Daimler bundles energy storage activities
Stationary energy storage units are regarded as a good complement in an economical environment defined by the industrial production of lithium ion-based traction batteries on one hand and renewable energies on the other hand. The reason: the instability of renewable batteries calls for stationary energy storage to iron out the variations in energy production. Plus, it helps to achieving scale effects in the battery production. Therefore, several manufacturers of electric cars including Tesla, Daimler and Nissan also have entered the energy storage business.
Already a year ago, Daimler expanded its traction battery production by adding stationary storage units for home and industrial applications. These storage units are manufactured by Daimler subsidiary Accumotive GmbH (Kamenz, Germany). Past April, the company started production of home energy storage solutions. The development and installation of first large projects for energy storage at industrial has also begun. The launch of Mercedes-Benz Energy is another step towards international the expansion of the energy storage business, the parent company said. Top items on the agenda of the new subsidiary are international expansion as well as attracting new cooperation partners.
With the launch of Mercedes-Benz Energy, the energy storage activities become widely independent of the carmaker. Given the different customer base for the car and the energy business, the gives MBE more freedom to move. “With this new focus we can react much more flexibly to customer requests and develop our product portfolio”, said Harald Kröger, head of the Electrics/Electronics and E-Drive development at Daimler. The sister company Accumotive gets offloaded of the energy storage business. Therefore it can focus on further developing battery systems for vehicles.
MBE will be located besides Accoumotive, both in the town of Kamenz in the state of Saxony. The new subsidiary starts with a headcount of some 50, by the end of the year it will employ twice as many workers, and by end of 2017 it is planned to double this headcount again. General Manager is Marcus Thomas who already has gathered extensive experience with alternative drive technologies at Daimler.
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