Italvolt Selects ABB To Build 45 GWh Battery Gigafactory In Italy

Italy joins the battery race?

By: Mark Kane

Oct 15, 2021 at 8:05am ET

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Italvolt is another new player that would like to become a lithium-ion battery supplier for electric vehicles. The location wil be Scarmagno in Northern Italy.

The company, founded by Lars Carlstrom, intends to build a factory with an output of 45 GWh of batteries annually, which would be enough for about 550,000 EVs - according to the press release. The average capacity would be 82 kWh per vehicle.

"The gigafactory will be located at the famous Olivetti site and is being designed by iconic Italian automotive design house division Pininfarina Architecture. "

This week, Italvolt announced that ABB was selected for Front End Engineering and Design (FEED) and that the two will partner on automation, electrification and digitalization solutions related to battery manufacturing.

"More specifically, the technology partnership with ABB will bring Italvolt:

Expertise in design and delivery of electrification and automation solutions for power control, distribution and management, optimization of manufacturing processes and long-term energy efficiency

Consultancy on robotics and autonomous operations for transportation and handling of material in the process units of the plant

Exploration of solutions for data gathering, processing, cloud storage and analytics for production planning, quality control, management, operations and reporting"

It seems that now we have multiple new wanabe battery manufacturers in Europe, including Northvolt in Sweden, Britishvolt in the UK, Freyr in Norway (and maybe in U.S.), Verkor in France, and multiple joint ventures set up by carmakers, including Automotive Cells Company, Volkswagen's JVs or stand-alone projects (Tesla in Germany).

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Considering that established battery manufacturers also are investing heavily in Europe, it already looks like a battery gold rush.

Lars Carlstrom, CEO and founder of Italvolt commented:

"Italvolt has the objective of gathering industrial excellences in each area of our business and we are glad to announce this partnership agreement with ABB, one of the foremost names in the global industry. ABB's state of art technology will help us in ensuring the sustainability of our production plant as well as enable efficient, reliable, and cost-effective production. We are happy that ABB is joining us for the journey."