The German electric converter Pepper Motion has signed a supply contract for battery systems with Impact Clean Power Technology from Poland. ICPT will now manufacture complete battery systems for Pepper that can be used in electric buses and electric trucks.
The requirements for battery systems in the commercial vehicle sector are even higher than for passenger car models due to the “tough everyday use”, Pepper informs. Central demands of fleet operators on drives and batteries include robustness, durability, safety and costs.
According to Pepper, the existing battery systems have been further developed according to these special requirements of the commercial vehicle industry. Above all, they have been optimised in terms of robustness and costs. Pepper specified the design of a modular lithium-ion battery unit. A single module has a capacity of 60 kWh. Several of these modules can be connected in parallel “in order to only install as much capacity as is necessary for the specific application”.
The scalable system should be able to cover daily distances of 200 to 250 km. This would cover the requirements for electric buses in public transport as well as for trucks in regional and urban distribution transport and offer “maximum economic efficiency”.
It is not clear from the press release which cells will be used. Impact Clean Power Technology recently began construction of a new production facility called GigafactoryX in the summer. From 2024, two GWh of batteries per year are to be produced there initially and five GWh in the final stage. The prismatic cells for the plant there are to be supplied by InoBat Auto.
It is clear that ICPT is not the only supplier of battery systems: “In the future, we will continue to rely on system suppliers who provide us with high-quality components. With Impact, we have gained another battery supplier that shares our quality requirements and supports us in being able to produce and deliver our vehicles reliably and quickly,” shares Matthias Kerler, CTO of Pepper Motion GmbH.
“In parallel, we are working in Paderborn on pepper’s own research and development of the latest generation of battery systems for commercial vehicles,” says Kerler. The electric converter already started its own development of battery systems a year ago.
Keyword: ICPT to deliver battery systems for Pepper Motion