Volvo Electric C30 Battery Production
A few weeks ago in Indianapolis, Ind., we helped EnerDel put on a press event for its new factory. Attending were about 20 automotive media and 30 financial analysts. The first half of the day was about battery chemistry and structure, while our afternoon covered cell pack assembly.
Indiana Governor, Mitch Daniels, was on hand to hear EnerDel announce that they would be building a new, $273 million battery manufacturing plant in Indiana. Capacity will be around 600,000 hybrid electric vehicle (HEV) battery packs or 60,000 electric vehicle (EV) packs. EnerDel will be the largest U.S. battery pack manufacturer when it’s up and running.
The C30’s twin battery pack weighs about 300 pounds and considering we took out about 400, it makes for a really quick car. An interesting point about present EV battery production, if one percent of all cars were to use lithium-ion batteries, all global production for cell phones, etc. would have to stop; cars would suck up all global capacity. Amazing. Ener1’s Chairman and CEO, Charles Gassenheimer, made an interesting comment about why they are building batteries here, in America: “Why lessen the importing of oil to increase importing of batteries [from Asia]” – good point.
During Lennart Stegland’s (President Special Vehicles – Volvo Car Corporation, Sweden) presentation, he made a couple of interesting points about global carbon dioxide production, this chart shows who’s adding carbon to our air:
I know, some people object to the idea that carbon output contributes to global warming and, well that’s their opinion. Frankly, we live in an enclosed space capsule, a little rock in the middle of nowhere, whatever we do impacts our lives, maybe not now but at some point we’ll be in trouble.
This slide is interesting. It’s showing different solutions to energy storage:
The red cluster of five dots is what Toyota and Honda are using (good power density and good energy storage), but where we need to go is Lithium-ion technology, probably more along a combined type lithium-ion that takes advantage of EV, HEV and plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV) demands into one pack, but that’s for another development cycle. On one of the videos, you heard reference to a 18650 lithium-ion battery. Here’s what it looks like:
In the Prius, there are about 6,000 of these batteries, welded together. What EnerDel is working towards is different cell chemistry for different applications.
Here are three PowerPoint presentations from the other week. Of course you’re missing what’s behind each slide, sorry. If you want, please feel free to ask questions and we’ll get back to you.
• Volvo Cars Electrification Strategy
• How We Build a Battery: Cell Chemistry and Pack Construction
• Pack to Vehicle
Good week to you,
dan
