operation in the second half next year will be capable of producing battery cells powering more than 100,000 pure high-performance EVs that can run up to 320 kilometers on a single charge. It will become the largest EV battery production capacity in Europe.

By Lee Dong-in

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