The B2B platform for full-electric and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles: Interviews

Christophe Pillot, scientific director for the BATTERIES 2009 event next week in Cannes, and Battery survey manager at AVICENNE, has talked to cars21.com about competition in the battery manufacturing industry, future trends in materials use for batteries, and why the industry cannot afford to underestimate the problem of safety.

cars21.com: Mr. Pillot, you have taken over the position of Scientific Director for the BATTERIES 2009 event next week. What does your role entail and why have you chosen to become active for the three days event to be held in Cannes from 30 September to 2 October?

Pillot: Actually, we created this event 11 years ago in 1999, in Paris. At the beginning, it was a French Conference on NiMH & Li-ion batteries for portable electronics. Today, it’s one of the major events worldwide on large & small rechargeable batteries.

cars21.com: What are your expectations for BATTERIES 2009?

Pillot: In general, the impact of the economic crisis on this congress is huge. But for Batteries 2009, we increased the number of booths. More than 60 international experts will present their paper & we expect more than 300 attendees.

cars21.com: In your daily work as a consultant for AVICENNE you have developed special expertise on rechargeable batteries and the evaluation of the market potential of full-electric vehicles, hybrids, and plug-in hybrids. Could you tell us a bit more about your role and where your main interests in these fields lie?

Pillot: I am Battery survey manager for consulting firm AVICENNE. We are working for most of the battery maker’s worldwide, raw materials suppliers or financial institutions. We provide multi-client reports, as well as customized surveys.

cars21.com: You have just published two market studies about the prospects for rechargeable batteries, as well as the importance of battery development for HEVs, EVs and PHEVs. Let us talk about the battery study, where you investigated the battery suppliers’ market shares in 2008. What are your major conclusions in terms of world regions and market readiness for EV batteries? Where do you see the strongest current suppliers and from where the strongest competition could arise in the future?

Pillot: At the beginning of the decade, the Battery industry was highly concentrated in Japan thanks to Li-ion technology. But, the Japanese battery market share decreased from 85% in 2000 to less than 60% in 2008. This is mostly due to the aggressive strategy of newcomers like BYD, Lishen, or Huanyu Power Source in China, Samsung or LG chemical in Korea.

The US, European or Asian automobile industry would like to get their batteries and hybrid systems from national partners. This may provide a second chance to US or European battery makers to compete with Japanese, Korean and Chinese ones. The growth is so high that there will also be some opportunities for the US or European battery industry. Ford’s top product executive declared last year: “to get the volume of battery we want, we need to produce them here in the United States, and we need to actually be able to be much more in control of the situation.” In other words, given the increasing volumes of hybrids in North America, there clearly is a need for a North America supply base”. In the US, you probably know that the Obama administration gave a stimulus package of $2,4 billion to battery makers & raw materials suppliers. They are creating a new battery industry in the US.

cars21.com: Which major trends can we observe when we look at the raw materials used in next-generation EV batteries? Is Lithium ion going to be the only viable solution, as claimed by many?

Pillot: Today, NiMH batteries dominate the power-assist hybrid market. NiMH is a proven technology. Developments & improvements of energy, power, temperature range, cyclability continue even if most of the money is going today towards Li-ion developments. From the 1st to the 2^nd version of the Toyota Prius, battery pack power increased by 30%. At the same time, thanks to a great improvement of the pack design, the pack volume decreased by 40%. The other thing is that the price per Wh is quite low compared to Li-ion, even if carmakers would like a cheaper one.

Li-ion batteries are in everybody’s opinion the future of HEV because Li-ion batteries are much more powerful, thanks to a higher voltage the number of cells is less important, the cyclability often appears to be better than NiMH batteries and for the same result, the weight of the battery could be divided by a factor of 2. For HEV, we expect a competition between NiMH & Li-ion. For P-HEV or full EV, the Li-ion technology is the only one today.

With Li-ion technology, there are many technical ways & technical solutions offered now. Many partnerships to share the know-how, and joint ventures were formed in the last few years.

cars21.com: What problems do manufacturers face with Li-ion batteries?

Pillot: As the cobalt Li-ion batteries get bigger, in addition of the Cobalt cost problems, Li-ion has also a problem of thermal runaway. Incidents or recalls observed with cellular phones or Portable PCs will be unacceptable in the car industry. Battery suppliers & car makers developed alternative solutions for Cobalt Li-ion batteries. Alternative solutions at lower costs, but solutions that have to fulfill the technical requirements in terms of temperature range, cyclability, thermal management and life duration.

The two main axes for new cathode active material are on one hand to increase the capacity thanks to NMC or NCA cathode, on the other hand to decrease the price and solve the safety issue with Manganese Spinel or Lithium metal Phosphate. However for the automobile industry more developments have to be made to achieve industry standards.

cars21.com: Will the increased demand for EV batteries put any strain on the world supply of raw materials?

Pillot: One million EVs on the market represent roughly 10 billion US dollars for battery makers and more than 40 000 tons of cathode materials. This is more than what we use today for all Li-ion battery markets combined. So, even if the Lithium reserves are huge and more than enough for at least several hundreds of years, the fact is that there are just a few, or more concretely only 3 Lithium suppliers worldwide, and that most of the Lithium resources are in South America.

cars21.com: On a more general note, one of the major themes discussed at BATTERIES 2009 will be how to bridge the gap between power needs and what the market offers today while still providing safe solutions. What can you tell us about the safety of batteries, a topic that is sometimes neglected in public discussions dominated by the hype around electric vehicles, but where voices already warn that challenges will be faced and that testing is urgently needed?

Pillot: From the beginning, Li-ion batteries have created a safety problem. Putting more & more energy in smaller & smaller volumes, we created kind of bombs. It is even worse with the Li-ion Cobalt cathode because of thermal runaway concerns. We all see that the problem is becoming increasingly important. The number of incidents, or I should say accidents, is growing and the damage caused become more and more obvious.

Also the number of recalls is increasing and the number of cells or packs involved in each recall is growing in parallel. That is a disaster for the Li-ion industrial business. Thanks to the competition, the average selling price was decreasing so fast that the profitability of the Li-ion business was not good anymore, between 5 to 10 % on average. The problem is that recalls have an enormous impact on profitability. In one recall Sony lost all the money they had earned in the battery business before.

cars21.com: More general still, how has the financial crisis affected the EV industry? Is there a positive momentum now for the development of new automotive technologies or are budgets tight to invest in solutions that might only be ready in several years?

Pillot: As I said before, in the US this incentive package of $2,4 billion has been given to battery makers & raw materials suppliers. The same will happen in France, Germany & the whole of Europe. In France, for example, Renault invests a lot in EV projects. I think that the next decade will mark a transition in vehicle technology, characterized by a significant increase in vehicle electrical power requirements.

It is not, however, that hybrids, PHEV or EV are going to sweep the automotive world immediately. But it is now clear that hybrid systems have muscled their way into acceptance. The extra cost and bulk of powerful electric motors and battery packs, initially viewed as impossible hurdles for the industry, has begun to seem less of an obstacle as production increases and automakers gain more production experience.

Let me issue some warning here: We have to remember that it took 8 to 10 years for Li-ion batteries to replace NiMH in cellular phones or portable PCs. We also need to remind ourselves of what end users want. What they wish for is a car with 500 miles range, recharge in several minutes, with 10 years & several hundred thousand miles guaranty at the price or cheaper than their present car.

I strongly believe that Li-ion and batteries for automotive use will be a real success and a great solution for our life and our world but it will take time and we still have tough work and network discussions ahead of us to live up to technical requirements and the users’ dreams.