- Production of solid-state batteries to attain 7.6GWh capacity
Switzerland is set to be graced with the construction of a new factory that is into the production of solid-state batteries. The project commencement is planned for 2024 with an initial production of 1.2GWh and later scaled to 7.6GWh.
The new company establishing the project, Swiss Clean Battery AG, will make a CHF 246 million (USD 262 million) investment to purchase machinery. The equipment will be used for the first phase of production, and a total of 7.2 million battery cells are expected to be manufactured every year. The batteries will be sold in domestic and international markets, with CHF 318 million as the expected returns. The final phase of the production, according to plans, will yield almost 48 million battery cells annually and a turnover of more than CHF 2 billion. In the initial phase, the production area will be expanded to about 100,000 sq m (119,599 sq yd) from 20,000 sq m.
The new company, Swiss Clean Battery, asserts that the solid-state battery technology which Switzerland-based High-Performance AG has licensed remains a promising successor to the lithium-ion batteries. The new technology – solid-state batteries – has a 50% higher environmental balance than lithium-ion batteries and is more resistive to deep discharge. It also has fast charging, does not require any crucial raw materials like cobalt, and is also incombustible.
The company’s agenda is to be funded through debt financing and to go public on the stock market in Zurich by October 2022.