German technology company Varta has announced that it will produce large lithium-ion round cells for battery electric vehicles (BEV) that are said to provide greater performance and faster charge than alternative technologies.
“We believe that our round-cell formats are excellent alternatives for building battery electric vehicles in the performance sector due to their unique features,” said Varta CEO Herbert Schein.
Varta, which had announced its ultra-high-power lithium-ion round cell V4Drive in the 21700 format at the beginning of this year, will transfer this technology to even larger cell formats. The aim is to power BEVs, offer long driving range and additional power.
“Today’s energy batteries provide automotive engineers the ability to build cars offering a long driving range. V4Drive will offer additional performance qualities on top. This makes it ideal for the performance sector of the automotive industry. An electric car powered by V4Drive cells will be able to cover large distances and at the same time offer more dynamic driving – and it can be charged much faster than it is possible today.”
According to Schein, Varta will decide on the scale at which the company will enter production of V4Drive by the end of this year, depending on customer demand.
“Varta has produced almost half a billion CoinPower cells. Varta has gained experience in producing small lithium-ion cells, and we are now transferring this know-how into the production of larger rechargeable lithium-ion cells. VARTA’s approach is to provide cells to the market with a better, with a different property than what is available on the market today. The high cash flows VARTA has generated so far with the primary zinc-air batteries, with the consumer business – which we recently bought – and now with our CoinPower cells, support the cash flow to finance the R&D and industrialization of the large lithium-ion cells,” said Armin Hessenberger, Varta’s CFO.
Pilot production of the V4Drive cells in the 21700 format will start at the end of this year, mass production is targeted to start two years later, with a production capacity of at least 2 GWh.
Rainer Hald, VARTA’s CTO, confirmed that the production of larger lithium-ion round cells will benefit from synergies with the production of the smaller lithium-ion round cells, called CoinPower. “Our technologies build on each other: We have transferred the innovative foil seal design of the hearing aid batteries – where we have become market leaders – to CoinPower and combined it with further innovations. We are now doing the same with V4Drive: We are transferring CoinPower’s know-how to V4Drive and adding further innovations.”
