lithium-ion

US lithium-ion battery maker Boston Power is to ramp up its battery production at the company’s Chinese manufacturing plants in Liyang and Tianjin.

The Boston-headquartered firm plans a 5-fold production capacity increase at the Liyang plant by 2016 as well as a production scale-up of up to 4GWh per annum by 2017 and 8GWh by 2018 at the Tianjin plant.

Samsung SDI has launched four battery products for plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEV) and electric vehicles (EV) at the Detroit Motorshow, US.

The first of the showcased products is a 120Ah high capacity lithium-ion battery cell designed to facilitate a driving range of 300km with one time charging.

Daimler is to invest €100m ($125m) in its lithium-ion battery system manufacturing subsidiary Deutsche ACCUmotive over the next years.

The subsidiary will produce lithium-ion batteries for new electric versions of Daimler’s Smart cars in 2016 and new Mercedes Benz hybrid models. An expansion of the subsidiary’s manufacturing facility in Kamenz, Germany, is currently under construction and is set to be completed mid-2015, increasing the production space to 20,000 sq. m.

German OEM Daimler’s subsidiary Li-Tec is to cease the production of lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles (EV) at its plant in Kamenz, Germany, by the end of 2015.

According to the carmaker, the production of battery cells for electric and hybrid cars is not economical. "Our cells are very good, but at current production figures, far too expensive," Harald Kröger, head of EV research at Daimler, told German media outlet Der Spiegel. "We have realised that a car manufacturer does not have to produce the cells themselves," he added.

German OEM Volkswagen will not switch to a single 48V power supply system in mild hybrids in the near future, according to Florian Kühnetz, development engineer at Volkswagen.

Volkswagen will focus on a dual voltage power supply comprising a 12V lead-acid battery and a 48V lithium-ion battery, said Kühnetz at the 2^nd 48V automotive power supply conference in Düsseldorf, Germany.