Smith Electric Vehicles US choose Kokam as battery supplier
While lithium ion battery maker, Valence Technology has had a relationship with Smith Electric Vehicles since 2005 and were pursuing contracts with the newly-created Smith Electric Vehicles US Corp (SEV-US), we thought they might seem the logical choice of supplier for the American venture. We thought wrong. It has been announced that Kokam America will be the "partner of choice" for Smith Electric Vehicles US. With a strong market presence in the U.S. for the past 8 years, Kokam is a partner in the KD Advanced Battery Group LLC who are building a new battery manufacturing facility in Michigan.
The Kokam battery in question is a large format primatic lithium ion polymer affair with a notable energy density of about 180 Wh/kg. A robust cycle life, it can be completely charged and discharged over 1,500 times before dipping below 80 percent of original energy capacity. Of course, when it comes to batteries, price is one of the most important factors and Kokam America is truly competitive here. Their CEO, Don Nissanka, says their cells are currently in the $750/kWh range and they expect to significantly improve on that point, he says, "Going into the auto industry, we have to keep below $0.50/Wh [$500/kWh] and we believe we can get there." We expect that if they do, they should have no shortage of customers in the future. If you'd like to read more about their battery, we suggest you check out our source article for more technical details.
[Source: Green Car Congress]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Stan Wellaway 11:31AM (4/18/2009)
SEVUS's first product for the US market is the large Smith Newton. I presume this is the vehicle in which they will use the Kokam batteries.
But by next year they are also going to be producing the electric version of the Transit Connect for Ford. I wonder if they intend using Kokam batteries in that smaller van? If so I presume this must have been okayed by Ford. Ford themselves this week announced they were partnering with Johnson-Saft as battery supplier of choice for other Ford hybrid and electric vehicles.
Meanwhile SEVUS's UK cousins (SEVUK I suppose we might call them) will presumably continue fitting Valence batteries in the european version of the Smith Newton, as well as in the Smith Edison and Smith Ampere. SEVUS did indicate that the Kokam deal doesn't extend to UK/Europe models.
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jharlan 1:03PM (4/18/2009)
Competition is working in everyone's favor. Now Kokam's batteries will be directly compared to Valence batteries. The end result will be a better, cheaper battery.
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Stan Wellaway 4:28PM (4/18/2009)
In the UK, there is a battery company called Axeon Holdings (listed on the London stockmarket as AXE). Not to be confused with the north American battery company Axion Power.
Axeon describe themselves as Europe's largest independent supplier of lithium battery systems. Customers include Smith's closest rival Modec (ModecZEV.com), as well as the next ranking EV maker Allied/ZEV. Their share price has rocketed in recent days, doubling in price this month. Partly on announcements from the UK government regarding EV subsidies, and partly on a general upsurge in coverage of EV plans worldwide which are percieved as accelerating likely demand .
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DaveD 7:04PM (4/18/2009)
This is both encouraging and yet very discouraging at the same time.
One of my partners has been building cars for over 17 years and he knows the industry very well. He told me once that the Bill of Materials for a Mustang was about $13,000 (I don't know what year or model, etc...but it's a ball park for this conversation).
If you want to give that same mustang an all electric range of 200 miles then you're going to need about 40kWh's because most of these cars are lucky to get 4-5 miles per kWh so I'm actually being generous and assuming 100% charge/discharge here.
Kokam is has a good product and aggressive pricing, yet even at that price this will be a good $30,000 worth of batteries and they are targeting a price that would make it "only" $20,000 worth of batteries.
Historically, there is about an 8-10% improvement in battery performance/price/energy/power/etc and that has been going on for well over 25 years. We need a major breakthrough or simple math tells you we're still 12 years away from even getting the battery costs down below $5000.
Fleet vehicles, with a good infrastructure and a way to depreciate the costs of the batteries can do ok with the current price of batteries. Probably not "break-even" until the cost of gas goes back up, but it may balance out with lower operating costs in other areas. That's the hope but we'll have to see if that actually happens.
Consumer cars, especially BEV's as opposed to PHEV's will have to wait a while. It's hard to handle a battery costs that is two times the entire BoM for a typical sedan today. I'm a huge fan of EV's, but geez, this is discouraging.
Ok, stop that...this is great progress from a couple of years ago and we will hopefully have a breakthrough or two that accelerates things. So let's be positive: A 30% breakthrough in price coupled with a 30% increase in energy density and hold everything else steady (cycle life, power density, etc) and it could be interesting in 3-5 years. Lots of money starting to flow into the field and more people working on the problem...it will get better.
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olhat 7:05AM (4/19/2009)
You said it without actually saying it. This is the maths behind Prius plug-in. Cheap batteries for a cheap (OK, moderately priced) daily driver with a very limited daily range is good enough for most people. If the used plug-in's future owner needs more range in, say, five year's time, it will be affordable to retrofit.
PeekOyle 4:27AM (4/19/2009)
Are we or have we reached the peak (pardon the pun) of Lithium Ion Technology?
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Evie 11:14AM (4/20/2009)
Dave hits the high points well. If the weight and size are large then batteries are simply a very, very expensive portion of the equation.
For the last two years, improvements in price have slowed and been less than expected, and fundamentally portions of that price are greatly dependent on commodity prices, up to 70%. So in effect predicting a very big near term improvement that translates to commercial product is unlikely. The national labs are on the case, but that takes time and innovation is very hard to predict.
The lighter weight formats in fully electric make more sense earlier, without that anything heavier is overpriced or a government subsidy baby. Some subsidy makes sense, but not as much as it would take in the heavy formats.
There has been a proliferation of the battery start ups, most all of them without manufacturing. A123, Valence, Altairnano, Enerdel, Boston-Power, Kokam, Seeo, and the list goes on and on. Given no economic large scale buyer of batteries in terms of a viable mainstream market for the next few years if there was a way to short in general those battery companies it would seem like a good bet. Too many players chasing a limited market, with high capital burn rates and no manufacturing. Ask them who their stable customers are, they can't answer that question. Who knows what GM and Chrysler look like in six months.
If you read the new piece by Uk journalists they question if anything other than the Mitsubishi imiev will actually be mainstream affordable in the next three years. So the battery market is a mess, going up against huge Asian competitors with no manufacturing and way too many players. Some rationalization will occur, If the future was in the markets hand most would be going away, now government policy picks the winners. Let's see what happens with the government battery grants and to Chrysler and GM.
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Michael Stavy 5:21PM (7/28/2009)
Valance Technology press release dated 7/28/09 is sub-titled, "Valence Technology is Proud Provider of the Battery System Technology inside the Newest and Largest Fully-Electric Fleet Truck in North America; Smith Newton Fleet Delivered to Several Fortune 500 Companies Today"
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