Chinese electric vehicle battery maker Sunwoda said on Thursday it would build a RMB 12 billion ($1.71 billion) facility in Yichang, a city in the central Hubei province, to serve state-owned automaker Dongfeng Motor. The plant will be built in two phases and have a total capacity of 30 gigawatt-hours (GWh) of batteries annually. The exact site is still undecided and it is unknown when construction will begin, according to a company statement. The Shenzhen-listed firm supplied 4.04 GWh worth of batteries from January to August this year, accounting for 2.5% of the country’s EV battery market, official figures showed. [Sunwoda statement, in Chinese]