“This year has already been marked by the proclaimed end of public funding for battery research,” says Professor Achim Kampker, Managing Director at Fraunhofer FFB. “Close collaboration between science and industry and the rapid transfer of innovative production processes into series production are now essential for Germanyʼs future as a globally competitive location.” In the battery sector, the focus will be on new developments and processes in cell, module and pack production, as well as on the extraction, new compositions, and recycling of raw materials. 

“For batteries, as for all other fields of electric mobility production, the competition should not be between domestic machine and plant manufacturers, but with companies from Asia, which are increasingly penetrating the European market,” says Professor Heiner Heimes, Member of PEM Management. “To counter the advantage in experience of Asian manufacturers, we in Germany can develop innovative, efficient and sustainable production technologies for our own value chain.”

From extraction to recycling: materials and methods

The event, which is taking place at Eurogress Aachen, is therefore dedicated to the key questions of which materials and methods can be used to make modern electric motors significantly more efficient, which processes can be used to realize the large-scale production of fuel cell systems and their components, which methods can be used to achieve comprehensive recycling of traction batteries and electric motor components, how the use of critical raw materials can be avoided in the future, in which other applications spent electric vehicle batteries can be reused, and what the new EU Battery Directive means in practice.

With the EPT the Fraunhofer FFB, the RWTH institution and the Campus Forum aims to enable industry, from plant engineering to users, to share knowledge and expertise and to promote technological progress. In the seminars of the “Week of Electric Mobility” before and after the EPT, numerous specialists and managers will be trained on the various components of the electric drive.

Information about the event is available on the official EPT website.