Construction of V4Drive lithium-ion cells for battery electric vehicles 

Large lithi­um-ion round cells for bat­tery elec­tric vehi­cles (BEVs) have now been announced by VARTA AG. The new cells make a dif­fer­ence, espe­cial­ly for next-gen­er­a­tion per­for­mance vehi­cles and oth­er non-auto­mo­tive appli­ca­tions, VARTA CEO Her­bert Schein said at the com­pa­ny’s first Cap­i­tal Mar­kets Day on Wednesday.

“We believe our round cell for­mats rep­re­sent excel­lent alter­na­tives for build­ing bat­tery elec­tric vehi­cles in the per­for­mance sec­tor due to their unique characteristics”

- Her­bert Schein

The com­pa­ny announced its ultra-high per­for­mance V4Drive lithi­um-ion round cell in 21700 for­mat (2.1 cm diam­e­ter, 7 cm height) ear­li­er this year. The V4Drive tech­nol­o­gy is now being trans­ferred to even larg­er cell for­mats. The aim is to pow­er BEVs, offer­ing long ranges and addi­tion­al per­for­mance for dynam­ic dri­ving. Schein: “The Group is bring­ing per­for­mance to e‑mobility. Today’s ener­gy bat­ter­ies offer auto­mo­tive engi­neers the abil­i­ty to build cars with long ranges. V4Drive will also offer addi­tion­al per­for­mance qual­i­ties. This makes it ide­al for the per­for­mance seg­ment of the auto­mo­tive indus­try. An elec­tric car pow­ered by V4Drive cells will be able to trav­el long dis­tances while offer­ing more dynam­ic dri­ving — and it can be charged much faster than is pos­si­ble today.” Schein said the com­pa­ny will decide to what extent it will enter V4Drive pro­duc­tion by the end of this year, depend­ing on cus­tomer demand. 

Armin Hes­sen­berg­er, CFO, said dur­ing Wednes­day’s event that the com­pa­ny has the finan­cial strength to enter the next era of growth. “VARTA has pro­duced near­ly half a bil­lion Coin­Pow­er cells to date. VARTA has gained expe­ri­ence in the pro­duc­tion of small lithi­um-ion cells. We are now trans­fer­ring this know-how to the pro­duc­tion of larg­er, recharge­able lithi­um-ion cells. Our approach is to offer the mar­ket cells with bet­ter, with dif­fer­ent char­ac­ter­is­tics com­pared to what is avail­able today. The com­pa­ny has gen­er­at­ed strong cash flows to date from the pri­ma­ry zinc-air bat­ter­ies, from the recent­ly pur­chased con­sumer busi­ness, and now from our Coin­Pow­er cells. They sup­port cash flow to fund R&D and indus­tri­al­iza­tion of large lithi­um-ion cells.” Pilot pro­duc­tion of the 21700-for­mat V4Drive cells will start at the end of this year, with mass pro­duc­tion sched­uled to begin two years lat­er. Pro­duc­tion capac­i­ty is expect­ed to be at least 2 GWh. 

Rain­er Hald, CTO of VARTA AG, con­firmed that the pro­duc­tion of larg­er lithi­um-ion round cells will ben­e­fit from syn­er­gies with the pro­duc­tion of the small­er lithi­um-ion round cells called Coin­Pow­er. “Our tech­nolo­gies build on each oth­er: We have trans­ferred the inno­v­a­tive foil seal design of hear­ing aid bat­ter­ies — where we have become the mar­ket leader — to Coin­Pow­er and com­bined it with oth­er inno­va­tions. We’re now doing the same with V4Drive: trans­fer­ring Coin­Pow­er’s know-how to V4Drive and adding more inno­va­tions.” Wednes­day’s event was VAR­TA’s first Cap­i­tal Mar­kets Day since its 2017 IPO, and due to COVID-19, the event was streamed live and online to view­ers. A replay will be avail­able on the com­pa­ny’s web­site http://www.varta-ag.com