Porsche is getting serious with manufacture of battery cells

The sports car manufacturer Porsche is getting serious with its announced project for the development and manufacture of high-performance battery cells for electric cars. As it was said on Sunday, the Volkswagen subsidiary is setting up a joint venture with the cell specialist Customcells from Itzehoe and Tübingen. According to its own information, Porsche intends to invest a high double-digit million sum in the new Cellforce Group for a majority stake of a good 80 percent. The sports car manufacturer wants to position itself at the top of the global competition for the most powerful battery cell. The traditional brand's sports cars are to be converted to emission-free drive. The battery will be more compact and will charge faster than the currently used batteries, it said. As already announced, the new company will be based in Tübingen. The production facility will be near the Porsche headquarters in Stuttgart-Zuffenhausen and will have up to 80 employees by 2025. The factory will have a capacity of 100 megawatt hours per year, which would be battery cells for 1,000 vehicles. As Porsche boss Oliver Blume told "Welt am Sonntag", production should start in 2024. The charging time of the high-performance cells should be just 15 minutes - and thus come close to the traditional refueling process. Regarding structural change in the auto industry, Blume said it was important "that politics and business have a clear path of innovation in order to advance our country together." For the future, Porsche is clearly focusing on electromobility. VW boss Herbert Diess had expanded the battery strategy of the Wolfsburg-based car giant in mid-March: The Wolfsburg-based car company wants to build a total of six battery cell factories in Europe by 2030 to meet its battery requirements. One of these factories in Salzgitter should deliver the so-called "unit cell" with which VW wants to equip its mass models in a cost-saving manner. With the Swedish battery start-up partner Northvolt, a plant for high-performance cells is also being built in Skellefteå in northern Sweden. Porsche has so far obtained the cells for its first all-electric sports car, the Taycan, from the Korean company LG Chem. Further details on the project are to be announced at a press conference on Monday.