Hitachi to raise lithium-ion battery output 70-fold - Nikkei

July 2 (Reuters) - Hitachi Ltd (6501.T), Japan's biggest industrial electronics group, plans to boost production capacity for lithium-ion batteries for hybrid cars at an estimated cost of 20-30 billion yen, targeting a 70-fold increase by 2015, the Nikkei business daily said.

Capacity will initially be raised more than 600 percent by next autumn, the paper said it learnt on Wednesday.

Hitachi has already received orders for lithium-ion batteries for 100,000 hybrid autos that General Motors GMGMQ.PK plans to sell from next year, Nikkei said.

With an eye toward winning orders from domestic and other overseas carmakers, Hitachi will bolster capacity to meet the needs of 700,000 hybrids a year, the paper said.

Each hybrid vehicle is generally equipped with 30-50 lithium-ion batteries.

Hitachi will mass produce two new types of lithium-ion batteries for use in next-generation hybrid vehicles.

In addition to significant improvements in output density, the batteries are half the weight and size of conventional nickel-metal hydride ones, Nikkei said.

Production will be undertaken at subsidiary Hitachi Vehicle Energy Ltd's Tokai works in Ibaraki Prefecture, the paper said.

The global market for hybrid-use batteries will be worth almost 600 billion yen in 2015, according to JPMorgan Securities Japan Co, and Hitachi is targeting sales of 100 billion yen that fiscal year, Nikkei said.

In 2000, Hitachi was the first to start volume production of high-capacity lithium-ion batteries for commercial vehicles.

It has supplied batteries for a few thousand vehicles to automakers such as Isuzu Motors Ltd (7202.T) and Mitsubishi Fuso Truck & Bus Corp. (Reporting by Shailesh Kuber in Bangalore; Editing by Unnikrishnan Nair)