Welcome to this (and last) week’s battery roundup. The most important news surrounding battery technology and production from Europe and beyond.
Daimler Acquires Stake in Battery Manufacturer ACC
Daimler’s Mercedes Benz recently announced it will take a 33% stake in Automotive Cells Company (ACC). ACC is a joint venture founded in 2020 by Stellantis and Total Energies’ battery subsidiary Saft.
Mercedes Benz is contributing a mid-three-digit-million euros amount to the € 7 Billion required for ACC to produce at least 120 GWh worth of batteries. ACC will supply Mercedes-Benz with high-performance battery technologies from its production locations from mid of the decade.
The cooperation is part of Mercedes Benz’s aim to become fully electric by the end of the decade and to produce more than 200 GWh worth of batteries annually by the end of the decade. To that end, the company wants to establish eight Gigafactories, four of them in Europe.
Quantumscape Partners With Top 10 Automaker
Volkswagen’s partner for solid-state batteries, QuantumScape, recently announced it had secured a deal with another major automaker. The company declined to reveal the new partner.
The partner, which QuantumScape states to be one of the top 10 automakers in the world, agreed to purchase 10 MWh of capacity from the company’s pre-pilot line facility für their pre-series vehicles. They have already evaluated the cells. What’s your guess on who will be buying battery cells from QuantumScape aside from VW?
BMW Establishes Consortium to Develop Solid-State Batteries
BMW has recently founded a consortium to advance the development of safe batteries with a solid electrolyte. The consortium aims to increase the energy density of a solid-state battery while maintaining high safety as well as to make the circular economy an integral part of battery production.
A key element of the ALANO project is the development of lithum metal anodes. Academic partners include, among others, Helmholtz Institute Ulm, Münster Electrochemical Energy Technology and Forschungszentrum Jülich.
The industrial members of the cluster include Applied Materials, Arlanxeo, Daikin Chemical Europe, Rena Technologies, and Varta Microbattery GmbH. The project is funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research.
If you’re interested in European Automotive companies’ strategies for solid-state batteries, check out my article from a while ago.
Giga Berlin Opens its Doors to the Public
Next week, Tesla is having a county fair in Grünheide to show off the efforts put into Giga 4.
Primarily residents from Berlin and Brandenburg will have the opportunity to see behind the scenes during a Factory Tour, visit on-site booths, join various activities and ride along in the Model Y.
The company is currently applying for a permit to host 9000 people at once. The tickets will be sent out this week, let me know if you are going! I’m still waiting for my ticket, but I’m very excited to see how far the production site has come.
Rumor has it that Tesla will be receiving the final permit as early as November, as Business Insider reports. While the online consultation is still open for two weeks, a speaker of the Brandenburg Ministry of the Environment states these objections would be included as part of the rules Tesla will have to follow.
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!