Author: Andrew Holloway

The European Commission has fined three automotive starter battery manufacturers and a trade association a combined €72 million ($84.54 million) for participating in a cartel that breached EU competition rules, the regulator said on Monday. The Commission said battery makers Exide, FET and Rombat, together with industry association EUROBAT, engaged in anticompetitive agreements and coordinated practices related to the sale of automotive starter batteries across the European Economic Area (EEA) for more than 12 years. See also: Verkor Opens 16-GWh Battery Cell Factory In Northern France “This cartel restricted competition and may have led to higher prices for the manufacturing…

French battery maker Verkor, a partner of Renault Group, has officially opened its first large-scale battery cell factory in Dunkirk, northern France, marking a key step in France’s efforts to build a domestic electric vehicle battery industry. The facility, known as Gigafactory Bourbourg, has an initial annual production capacity of 16 gigawatt-hours (GWh) and is planned to expand to 50 GWh by 2030, Verkor said. Construction of the plant began in late 2023 and was completed in about two years. French President Emmanuel Macron, who attended the inauguration, said the project illustrated how industrial revival, innovation and decarbonisation could progress…

Bristol-based battery technology startup Anaphite said it has raised £1.4 million in new funding to accelerate development of its manufacturing technology aimed at cutting the energy intensity and carbon footprint of electric vehicle battery production. The financing includes £700,000 in grant funding from the Innovate UK Investor Partnerships: Clean Energy and Climate Technologies programme, matched by £700,000 in private investment from climate-focused venture capital firms Elbow Beach and World Fund. The funding follows Anaphite’s £10.4 million Series A round, which closed in September. See also: KAIST Identifies Electrolyte Interaction Behind Rapid Degradation of High-Nickel Batteries Anaphite said the capital will…

Researchers at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) have identified the underlying mechanism driving the rapid performance decline seen in lithium-ion batteries with high nickel content in their cathodes, a development that could reshape electrolyte design for advanced battery chemistries. High-nickel cathodes are widely used to boost energy density in electric vehicle and energy storage batteries, but they have long been associated with faster degradation compared with other chemistries. In a study led by Professor Nam-Soon Choi of KAIST’s Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, researchers found that the issue is not inherent to nickel alone, but…

QuantumScape announced that it has finished the installation of key equipment in San Jose for the higher-volume production of its QSE-5 battery cells, completing a significant annual objective for 2025. The new assembly line, referred to as the ‘Eagle Line,’ is designed as a highly automated pilot production facility. It is intended to lay the groundwork for future gigawatt-hour-scale manufacturing by the company’s technology licensing partners. See also: QuantumScape Begins Shipping QSE-5 Solid-State Battery Samples QuantumScape plans to formally inaugurate the Eagle Line at its San Jose headquarters in February 2026. The event is scheduled to host customer representatives, technology…

Porsche is employing sophisticated battery management and robust cell technology to ensure its electric vehicle (EV) high-voltage systems achieve a lifespan and reliability target of at least 15 years or 300,000 kilometers (approximately 186,000 miles), equivalent to its combustion engines. The automaker’s strategy involves compensating for the inevitable “initial drop” in capacity—the $1\%$ to $5\%$ capacity loss in the first months of a lithium-ion cell’s life—by pre-setting a higher energy content in newly produced batteries. This allows the battery’s effective State of Health (SoH) to decline more slowly over time. Carlos Alberto Cordova Tineo, a battery cell development and fast…