GS Yuasa plans battery plant for electric cars-paper

TOKYO Aug 6 (Reuters) - A joint venture led by car battery maker GS Yuasa Corp (6674.T) will spend about 4 billion yen ($36.94 million) to build a factory to make lithium-ion batteries, starting production next spring with annual output sufficient to power 10,000 electric vehicles, the Nikkei business daily said on Wednesday.

The joint venture with Mitsubishi Corp (8058.T) and Mitsubishi Motors Corp (7211.T) plans to invest an additional 10 billion yen to increase the annual output to sufficient to power 20,000 electric cars by 2012, the paper said. The venture had been scheduled to begin mass production early next year with the original planned annual output enough to power 2,000 cars, but it has decided to expand the production capacity to stay ahead of rivals, the Nikkei said. ($1=108.27 Yen) (Reporting by Taiga Uranaka; Editing by Michael Watson)