Photo: Volkswagen | Edited
Volkswagen announced a "game-changing" technology for battery cell production, utilizing dry coating. This is a manufacturing process that Tesla and its partners have been developing for years without significant progress. Could Volkswagen have the upper hand in achieving this significant milestone?
Volkswagen is playing an intriguing game in the EV market, trying to advance and block EV development at the same time. The German carmaker is one of the leading proponents of e-fuels while at the same time advocating for lowering the emissions standards. Still, Volkswagen boasts about massive investments in electric vehicles and Li-ion batteries. We've seen a similar strategy followed by Toyota in the US, only with hydrogen instead of e-fuels.
Volkswagen is lagging behind Tesla and even other carmakers in EV technology, with its aging MEB platform finding it challenging to compete. The German group is also behind in manufacturing, needing three times as much to manufacture an electric vehicle as Tesla. The main problem for Volkswagen is that it has no chance to compete in the near future because its recently-appointed CEO, Oliver Blume, insisted on retooling existing factories instead of building new ones. Making EVs profitably requires a different factory layout and optimizations that are not possible within existing production facilities.
Still, Volkswagen boasts hundreds of billions of investments in electric vehicles and battery gigafactories. Its battery subsidiary PowerCo should operate Volkswagen battery factories and supply the group's car plants around the globe. Volkswagen also invested in battery startups, including QuantumScape and Gotion High-Tech. You'd think the Germans have it all figured out to conquer the EV market and leave everyone behind.
Although PowerCo was founded only a year ago, the company has announced a dry-coating manufacturing process. The dry-battery-electrode (DBE) process is a technology that Tesla bought from Maxwell in 2019 and has been trying to advance with much effort and little progress ever since. Tesla is, of course, not the only company trying to crack DBE, but it's arguably the most advanced. Its battery partners Panasonic and LGES are also working on this technology, but they are even less advanced than Tesla.
The most crucial advantage of dry-coating technology is that it eliminates costly and time-consuming steps in the production process. According to Volkswagen, this technique allows PowerCo to save about 30 percent of energy, 15 percent of floor space required, and millions of euros in production costs compared to traditional Li-Ion cell production methods. To achieve this, Volkswagen partnered with German printing machine specialist Koenig & Bauer.
PowerCo and Koenig & Bauer will develop a roller press to apply powder coating on electrodes at a large industrial scale. If you wonder what a printing-machine producer has to do with this, Volkswagen says that adding battery materials to the foil is similar to a printing procedure. The powder coating can be applied to the foil extremely fine and even, resulting in a layer about as thin as a hair. This guarantees excellent spatial energy density and a long life cycle while improving the fast-charging ability of the battery.
Volkswagen claims that PowerCo is already testing and optimizing the technology in a pilot line in one of its laboratories in Northern Germany. This is interesting, considering the efforts Tesla has put into advancing the dry-coating process. Could Volkswagen and its printing partner succeed where Tesla and the biggest Li-ion battery producers in the world failed? That is something I'd like to see before calling the fight.
Volkswagen is lagging behind Tesla and even other carmakers in EV technology, with its aging MEB platform finding it challenging to compete. The German group is also behind in manufacturing, needing three times as much to manufacture an electric vehicle as Tesla. The main problem for Volkswagen is that it has no chance to compete in the near future because its recently-appointed CEO, Oliver Blume, insisted on retooling existing factories instead of building new ones. Making EVs profitably requires a different factory layout and optimizations that are not possible within existing production facilities.
Still, Volkswagen boasts hundreds of billions of investments in electric vehicles and battery gigafactories. Its battery subsidiary PowerCo should operate Volkswagen battery factories and supply the group's car plants around the globe. Volkswagen also invested in battery startups, including QuantumScape and Gotion High-Tech. You'd think the Germans have it all figured out to conquer the EV market and leave everyone behind.
Although PowerCo was founded only a year ago, the company has announced a dry-coating manufacturing process. The dry-battery-electrode (DBE) process is a technology that Tesla bought from Maxwell in 2019 and has been trying to advance with much effort and little progress ever since. Tesla is, of course, not the only company trying to crack DBE, but it's arguably the most advanced. Its battery partners Panasonic and LGES are also working on this technology, but they are even less advanced than Tesla.
The most crucial advantage of dry-coating technology is that it eliminates costly and time-consuming steps in the production process. According to Volkswagen, this technique allows PowerCo to save about 30 percent of energy, 15 percent of floor space required, and millions of euros in production costs compared to traditional Li-Ion cell production methods. To achieve this, Volkswagen partnered with German printing machine specialist Koenig & Bauer.
PowerCo and Koenig & Bauer will develop a roller press to apply powder coating on electrodes at a large industrial scale. If you wonder what a printing-machine producer has to do with this, Volkswagen says that adding battery materials to the foil is similar to a printing procedure. The powder coating can be applied to the foil extremely fine and even, resulting in a layer about as thin as a hair. This guarantees excellent spatial energy density and a long life cycle while improving the fast-charging ability of the battery.
Volkswagen claims that PowerCo is already testing and optimizing the technology in a pilot line in one of its laboratories in Northern Germany. This is interesting, considering the efforts Tesla has put into advancing the dry-coating process. Could Volkswagen and its printing partner succeed where Tesla and the biggest Li-ion battery producers in the world failed? That is something I'd like to see before calling the fight.
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