First In Europe: EB Starts Large Lithium-Ion Battery Manufacturing
Last month European Batteries (EB) celebrated the opening of its doors. Phase one of the project will cost close to €40m, which is a very high figure for a startup in Finland. The company was founded in 2008 as a spin-off from FEVT (later on, in September 2009, FEVT merged back into EB). European Batteries produces large format lithium-ion battery systems for energy, industrial and vehicle applications with a range of 3 kWh up to 1 MWh in size.
I had the pleasure of a telephone conversation with EB's new CEO Jukka Koskinen, former CEO of the Finnish company Ensto Oy, last week regarding the issues behind the chosen strategy to be a vertical battery system manufacturer (meaning that EB operates the whole production process from cells to complete system, allowing full control over the quality of the products).
EB's business model is clever: the demand for end-products, the large format lithium-ion battery systems, is based on cost-efficient, long-lasting and safe energy storage solutions. The energy content (Wh/kg) of lithium-ion batteries is about three times that of lead-acid batteries and double that of nickel-based batteries. The key customer group during the first phase is the transportation industry, EV car and delivery van producers.
Finnish Electric Vehicle Industry Speeds Up
The revolution on transportation industry starts speeding up also in Finland and other Nordic countries. Electricity, if produced by renewable energy (like wind, solar, hydro or nuclear power), could provide the needed low emission power source for transportation industry.
Earlier this summer, Swedish Volvo and state-owned Vattenfall launched a joint venture for plug-in hybrids to market by 2012: the target is to develop a hybrid car for households which could be charged from a common household electric outlet in about five hours ( a press release). On May, City of Copenhagen and Better Place launched a plan to build up an electric vehicle pilot project with electric-car reharging infrastructure (with battery-switching stations) in Copenhagen Region (a press release). US based Better Place has been partnered globally with Renault-Nissan and will create a battery-switching station network allowing drivers to charge with five minutes.
