As we discussed in our previous post, the NY Times reported an experts opinion that unless ground is broken on a new battery factory very soon, GM won’t make the 2010 deadline for the Volt (see post). We here reasoned that didn’t sound right, for many of the reasons commenters noted. I decided to get the facts straight from the sources; the two major companies vying to make the Volt’s battereis, A123, and Compact Power. Here is what they said:
Ric Fulop, co-founder and marketing director A123:
“I would be surprised if the expert has ever seen a Lithium Ion factory. If you started from scratch and you know what you are doing you’d need less than 2 years, however, we are not starting from scratch and already have very large Lithium Ion factories in Asia (+300,000sf of mfg space).
We are now expanding our plants to support our different automotive programs. We announced a $30M financing to start this process a few days ago.
http://www.a123systems.com/newsite/index.php#/news/news071023/.”
Martin Klein, engineering director CPI:
“While two years is probably an accurate assessment of the time it would take from breaking ground on a new manufacturing facility to mass producing high quality lithium-ion batteries, Compact Power, Inc. (CPI), through its parent LG Chem, is actually well beyond the ground breaking point. We already have a plant in operation (in Korea) that is capable of producing the kinds of volumes of safe, high quality, large-format lithium-ion cells for automotive use required by the calendar year 2010 target. And, the pack assembly lines, which take considerably less time than a cell plant to complete, are well into the planning stages, due to our work over the years in developing and validating pack design and build processes. Moreover, our experience and understanding of the manufacturing methods and processes will quickly allow us to expand volumes to meet the demands beyond 2010.
To look at it another way, if your starting point is an entirely new cell design, or you are trying to force-fit an existing cell design that was not originally intended for automotive use into an automotive application, then two years is very tight. But if you’ve been developing battery cells specifically for automotive applications, and have been developing pack designs in parallel that make the most of those cells, then the next two years will see cell and pack plants that are capable of the necessary volumes and quality in time for a launch in CY 2010.”
