Faraday Future reportedly signed a massive $2.4 billion supply contract with LG Chem for battery cells

When Faraday Future announced its electric vehicle factory in Nevada, it confirmed that it will be building the vehicles down to the battery pack with its EV platform called VPA, which is short for ‘Variable Platform Architecture’, but it also confirmed that it will import the battery cells.

Now a leak coming from LG Chem, one of the biggest supplier of batteries for electric cars, suggests that Faraday Future not only selected the battery cells from the Korean battery maker, but that they signed a supply deal worth 2.7 trillion won (US$2.40 billion).

The Korea Herald, which often leaks information from Korean tech companies, reported the news in a slightly confusing report citing that the contract was signed with Faraday Future, but to supply batteries for LeEco’s LeSee.

As reported yesterday, LeEco, a Chinese tech company financing Faraday Future, disclosed having raised $1.08 billion USD to finance its electric car effort, which includes the LeSee.

What is important to note is that LeEco’s LeSee has been designed on Faraday Future’s announced VPA platform and therefore, it’s safe to assume that are involved in the development process of the vehicle.

There’s no word on the timeline of the contract, but we can get a rough idea of the volume based on its value. At $2.4 billion and a rough price of ~$145/ kWh represents ~16.5 GWh of battery cells. At ~80 kWh per battery pack, it could be big enough for ~200,000 vehicles.

LeEco disclosed planning for a capacity of 400,000 vehicles per year at its upcoming factory in China, while FF is aiming to produce at least 140,000 vehicles per year at its plant in Nevada.