Echandia’s mission is to power the future of zero-emission transport and the company continues to invest in cutting-edge LTO technology for the maritime market. The new partnership gives Echandia access to a dedicated Scandinavian battery module factory with an initial capacity of 100 000 modules per year, extendable to 300,000 modules per year. In megawatt hours that equals 60 MWh per year with a capacity to increase to 180 MWh per year.   

In practice, this means that Echandia will be able to supply batteries to power around 300 medium-sized passenger ferries per year. 

Recharge times cut in half for high-speed commuter vessels 

The new battery modules can run continuously at 9 C if water-cooled or 6 C if air-cooled, compared with today’s 4 C for an air-cooled battery.  

 “The C-rate definition is the ratio between how much power you can take out versus the energy storage capacity, so this means that we can increase power in/output with more than 200% compared with current technology baseline.  The possibility of absorbing extreme powers when recharging the vessel means that we can more than half the recharge time for coming high-speed commuter vessels. 

With a smart battery module architecture and only marginal price increase this milestone marks a quantum leap in terms of performance over price”, says Echandia CEO Magnus Eriksson. 

 The new battery design was completed in Q2 2019.  Echandia will start taking orders for these high-performing battery modules in Q1 2020.  The full certification process is expected to be completed by September 2020.