Volkswagen’s PowerCo now formally confirmed its intention to industrialise dry coating for electrical automotive batteries. The plan was leaked a number of days in the past. At a media spherical desk in Berlin, the corporate has now revealed additional particulars.
Volkswagen’s battery subsidiary PowerCo is approaching the additional growth and industrialisation of the dry coating course of along with the German printing machine specialist Koenig & Bauer AG, amongst others. The event part of the brand new course of expertise is to be accomplished by the top of 2024. From right this moment’s perspective, sequence manufacturing is deliberate from 2026/2027 onwards. A complete value financial savings of fifty per cent of the battery cell value is the present goal for mass manufacturing.
The primary thought behind the method is to exchange the slurry of battery supplies with a paste that may be utilized extra simply and effectively, in addition to eliminating the necessity for a drying step. The group at PowerCo additionally determined to method your complete course of in another way, and took a leaf out of the ebook of one other trade with the partnership with Koenig & Bauer. The German printing press specialists will provide a machine that may basically perform equally to an previous newspaper printing press, the place the paper is positioned on a curler which then prints the ink, or on this case, battery powder coating on each the anodes and cathodes.
Lots of the particulars had been beforehand introduced, most significantly that the dry coating course of will scale back the power consumption within the manufacturing of battery cells by 30 per cent, thus reducing the prices of electrical automobiles by a number of hundred euros per car. Whereas a last quantity was not but obtainable, as useful resource prices nonetheless account for 80 per cent of the battery and power costs differ wildly from Northern to Southern Europe and the USA, the place PowerCo is constructing its factories.
Quantity manufacturing is predicted to be achieved by 2026, when the battery cells will likely be utilized in all MEB automobiles. Gross sales to different OEMs are additionally deliberate, nonetheless, Volkswagen will seemingly be supplying its personal automobiles first. The development of the prismatic cell permits for it to be flexibly utilized by all car sorts, in addition to with completely different cell chemistries. The cells are additionally designed to be backwards appropriate, which means that present car fashions may also profit from the event.
When it comes to manufacturing, the Volkswagen subsidiary is trying to create a “blueprint” to make factories extra modular and thus extra simply constructed and modified. Sebastian Wolf, Chief Working Officer of PowerCo, defined that the effectivity of the factories performed a serious position in the price of the batteries and the way the group had thought of constructing “future-proof” factories that may be tailored to fulfill technological course of because it develops. The producer calls this a “normal manufacturing facility”, which takes the structure and regulatory necessities under consideration forward of time. “Our normal factories are ‘retrofittable’, i.e. they are often simply and rapidly retrofitted or transformed. We have now anticipated a complete of round 30 foreseeable product and manufacturing improvements from the outset and might convert the manufacturing facility to all related new processes as quickly as they’re prepared for the market,” the COO mentioned.
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The most important present financial savings are accomplished through the dry coating course of, during which PowerCo managed to eradicate liquid elements from the method, primarily the binding supplies, which might ordinarily be dried in a specifically constructed facility. This facility must be heated to a selected temperature, in addition to have moisture eradicated virtually solely from its air, making for an costly course of. Sebastian Wolf factors out that right here the producer has to calculate GW by the cubic metre, as your complete room should include the situations wanted to dry the cathodes. Thus PowerCo was capable of lower down the method from 4 steps to 2, which may once more be translated into value financial savings, because the drying course of alone at the moment takes up about 30% of the power required to fabricate a battery cell. This additionally saves about 15% of the house required in a manufacturing facility.
“Applied sciences like Dry Coating showcase PowerCo’s technological prowess. We have now the required know-how and the proper specialists to take cell manufacturing to a brand new stage and supply vital value benefits to our clients. Our goal is to determine an industrial manufacturing of sustainable and inexpensive batteries,” mentioned VW board member Thomas Schmall.
“What the solid-state cell is to the product, Dry Coating is to manufacturing – an actual sport changer. If scaled efficiently, it would give us a singular place available on the market and particular aggressive benefits,” added Frank Blome, CEO of PowerCo. He additional defined that whereas all the required technical information has been constructed up, the method of industrialization was now the following step.
Supply: press spherical desk, Information through e-mail, volkswagen-newsroom.com