Electronics and power-equipment maker Toshiba Corp. completed construction Wednesday of a second lithium-ion battery plant to meet rising demand for electric vehicles.

The plant in Kashiwazaki, Niigata Prefecture, will start mass production in February with initial monthly capacity of 500,000 cells, Toshiba said in a statement.

The factory will produce quick-charging batteries for electric vehicles ranging from motorcycles to forklifts and cars and cost about ¥25 billion, the company said earlier.

While lithium-ion batteries are still used mostly in laptops and mobile phones, competition is heating up among electronics makers to supply cells for electric vehicles.

Toshiba said in July it was in talks with Mitsubishi Motors Corp., which currently gets batteries from GS Yuasa Corp.

"What will determine the medium-term survivability of these battery makers is their relationship with the car companies," said Xiaomai Feng, an analyst at Macquarie Group Ltd. in Tokyo. "Everybody's trying to team up."

The market for lithium-ion batteries will more than quadruple to ¥4.5 trillion in the next decade, according to Nomura Research Institute Ltd. Most of the growth in demand for the cells may come from automakers, with sales of batteries in electric, hybrid and plug-in hybrid cars projected to increase to ¥1.7 trillion in 2020 from almost zero last year, according to March estimates at Daiwa Securities Group Inc.

Nissan Motor Co., the nation's third-largest carmaker, has a venture with NEC Corp. that supplies the lithium-ion cells for its Leaf, a battery-powered vehicle that goes on sale in December. Chief Executive Officer Carlos Ghosn estimates electric vehicles will account for 10 percent of all car sales by 2020, assuming oil costs more than $70 a barrel.

The Yokohama-based carmaker has booked more than 26,000 orders for the Leaf, and Ghosn has said he aims to have capacity to build 500,000 electric cars annually by the end of 2012.