Audi decides to start battery production for its electric car programme
Audi has set up battery-making facilities in Brussels where the carmaker will start making the all-electric e-tron sport-utility vehicle this year.
Audi’s top management will decide in the next year or two whether to build batteries for its vast electric-car programme in its high-cost German home market, its chief executive said.
Audi’s labour leaders have urged management to invest in battery-cell technology and to assemble powerpacks at the two core factories in Ingolstadt and Neckarsulm, where R&D operations and two thirds of the 91,000 workforce are based.
“We have not yet taken a decision on this matter,” Chief Executive Rupert Stadler told journalists after the brand’s annual news conference on Thursday.
Audi has set up battery-making facilities in Brussels where the carmaker will start making the all-electric e-tron sport-utility vehicle this year.
Audi has picked the small plant, with a staff of 2,700 people, as a lead factory for electric mobility within the parent Volkswagen group.
“It’s also a question of space,” Stadler said. “Here (in Germany) it is definitely a bit more complex. We will have to decide this in the next one to two years,” he said.
Earlier, German battery maker Sonnen GmbH will set up a battery manufacturing hub in South Australia state this year to tap what it sees as the fastest global growth market for solar rooftop storage, its Australia managing director said on Thursday.
The plant will make around 10,000 solar batteries a year for the first five years, once it is set up in six to nine months, Chris Parratt said. Sonnen is the world’s largest producer of household batteries and solar energy storage systems.
“We believe that Australia will be the biggest market for storage over the next five years,” Parratt told Reuters.
“At the moment, Germany is the biggest. But we think given the conditions in Australia: high energy prices; an affluent society; high penetration of solar; these things all add up.”
Sonnen will import the battery cells, which are not manufactured in Australia, and rely on local supply for the rest of the products.
The company did not say how much money it would be putting into its South Australia investment.
Source: devdiscourse
