June 21, 2024: The eyes of Europe were firmly fixed on Germany this week as hordes of people descended on the streets of Stuttgart with rallying cries and readiness for an event not to be missed.
But that’s enough about the UEFA Europa champions league.
Because it wasn’t just thousands of football fans flooding to Bavaria with a game plan and promises to keep their eyes on the ball (okay, I’m going to stop with the football analogies now).
This week also saw The Battery Show Europe 2024 kick-off (last one!) with 961 exhibitors, along with thought-leaders and decision-makers exploring the latest products, developments and solutions at one of the largest trade fairs in Europe.
Last year, The Battery Show Europe, co-located with The Electric & Hybrid Vehicle Technology Expo to showcase innovations in electric vehicle battery development and powertrain vehicle technology over the course of the three-day event.
Stuttgart, known as ‘The Cradle of the Automobile’, is hosting this, the fifth annual European convention, as global EV sales demand are projected to grow over 27% in 2024.
“Western Europe is expected to account for 17.2% of global market share in 2024 with anticipated sales of 2.1 million this year,” said Rob Shelton, event director, Battery Show Europe.
“Preparing to maintain European position as global leaders in EV will fuel conversations and create the platform to facilitate education and content surrounding these topics and we anticipate key global discussions to set the stage for the next few years to come.”
Held across five gargantuan halls — each offering 10,500 m² of space — in the Messe Stuttgart convention centre 12km south of the city, this has always been a crucial conference for industry professionals to find all their supply chain contacts in one place and to gain new ideas for increased battery efficiencies and reduced manufacturing costs.
This year some 19,000 attendees came from leading manufacturers, technology developers, purchasers and experts from Asia, North America and Europe. Topics at the co-located conference covered areas such as policy and regulations; sustainable production; battery safety; recycling; next generation materials; EV infrastructure; and stationary energy storage.
One delegate told Batteries International that they thought the event had gone ‘from strength to strength’. Another said they had attended some fascinating talks on the future outlook of the battery market with contributions from Volvo Group and JLR and that ‘it was great to be back’.
We also spoke to Bob Galyen, lithium and lead battery veteran, who is chairman of The Battery Show in Europe as well as in Detroit, US in October.
“The growth in both these shows over a decade and more has been outstanding,” he said. “It shows the vibrant health of the industry in general and the huge demand we’re seeing for products that can help push forward the energy transition and our road to net zero.”
One of the latest trends in the industry, as evidenced by discussions with many of the exhibitors, has been the rise of new products and services. This has led to a debate on the sometimes troubled issue of outsourcing versus manufacturing in-house for the large industry players.
The new trend is clearly that the lithium battery business is now of a scale that outsourcing has more attractions than before and a new generation of services are emerging.
One such firm is BatteryEnergyBack, a recent start-up, which has, among other things, a business value proposition that it can accept spent lithium batteries from recycling firms and then discharge them — a process that is sometimes dangerous but absolutely necessary — before shipping the batteries back to the recycler.
These can then be turned into black mass for extraction of the more valuable metals in the battery such as cobalt, manganese and nickel.
Another firm looking at this business approach is US testing and R&D firm Arbin. Stephen Parker, VP for global sales said: “We’ve been researching the idea of providing lithium battery formation as a service — battery OEMs finish the complex manufacturing needs of making the cells, pouches and packs and we then use our expertise with charging algorithms to ensure they are ready to go.”
Certainly, the whole auto-manufacturing industry has come a huge way from the early 2010s. Then a General Motors representative — co-incidentally at an earlier iteration of the Battery Show in Novi, Michigan — told Batteries International that GM for almost the first time in its history was moving away from manufacturing everything within its car and was starting to use external suppliers.
Next up is The Battery Show, India, October 3-5 in Greater Noida. Then, with barely 48 hours in-between, the show heads to a new downtown Detroit location in the infamous motor city for the North America conference on October 7-10. Maybe not as many stops as Taylor Swift’s Eras tour, but still — a clear indication that demand is there.
“It is of global critical interest,” says John Lewinski, VP Informa, the conference organizer. “Each region provides a different lens and the varied technology coming from specialized research and development abound.”
