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Car suitable as electricity grid reserve

To meet the universal desire for a transition to decentralised energy generation from renewable sources, new and innovative solutions for stabilising the electricity grid are necessary. The increasing use of renewable energy leads to fluctuations in the grid, which must be initially balanced by primary regulation, able to prevent impending power cuts at a second’s notice.

In Hagen (Germany) an important milestone on the road to emission-free energy and mobility has been achieved by technology company The Mobility House, energy supplier Enervie, transmission system operator Amprion and car maker Nissan. With the Nissan Leaf and an innovative charging and energy management technology, the project partners have succeeded in qualifying an electric car for all the Tso regulatory requirements for primary power regulation. This means that the car can be integrated as a regulating reserve for the German electricity grid – a breakthrough in the establishment of Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G) technology in Germany.
Electric cars such as the Nissan Leaf, with integrated bidirectional charging technology, is able not only to extract power from the grid and store it in its traction battery, but, if necessary, also to feed power back. This is called the Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G) concept.

The bidirectional chargeability of Nissan’s electric car is the foundation for its integration in the pilot project at the Enervie site in Hagen. In combination with innovative, intelligent charging and energy management technology from The Mobility House, the charging and discharging processes can be controlled and monitored.
As one of four Tso’s responsible for the transmission of power in Germany, and thus charged with the stability of the power grid, Amprion is a supporter of the ambitious V2G project. The Tso has defined the technical and regulatory requirements for prequalifying a mobile battery storage unit for the market for primary regulation. Amprion has now approved the Nissan Leaf, as the first electric car, in combination with the control system from The Mobility House, as suitable for this function.

A partnership in the name of the e-axle

Some months after its establishment, the joint venture Marelli and Punch Motive International is giving its fruits: the assignment of the first relevant contract for the production of e-axles (electrified axles) by an important car manufacturer on a global scale.
The production start of this system, which will be developed, tested and produced by Marelli Electric Powertrain Strasbourg, is expected for 2024.
The joint venture, where Marelli is the major shareholder, combines the proven expertise of the two partner companies to develop and to assemble “e-axle” systems, integrated and optimized for BEV or Plug-in Hybrid vehicles for Europe and Americas. The achievement of this first relevant contract since the establishment of the JV has represented the market acknowledgment of its advanced technological skills.
The e-axle system will be compatible with the most severe requisites of functional safety, as the ASIL-D, and it will be one of the most compact, efficient and performing market solutions. Another relevant feature will be the capability of assuring optimal driveability to BEV vehicles through functions such as the active torque vectoring, which confers more agility to driving.
Hannes Prenn, President of the Vehicle Electrification Division of Marelli, declared: “This joint venture was created to allow controlling a further area in the ambit of the portfolio of the Vehicle Electrification Division of Marelli. Winning a contract of this relevance few months after the creation of the JV perfectly demonstrates the logic at the base of its establishment. The focus on the e-axles dedicated to full electric systems is a key element in the strategy of Marelli Vehicle Electrification. Such element, together with our consolidated expertise in the ambit of electric motors and of the thermal management, defines a complete approach that permits the efficient control of the energy flow in current and future vehicles”.

Dema, new headquarters and strategic steps forward

Dema, industrial automation company, is taking two major steps forward after more than 70 years of business history and exactly 20 years since the testing of its first automatic machine under the current ownership. The company is relocating its headquarters and transforming from a Srl (Private Limited Company) to a Spa (Public Limited Company).
To meet growing production demands and improve logistical operations, Dema has made the strategic decision to move its headquarters to the new facility in Savona. The new production spaces are significantly larger, and the improved logistics allow for a prompt and efficient response to the increasing workflow by optimizing all operations.
Dema also announced its transformation from a Srl to a Spa. This change will provide access to new financing opportunities and attract investors, enabling the company to effectively meet customer needs by developing new technologies and expanding its international activities. This transformation represents a significant milestone in the company’s development journey, allowing a continuously growing team of professionals to strengthen existing collaborations, establish new partnerships, and reaffirm its position as a leader in the automation sector within the electric motor market.
This evolution will not only enhance Dema’s market position but also ensure greater stability and a solid foundation for the future, which is already filled with innovative projects. It confirms that innovation is an integral part of the company’s DNA.

A challenge for EV potential investments and collaborations

The race to the full electric is priority for an ever-increasing number of brands, aware of the necessary mobility direction. Each winning idea might make the difference; just for this reason Hyundai, Kia and LG Chem have released EV & Battery Challenge, a challenge aimed at selecting 10 start-ups specialized in electric cars and batteries for potential investments and collaborations.
Hyundai Motor Group, for instance, pursues the ambitious target of releasing on the market 44 “green” cars within 2025, 23 of which are electric.
New Energy Nexus, the international organization that supports start-ups, is entrusted with the task of managing the competition, in which will be selected the ten start-ups that will have the opportunity of working in strict collaboration with Hyundai, Kia and LG Chem and of developing proofs of concept, benefitting from the technical expertise, the resources and the laboratories of the three international brands that aim at enhancing their technological competences.

India, sale of electric vehicles without batteries

Batteries comprise 30-40% of the upfront cost. To push electric mobility, the Ministry of Road Transport and Highway (MORTH) of India, announced that all the states and union territories (UTs) have now been allowed the registration and sale of electric vehicles (EVs) without pre-fitted batteries.
The move is likely to provide the necessary boost for the wider adoption of EVs across the country.
Practically, the government is striving to create an ecosystem to accelerate the uptake of electric mobility in the country. This will not only protect the environment and reduce the oil imports but also provide opportunities to the sunrise industry.
What is the situation in India? According to the Society of Manufacturers of Electric Vehicles, the sale of electric vehicles in this country increased by 20% in 2019-20, mainly driven by rising sales of two-wheelers.

Volkswagen, great strides for the production of electric vehicles

Volkswagen prosecutes its factories’ conversion to electric mobility. Volkswagen brand is enlarging its network of global production of electric vehicles with the manufacturing start of full-electric ID.4 at Emden. Emden is currently the second site for electric vehicles in Germany after Zwickau and joins the Chinese plants in Anting and Foshan. Chattanooga and Hannover as well will start the production this year. Consequently, in 2022 Volkswagen is creating the conditions to manufacture in the future 1.2 million full-electric vehicles based on MEB modular platform in its factories in Europe, United States of America and China. Volkswagen has invested around one million Euros for the conversion of Emden factory with its 8,000 employees. Therefore, Emden is the first high-tech site for electric mobility in Lower Saxony. Volkswagen Group will invest 21 billion Euros overall in Lower Saxony until 2026 and will make the Land the German fulcrum of electric mobility. «The fast expansion of the production capacity of our successful ID.4 model is a key component of Accelerate strategy. It aids us in speeding up the transformation towards a zero carbon-emission mobility and in satisfying the high demand for electric vehicles», declared the Ceo of Volkswagen brand, Ralf Brandstätter.

PowerCo: Volkswagen enters global battery business

Ceremonial start of construction for the cell factory in Salzgitter (left to righ: Frank Blome, CEO PowerCo, Daniela Cavallo, Chairwoman of the Group Works Council Volkswagen AG, Stephan Weil, Prime Minister of Lower Saxony, Herbert Diess, Chairman of the Board of Management of Volkswagen AG, Olaf Scholz, Federal Chancellor, Thomas Schmall, Member of the Volkswagen AG Board of Management for Technology and Chairman of the Board of Management at Volkswagen Group Components, Hans Dieter Pötsch, Chairman of the supervisory Board of Volkswagen AG)

The Volkswagen player has presented the birth of its new branch dedicated to the production of battery cells for the Group’s electric cars and, in the meantime, they have laid the first stone for the building of the new gigafactory in Salzgitter, Germany, which will be called SalzGiga.
PowerCo will take care of the production and management of the whole business connected with batteries for electric cars.
The manufacturing of cells in the new factory will start in 2025 and, at steady state, the plant will be able to produce batteries for a yearly capacity of 40 GWh, sufficient for 500,000 electric vehicles.
With the entry into operation of all six gigafactories, within 2030 Volkswagen will achieve an overall capacity of 240 GWh of annual battery production.
The German Chancellor Scholz declared: «Today is an important day for the automotive industry in Germany and in Europe. Volkswagen Group shows how the future of a sustainable environment-friendly mobility might be. Together, in Salzgitter, we are laying significant foundations to shape this future».
PowerCo will invest over 20 billion Euros from now until 2030 in the business of batteries for electric vehicles, with the creation of 20,000 new workplaces in all Europe.
Good news in view of sustainability: SalzGiga will rely on a recycling centre that will allow, in full operation, recovering all most precious materials from “exhausted” batteries, to be reused as raw materials for the production of new cells.

Boom of electric motors: the demand for minerals is rising

The last report “The role of critical minerals in clean energy transitions”, published by the International Energy Agency (IEA) has highlighted that the necessary energy transition will imply a further stress on material flows for many minerals.
Flows that never stop: the global mining of raw materials has increased by 3.4 times since 1970, rising from 27 to 92 billion tons yearly, with the addition of just 8.6 coming from recycling.
«Data – Fatih Birol, executive director of IEA, explained – show an incumbent gap between the world’s strengthened climatic ambitions and the availability of critical minerals that are essential to implement such ambitions. Challenges are not insurmountable but Governments must give clear indications about how they are transforming their commitments to climate into actions. If not faced, these potential vulnerabilities might make the global progress towards a green energy future slower and more expensive».
Currently, revenues from coal production are ten-time higher than those connected with the protagonist minerals of the energy transition: the real “oil” of the XXI century.
An onshore wind power plant needs nine-times more resources than an electric gas station of similar sizes, the expansion of electric networks requires a huge quantity of copper and aluminium whereas an electric car needs six times the mineral inputs of a conventional car.
The demands by the energy sector for the above-mentioned critical minerals might «increase by up to six times by 2040, depending on the rapidity of Governments’ actions to reduce emissions», and this massive increment in absolute terms will unavoidably influence the rate of the energy transition itself.

Green new deal and Manufacturing center. Turin electrified by the Relaunch Decree

The project for the establishment at Mirafiori of a Manufacturing Technology & Competence Center (MTCC) has received a remarkable boost and obtained more concreteness due to the publication in Official Gazette of the so-called Relaunch Decree, dated May 20th 2020. The initiative started in March 2019 with the signature of an agreement by Turin University and Polytechnics, the city Administration and Trade Chamber and by the Piedmont Region.
Roughly one year later, the centre planned in Turin industrial pole New Economy, former Fiat Mirafiori, has obtained a funding amounting to 20 million Euros with the LD. As reported also by other sources, the aim is creating an ambitious structure – National Centre for research, innovation and technological transfer in the mobility and Automotive field, this is the institutional denomination – with a broad scope. Focused, without ifs and buts, on the automotive world, it aims at interpreting its most innovative trends especially in the sustainability issue, developing research activities on electric and autonomous guide vehicles. On the other hand, the article 49 of the document has clarified that this first financing tranche, already planned for 2020, is part of Green New Deal and Territorial Plan 4.0 programmes «to favour ecologic transition processes in public and private sustainable mobility sectors, as well as the industry’s competitiveness».
MTCC intends to constitute a reference reality, one of the biggest and most important in Europe, dialoguing and collaborating with Italian and foreign institutes, with private enterprises and with other similar entities by vocation. Its targets are the study and the experimentation of new manufacturing lines and alternative transport models, besides the development of artificial intelligence applications. Clearly, the allocation of this resource tranche was favourably welcomed by the Industrial Union of the Piedmont capital: «This first tranche of 20 millions», the president Dario Gallina stated, «is a first important step for the start and the implementation of an international pole specialized in automotive and a relevant acknowledgment for our territory, whose fundamental role of technological transformation, in a sector with historical vocation of our city, is understood. The resources allocated by the Government, networked with regional ones, can exert a multiplier effect for our growth, based on new technologies and on education, the pillars on which building a virtuous course that involves big and small businesses».
The ball is returned to regional authorities, precisely, because the hope is that the 30 millions, set aside by the Region itself for the implementation of recovery policies, will be soon released.
(Roberto Carminati)

Huge investments: the $80M collected by Infinitum Electric

Infinitum Electric, creator of the sustainable, breakthrough air-core motor, has recently announced $80 million in Series D funding to scale motor production to meet increasing demand. Infinitum Electric will use the investment to vertically integrate and automate production of its motors for the commercial and industrial market segments, and complete development and commercialization of a traction motor for the rapidly growing electric vehicle market, where its exceptional breakthrough power density can significantly extend the range of electric vehicles.
Riverstone Holdings led the round with Alliance Resource Partners, Applied Ventures, LLC, the venture capital arm of Applied Materials, Inc., and existing investors Cottonwood Technology Fund, Chevron Technology Ventures, Aventurine Partners, Energy Innovation Capital and Ajax Strategies participating, bringing the company’s total funding to date to $135 million. Other current shareholders include industry leaders Rockwell Automation and Caterpillar Venture Capital.
Since the launch of its IEs Series of motor systems in 2020, Infinitum Electric has secured customer agreements with more than $900 million in potential orders across a wide variety of companies in heavy industry, manufacturing, HVAC and transportation that aim to reduce energy and emissions with smaller, lighter, quieter, higher-efficiency motors
Ben Schuler, founder and CEO of Infinitum Electric said: «As industrial equipment, cars, aircraft and buildings are rapidly electrifying, our revolutionary motor systems offer a path forward to reduce electricity demand and carbon footprint. Partnering with Riverstone Holdings, Alliance Resource Partners and our other new and existing network of investors representing leaders in the energy, semiconductor and industrial sectors, puts us in a strong position to scale production, deliver product and impact how the world sustainably consumes and generates power for the next generation».

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