The Battery Alliance between industry giants Saft, Siemens, Solvay and Manz, announced in February, is set to enter serial production of a new generation of lithium-ion batteries in early 2020.
The alliance hopes the new high-density liquid electrolyte lithium-ion and solid-state batteries it will produce will pose a challenge to the Asian players – including China’s BYD and South Korea’s Samsung SDI – currently dominating the battery market. It has also announced plans for another generation of lithium-ion batteries to follow in 2022.
“The performance levels we are targeting are very much better than what we have today. We are looking at performance levels that are 50% better in terms of energy density,” said Jean-Baptiste Pernot, Saft’s director of operations.
Sweden’s Northvolt, headed by a former Tesla executive, aims to build Europe’s biggest lithium-ion battery factory, producing 32 gigawatt hours (GWh) of battery cells a year by 2023.
“The European battery market by 2025 will be in the range of 150 gigawatt hours (GWh) to 200 GWh - and probably twice as much in 2030 - while the largest plant in the world today is around 20 GWh. That means there is room for several actors,” Pernot said.
The European car battery value chain is expected to be worth as much as 250 billion euros by 2025, according to estimates by market analysts.