Daimler inked an agreement with Farasis Energy to buy lithium ion battery cells as a factory in eastern Germany is being built by the Chinese-American supplier to help Mercedes-Benz in speeding up production of its electric vehicle, the german automaker said last week.
Farasis has been constructing its plant in Bitterfeld-Wolfen town in Saxony-Anhalt region of Germany, Markus Schaefer said at the Frankfurt auto show. Schaefer is board member at Daimler who is responsible for research and Mercedes-Benz Cars development.
Farasis is in plans of producing battery cells as well as packs and modules in the facility that will be situated on the former site of Solar Valley in that town of south-western Germany, and Farasis will make an investment of 600 million euros ($662.5 million) building that plant in the country.
The facility will be of several gigwatt capacities and will supply cells for Daimler’s battery plants in Bruehl, Sindelfingen and Kamenz, Schaefer said. The energy utilized in production of battery cells will be coming from renewable energy sources, he added.
Farasis is intending continuously expanding the production capacity of the facility from end of 2022 by bringing it to 10 gigwatt per year from an initial production capacity of 6 gigawatt every year. The batteries so produced will be purely for electric vehicles and could meet the needs of 60,000 to 80,0000 electric vehicles.
As the other battery composition materials though provide higher amount of energy but lacks reliability because of which, Daimler, meanwhile, will continue using lithium ion battery cells which make use of nickel, manganese and cobalt (NMC) in battery composition, Schaefer said.
Schaefer elaborated that some new materials successfully work in laboratories but proved to be not reliable in the real world scenarios, as these experimental batteries usually failed to survive temperature changes and vibrations in the vehicle while driving on the roads.
