With the strong push for electric mobility this could be the best time to invest in a battery factory. What do you think? Manufacturers will need a combined capacity of 150 gigawatt-hours of electricity, so now is the best time to invest in a battery factory….and do it asap.
It’s a secret for no one that the most significant change in the history of the automotive industry is coming, hopefully, very soon. The switch from ICEs to hybrids and pure electric vehicles is inevitable, but it could be delayed by a massive shortage of lithium ion battery cells. Or, at least, that’s what a top manager in Volkswagen predicts.
In June last year, Ulrich Eichhorn, head of R&D in the company, estimated that Volkswagen Group would face “an enormous purchasing volume” in 2025 when it needs to source cells with a combined capacity to deliver 150 gigawatt-hours of electricity, as Automotive News reports. Now, Eichhorn increased his projections, saying “we will need more than 200 gigawatt-hours.”
According to him, if each manufacturer targets 25 percent EV and HEV/PHEV sales in their lineups by 2025, just like Volkswagen does, the industry will require a supply of more than 1.5 terawatt-hours. If you do the simple math, this means that more than 40 Tesla gigafactories will be needed.
“That’s the demand we’ve extrapolated assuming other OEMs have a similar target,” VAG researcher Linda Brinkhaus added.
Interestingly, Eichhorn believes the industry might have been powered by electricity since its beginning, if there was no oil boom in Texas. “If the technologies had been reversed, it would be hard to conceive an engineer now successfully proposing that combustion engines replace electric cars. Imagine that person would say, ‘Rather than having maximum torque available from the start like an electric car, it had to ramp up over time.
