Battery maker Boston-Power is closing on a new investment round of $250 million from investors in China and elsewhere, according to the Wall Street Journal’s Venture Capital Dispatch blog. The company was founded in Massachusetts, but moved most of its operations to China in 2011. It currently sells batteries to the Beijing Electric Vehicle Company.

Boston-Power’s lithium-ion battery production plant in China has an annual capacity of 300 megawatt-hours, and the company plans to increase capacity to one gigawatt-hour next year, said Boston-Power’s Chairman and acting CEO Sonny Wu. Mr Wu also said that Boston-Power plans to sell about $100 million worth of product this year, and will soon consider a public offering.

Mr. Wu said that he expects Boston-Power to become profitable “in a couple of years.” He characterized his company’s expansion plans as competition for Elon Musk and Tesla, which plans to build a battery Gigafactory with 35 gigawatt-hours of capacity. “Somebody has to compete with him,” said Wu.

Source: WSJ via GigaOM