Welcome to this week’s battery roundup. The most important news surrounding battery technology and production from Europe and beyond.
New British Consortium for Solid-State Batteries
Seven British stakeholders, including Johnson Matthey, Britishvolt, Faraday Institution, and Oxford University have recently formed a consortium to advance the development and production of solid-state batteries. Together the consortium wants to harness UK academic capability as well as highly scalable manufacturing techniques to be at the forefront of solid-state batteries industrialization. A prototyping facility is currently being developed.
“Solid-state is the holy grail of battery solutions. Solid-state batteries have the potential to increase energy density significantly over battery technology available today and could dramatically, and positively, change the world of electric vehicles. Britishvolt will be at the forefront of commercialising this step change over the coming years. This collaboration […] underscores another key objective in our technology roadmap – home grown intellectual property.”
Orral Nadjari, Founder/CEO, Britishvolt
Check out my article from April about how European Automakers are tackling solid-state batteries if you’d like to know more about that.
Ilika Planning for Solid-State Battery Scale-Up
French frontrunner in solid-state battery development Ilika plc is planning on scaling up production for their EV battery. Goliath is Ilika’s EV application, a single layer pouch cell is currently being produced at 1kWh a week with plans to increase this number to 10kWh/week. The company hopes for a technology transfer to a higher scale by 2024/25 to produce Goliath batteries cost-effectively.
Earlier this year, Ilika had secured almost €25 million in funding for the project through retail placement and equity placing.
As part of a 12-month collaboration, Ilika is being supported by Comau UK. Together, the companies are planning the scale-up of Ilika’s solid-state battery manufacturing capacity at its lab-based facility in Romsey, UK.
Possible New Finnish Battery Factory
The Norwegian company FREYR Battery is considering building a battery factory in Finland. Together with the city of Vaasa and the Finnish Minerals Group, it signed an MoU for a possible battery factory in the west of Finland. In 2023, the company plans to open its first factory in the north of Norway. The site is expected to produce up to 34 GWh worth of batteries annually.
In total, FREYR plans to develop up to 43 GWh of battery cell production capacity by 2025 with an ambition of up to 83 GWh in total capacity by 2028. The short transport routes due to possible cooperation with the supplier Finnish Minerals Group could improve the sustainability of the batteries.
This is not a complete list of news from this week but the press releases and articles I found the most interesting. Let me know if I missed anything important. I am working on another detailed article at the moment but I am always interested in ideas for further posts, so let me know what you want to read about.
You can also follow me on Twitter (@BatteryBayEU), where I post some of the news before they end up in my weekly roundup. I’m looking forward to learning about your involvement or interest in the industry and chatting about everything batteries.
Also, please feel free to use the comment section below to leave any feedback or suggestions!