The Serbian company ElevenEs, dedicated to battery cells, has developed the first and largest LFP (lithium iron phosphate battery) battery cell in Europe. The first test orders will ship to customers in the first quarter of 2023.
The company has announced that its EDGE battery cell will be showcased at The Business Booster, EIT InnoEnergy’s annual international event showcasing more than 150 leading sustainable energy technologies from around the world The event will be held in Lisbon, Portugal on 28 and September 29 this year.
LFP technology, which according to Bloomberg NEF in 2022 will reach 40% of the global market share of batteries, is characterized by its greater security, lower cost and greater sustainability (no nickel or cobalt required) over existing NCM lithium batteries. In addition to their proven safety features in electric vehicles, LFP batteries last twice as long as most common competing technologies. In recent months, leading car companies such as Tesla, Volkswagen, BMW, Mercedes and Ford, among others, have already introduced LFP cells in their fleets.
“After creating and testing more than 500 sample cells in the lab, we have developed the final cell chemistry and design and have assembled an international team of almost 50 people. We are on track and look forward to closing our funding round.” series B by the end of this year, expand our production capacities to 300-500MWh and attract several strategic investors to further accelerate our growth,” said Nemanja Mikać, CEO of ElevenEs. In addition, he has highlighted that ElevenEs will offer the market 3 different sizes of EDGE battery cells in prismatic format, which will be competitive against all the mass production batteries currently available on the world market.
“A year ago, at this very event, this company was just a nascent development project, and this battery did not exist. It is impressive to see what they have achieved in such a short time,” said Diego Pavia, CEO of EIT InnoEnergy.
ElevenEs is an industrial project derived from Al Pack Group, a leading multinational in aluminum processing with almost three decades of experience and know-how in high-precision aluminum processing, a key component in the production of electrodes that form the active part of the LFP battery.
The laboratory and R&D center are operational from June 2021, and the production plant of the first phase will be completed in January 2023. The first giga-scale production phase (8 GWh), with the capacity to supply batteries for 200,000 cars per year, is scheduled for the end of 2025. A new expansion plan is expected to be announced soon. Despite a growing number of startups announcing expansion plans, the battery market in Europe remains undersupplied.
For companies that are very advanced in product development, such as ElevenEs, expansion will come from launching a good product and executing an exemplary industrialization strategy. European demand for localized and sustainable batteries is on the rise, so reliability and product leadership from European battery manufacturers is becoming an imperative.
