Scania to build a battery assembly plant and electric vehicle laboratory

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Truck manufacturer Scania is to build a battery assembly plant and laboratory to support its new range of electric trucks.

The company said it will invest more than £86m in the 18,000m2 battery facility, which will employ more than 200 people and be built next to its chassis assembly plant in Södertälje, Sweden.

It will assemble battery modules and packs from cells that will be delivered from Northvolt’s battery factory in Skellefteå, Sweden.

Battery packs will be tailored for various applications and delivered to the chassis manufacturing area, which will also be reorganised for parallel assembly of electric and combustion engine vehicles.

Ruthger de Vries, head of production and logistics at Scania said the battery assembly facility is expected to be fully operational by 2023.

He added: “Operating an on-site battery assembly plant is a prerequisite for large-scale production of electric vehicles and it also establishes Scania clearly as a part of the battery production value chain.”

The company is also setting up a laboratory to test battery performance and lifespan in different climactic conditions.

Construction of the 1,000-square metre laboratory has started and following extensive testing and verification of equipment and instruments, it will be fully operative by autumn 2021.

The laboratory will contain three 250-square metre test halls for battery cells, modules and packs. Adjacent to these halls, the laboratory will also have facilities for test sample preparation in order to improve work environment, safety and testing uptime.
Claes Erixon, Head of Research and Development at Scania said: “With the accelerating pace of development, the laboratory will strengthen our capacity to right-size batteries for every application.

“We have an ambitious roadmap ahead of us in annually launching new and updated electric products with related battery services. This underscores the need for world-class skills and knowledge in battery usage and lifecycle optimisation.”
In September, Scania launched its first fully electric truck with a range of up to 250 km (155 miles).

Series production will begin in 2021 and the manufacturer said crash tests of the vehicle “went as expected” with the battery emerging unscathed.

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