Johnson Controls and Saft to build lithium ion battery plant in France
Johnson Controls and Saft have a partnership to produce lithium ion batteries for automotive applications. Among other projects they are one of the two suppliers chosen for GM's Saturn Vue plug-in hybrid program. Saft has also provided lithium ion battery packs for concept vehicles such as the Chevy Sequel and Ford HySeries drive Edge. The two companies are opening a new plant in Nersac, France to manufacture lithium batteries for a variety of car-makers including Mercedes-Benz, Chrysler and General Motors. The €15million plant has an initial capacity of 5,000 packs a year and will be able to scale up as demand increases. It is believed to be the first plant to be dedicated to automotive lithium ion batteries. [Source: Financial Times]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Tim 1:20PM (2/01/2008)
"The €15million plant has an initial capacity of 5,000 packs a year and will be able to scale up as demand increases."
GM says that they will produce 60,000-100,000 Volts in the 1st year!
That's a LOT of scale-up.
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Michael 2:55PM (2/01/2008)
The Volt batteries won't come out of this plant. I believe the Volt battery contract was awarded to A123?
Also, the title says they will build a factory, but it has already been built.
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GoodCheer 3:34PM (2/01/2008)
_If_ this plant has gotten into the kinds of production volumes required to get into some volume discounts and production streamlining, I'd love to know what the cost per kWh storage is.
Anybody know?
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rgseidl 4:38PM (2/01/2008)
They wouldn't be building this plant in France if they didn't have any European customers for the units produced there. Big-ticket automotive subsystems are generally built close to the assembly plant and shipped there more-or-less just-in-time these days, because keeping work in progress lying around means working capital is tied up.
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meme 5:32PM (2/01/2008)
Is it just me, or does 5,000 packs a year not sound that impressive? I mean, Chevy wants to make 60-100k Volts per year.
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Joseph 9:39PM (2/01/2008)
If they do make 5,000 packs a year, I wonder how they'll be able to sell them all. I mean, between all the different automaker's concepts and prototypes, will it really amount to 5,000? I think the plant will probably make less than the top capacity. However, this is still very surprising and good news!
I wonder if this is where Honda is getting the lithium batteries for their FCX?
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Chris M 10:15PM (2/01/2008)
Saft is a French company, so naturally, they would put the factory in France.
5,000 a year may not sound like much, until you realize that it is greater than all the EVs now on the road, and that is just one of several companies that will produce automotive Lithium batteries. The future is electric.
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