BASF to invest “three-digit” million Euros on advanced automotive battery activities over next 5 years
04 February 2011
Over the next five years, BASF will be investing a three-digit million Euros sum for battery-related activities. These include the company’s own R&D programs devoted to optimizing lithium-ion technology and developing completely new battery concepts, and cooperations with its partners, for example in the research network Electrochemistry and Batteries.
Part of this investment is also being channeled into the production plant for advanced cathode materials already under construction in Elyria, Ohio, sponsored by the US Department of Energy. This new facility with an investment volume of more than $50 million is scheduled to supply the market with cathode materials for the production of high-performance lithium-ion batteries from mid-2012.
In January, BASF and the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) founded a joint laboratory for the development of innovative battery materials. This “Batteries and Electrochemistry Laboratory” (BELLA) in Karlsruhe combines BASF’s electrochemical know-how in industrial applications with the basic research results of the KIT. The aim of this cooperation is to translate research findings more rapidly into products for high-energy battery systems.
These activities are focused on increasing the lifetime of batteries, the use of high storage capacity materials and the safety of battery systems. The partners will be jointly investing about €12 million into these activities in the next five years. In initial projects scientists are, for example, developing ceramic ion conductors for use as protective layers in future battery generations.
Through our research, we want to develop products and technologies that will secure individual flexibility and mobility while protecting the environment and climate. In particular electromobility offers us the opportunity to drive forward a fundamental change in technology. We will use our competence in chemistry to help bring about a breakthrough in electromobility.
—Dr. Andreas Kreimeyer, Member of the Board of Executive Directors and Research Executive Director
This is very good news for future improved batteries for electrified vehicles.
With similar large investments in many places, much improved batteries should be on the market place by the end of the current decade.
Posted by: HarveyD | 04 February 2011 at 09:49 AM