Saft plans to invest €200 million in next-gen batteries

The alliance was formed by Saft, together with Siemens, Solvay and Manz, back in February with the aim to develop and build a new generation of solid-state batteries that could compete with the Asian and US manufacturers, Reuters details in an article. Saft told the paper that the level of funding from its partners has yet to de decided. However, part of the investment will come from internal funds, and part – which is yet to be determined – will reportedly come from the EU’s executive arm. The plan is to develop a competitive solid-state battery technology by 2025; more precisely the company wants to develop a battery that has twice the performance of whats available on the market today, the company told Reuters. The is currently a massive push within the European battery sector. There are a number of large scale battery project going on in several European companies, all with the aim of pulling Europe to the forefront of battery technology and manufacturing – just to name a few we have Daimler, LG Chem, Northvolt, GS Yuasa and Samsung SDI. Worth noticing however is that several of these companies are not native to Europe. Saft said that if the project is deemed a success, the plan is to build a 1 gigawatt-hour manufacturing standard block by the fourth quarter of 2023, and go into larger scale production based on the 2024 market demand, the report continues. “The target is to demonstrate a prototype cell at lab level by the fourth quarter of 2019 and build up a 2 megawatt-hour (MWh) pilot line by Q4 2021,” Saft said.