SK Innovation will be introducing radical changes to its mid and large sized EV battery supply lines all over the world, according to industry sources on May 14.
Mass storage technology will be applied to procedures involving the mixing of battery materials, while super high speed technology will be applied to stacking them.
When both are applied simultaneously to the plants’ electrode fab procedures, industry sources say battery supply productivity will climb by up to 30 percent because more batteries can be made at a single supply line. Cost-cutting is also likely.
SK Innovation is reportedly looking to apply the new technologies to supply lines in Komarom of Hungary and Georgia, U.S. “Introducing new procedures is critical for maintaining battery supply capacity, which is imperative for attaining competitiveness,” said the source.
The Komarom plant has already upgraded its equipment quality to stack battery materials at higher speed. This allows the plant to speed up Z-Stacking, a process under which electrodes are cut into separate sheets, then stacked alternatively with separation membranes.
For the plant in Georgia, the new technology is being applied to the mixing equipment. Mixing is the first step for creating electrodes. Materials are mixed together at certain ratios and turned into slush. Mixing takes about 12 hours on average per assembly line.
SK Innovation currently uses about 1000~1300 liters of mixing equipment. It now plans to increase that to 2300 liters. This means it can secure more battery materials during the same time frame. The sources said the super high speed stacking technology that has been applied to the Komarom plant will also be applied. The battery supply capacity goal for SK Innovation is set at 100 GWh by 2025.
However, industry watchers say the goal may not be plausible, since the aggregate supply capacity is at around 38.5 GWh. Broken down, the EV battery capacity at Seosan is around 4.7GWh, 7.5GWh at Changzhou, 7.5 GWh at Komarom Plant 1, an estimated 9 GWh at Komarom Plant 2 and 9.8GWh at its Georgia plant.
