This Week in Batteries – Week 35

Welcome to this (and last) week’s battery roundup. The most important news surrounding battery technology and production from Europe and beyond.

Morrow Batteries Secures € 2.4 Million Funding to Develop Cobalt-free Batteries

The board of Innovation Norway, the Norwegian Government’s most important instrument to support innovation, has recently awarded Morrow Batteries a fund for the development of cobalt-free LNMO (lithium manganese nickel oxide) battery cells. With the shift to the new cell chemistry, the company expects a reduction in material costs by up to 50%. Check out this article I found about different types of battery chemistries including LMNO-based cells if you are interested in why Morrow Batteries chose this composition.

Terje Andersen, CEO of Morrow Batteries, at the location for Morrow’s planned Giga factory. Credit: Morro

Morrow Batteries want to develop system-level samples and produce final format prismatic test cells at their pilot plant in 2023. In 2023, the company also wants to start construction on its full-scale battery manufacturing site in Arendal in the south of Norway, where it wants to manufacture up to 32 GWh worth of batteries annually.

“The grant to Morrow Batteries’ development of batteries for electric cars without the use of cobalt is an important part of our investment in new, sustainable industry in Norway”

Håkon Haugli, CEO of Innovation Norway

Munich-based Battery Startup to Cooperate with Analog Devices

This week, battery analytics software expert TWAICE and the semiconductor company and software solutions provider Analog Devices announced their cooperation. Together, the companies want to tackle the challenges of reducing warranty risks and recalls of battery systems. The goal of the collaboration is to develop a holistic lifecycle solution for automakers with integrated hardware and software. For that purpose, Analog Devices will provide the sensors to collect the necessary data while TWAICE is working on a solution to use this data to gain insight into the performance of batteries to determine their health state.

“Precision data combined with advanced predictive battery analytics will shed light into the darkness, which is crucial in unlocking as yet undiscovered potential along the entire value chain.”

Dr. Stephan Rohr, Co-CEO of TWAICE

Stellantis’s ACC Recieves €438 Million in Funding From the German Government

ACC, a joint venture of the international automotive group Stellantis, its subsidiary Opel Automobile GmbH, and the French battery manufacturer Saft, recently received a funding notification from the German Federal Ministry of Economic Affairs and Energy. The resources will be used to build a battery factory in Kaiserslautern in the west of Germany.

The future battery Plant in Kaiserslautern. Credit: Saft Batteries

At the site, battery cells for Stellantis’ Opel cars will be produced. Starting in 2023, the initiative will build three factory units with a capacity of 8 GWh hours each year. Production is scheduled to start in 2025.

The project is funded within the framework of IPCEI, a fund for Important Projects of Common European Interest.

This is not a complete list of news from the last two weeks 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.

On a personal note: Since there is not a lot of news at the moment and I am also in the final stretches of my master thesis, I will only be posting these updates every other week for the next couple of weeks.

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!

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