Building The Electric Vehicle Battery Of Tomorrow

 Building The Electric Vehicle Battery Of Tomorrow

At the entrance to the new plant, the logo of the company’s battery cell supplier, Eneos Energy Solutions, stands out against the gray slate that covers most of the building. (Image credit: Eneos Energy)

The plant will be used for manufacturing an efficient lithium-ion battery. It will produce batteries that are able to charge more than their average life. However, they can also recharge slower as well. For instance, when two cells of this kind charge, each cell takes about one week to completely lose its charge. This means if you want a full charge, you need to keep it at least half full for four hours. If you use three of them simultaneously, then you need them for two days to fully recharge. When two cells are charged together, the last three cells will take 12 hours to completely lose their charge. “The technology being developed by Eneos Energy has been around for several years, but this is only on paper. So we can not test the real product,” says John Coates, CEO of the company. That leaves the company with no option but to buy a competitor’s Li-Ion batteries.

They’ve chosen J&J.

Image by Jill Wellington from Pixabay 

In recent years there has been intense competition between Japanese manufacturers like Panasonic, Toshiba, SK Hynix, and Samsung. Other customers include Mitsubishi Motors, Ford Motor Company, General Motors, Volkswagen, Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, Toyota, Nissan, Hyundai and Daimler among others. But none come close to what J&J, an American manufacturer, has to offer for a battery. A few of these Li-Ion batteries can be found in showrooms; however many models are still limited to the domestic market. They go into production over the next year or so though much cheaper versions are already sold in Europe. J&J already makes some of the best electric vehicles in the world, including all Ford Focus cars and all of their hybrids and plug-ins. These devices have a large capacity, and they’re usually priced competitively. All of them carry J&J branding on their sides.

The reason for choosing J&J? Well… J&J manufactures everything from solar panels and fuel cells to medical supplies and even batteries. Their competitors are mainly made of cheap materials but J&J is known for making its products using high-quality materials. When they were looking for potential partners, they wanted someone ready to move quickly to make whatever the market needed. Also, they didn’t want a huge investment but something that would pay off. J&J has been working with other companies since 1945 and they knew right away that they wanted to work with Tesla. In April 2016, the news broke that J&J had acquired Lithium Americas. Three months later two battery plants began operations in Michigan and Indiana, which should increase their output for 2021.

What the hell is going on here?

The batteries were supposed to start being manufactured in late 2019 until early 2020 before beginning deliveries in January. Then again, not much is clear on how long that is going to take. Most of the facilities are located across a 1,700 square foot area. J&J claims it will be producing up to 10 million units per year in the U.S. with plans to expand beyond that. During President Trump’s final visit to J&J, he said that orders for electric car batteries could begin to arrive in 2021. It may be too soon for those particular machines. Regardless of where all of this might land before 2022, J&J is already starting to raise awareness of its products. Now it wants to sell a dozen or more thousand units a year.

J&J has also taken a leap forward in battery production. Back in 2015, they began mass manufacturing of battery packs. Today, they are working towards developing an automated line of packing lines in order to improve efficiency. The goal is to get 15,000 lines in place by first quarter of 2017, according to Jim DeGaynor, vice president of manufacturing. He believes that if the line is successful, it could reduce costs by 30% to 40%. The hope is to eventually have 3,000 lines running at any given time. To do so would require building a much larger facility. So why did J&J choose to use Indiana? There aren’t many places in America that have a major automotive industry in addition to being the second largest producer of lithium in the world! Because they have access to good labor, skilled workers, and skilled technicians.

There is also another issue regarding taxes. Both Indianapolis and Flint are fairly small cities. J&J likely will have to pay local and state sales taxes for every sale but J&J doesn’t give this much information. So while J&J sells mostly for profit, it does break one or two state tax laws. You need to check the fine print for specifics but J&J seems pretty smart about it. With the company in operation over the next 12 months, I think it will end up paying less tax than it currently does and maybe a bit more than it needs. Some states including New Jersey are facing similar issues since they have relatively big employers. J&J just hired 50 new employees to help with that problem but I think that’s going to cost them even more in the coming years.