Battery systems manufacturer Akasol has commissioned mechanical engineering firm Woll Maschinenbau to develop and supply highly automated production equipment for its new manufacturing facility in Darmstadt, Germany.
From mid-2021, the company’s new AKASystem AKM CYC lithium-ion battery system – which provides all-electric buses and commercial vehicles with a 600-800km range – will be manufactured at the company’s new Gigafactory 1 production plant.
The total investment volume for the order is said to be in the low double-digit million Euro range and includes the option of further production lines at Akasol’s US site in Hazel Park, Michigan USA, as well as the subsequent expansion of Gigafactory 1 in Darmstadt.
At the beginning of February Akasol commissioned mechanical engineering company Manz from Reutlingen to build fully automated production lines in Darmstadt and Michigan in a deal worth £17.6m (€20m).
While Manz will provide the equipment to produce battery modules, Woll will supply special machines that link 10 of these modules to form a battery system.
“Continually increasing the degree of automation in serial production is of high importance in order to allow us to meet our customers’ growing demand for production-ready high-energy battery systems,” said Akasol CEO Sven Schulz.
Akasol’s third-generation battery system, the AKASystem AKM CYC, is to be produced on a new, 100m-long production line in Darmstadt from mid-2021.
According to the company, the battery solution, which weighs around 500kg and stores 100kWh, could be produced at a rate of up to 70 units every day.
Furthermore, the automated production line should be flexible enough to be able to build “customer-specific products of the same battery system type”.
According to Akasol, a further acceleration of the production is possible; with further investments in automation solutions, the cycle time can be reduced to up to 10 minutes per battery system, said Schulz.
“As a result, we have the potential to raise output to as high as 126 systems per day, for a storage capacity of 12.5 MWh per day.”
Akasol’s Gigafactory 1 reportedly also has sufficient space to install a second line of the same type there. As a result, the production capacity at the Darmstadt site could be expanded by up to 5 GWh per year in the future.
The Darmstadt plant also forms the basis for the further expansion of capacity in North America, where Akasol plans to start operating Gigafactory 2 with almost identical production equipment from early 2022.
At Akasol’s Langen site in Germany, the company had already increased production capacity to up to 800MWh in March by commissioning a second production line.
With the construction of the plant in Darmstadt, the battery manufacturer is further increasing capacity in view of “follow-up orders from long-standing series customers”.
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