We have fast-chargers, come up with better batteries: ABB to manufacturers

ABB, the global electrification, robotics and industrial automation major, created a stir in April by launching a charger solution that can fully charge an electric car in eight minutes, sufficient to last for a 200-km ride.

Earlier in 2016, the company had announced the winning of an order from Geneva’s public transport operator and Swiss bus manufacturer, HESS, for providing flash charging solutions — the equipment would take only 15 seconds to charge the batteries of buses to enable them go on further. (A five-minute plug-in at the terminus would fully re-charge the batteries, a press release issued then, said.)

And, now, the Zurich-headquartered multinational, with a large presence in India, is saying, ‘‘we have the chargers, please come up with better batteries’’.

Frank Duggan, Member of the Group Executive Committee of ABB Ltd, said that the battery technology would need to “catch up” with the charging technology.

‘Keen on India’

“If you look at our 350-kW fast charger (which can fully recharge an electric car in 8 minutes), the problem is not ABB’s — the batteries can’t take that fast a charging,” Duggan said. However, he observed that the battery technology is evolving fast.

“We expect that by next year or 2020, batteries will be able to take 300-400 kW charge in 15 minutes without overheating,” he said. Battery-powered vehicles will become the order of the day in a decade as the world, scared by climate change effects, shifts away from fossil fuels. There are two million e-vehicles on the roads today, and more on way, but for that a critical piece of the infrastructure is charging stations. ABB, which says it has the “world’s largest installed base of fast chargers,” with over 7,000 charging stations across 60 countries, wants to position itself as a leader in e-mobility. Sponsoring a Formula E championship is one of the ways it wants to do so.

Europe has about 120,000 charging stations and China 214,000. On the eve of the championship, ABB donated 30 charging stations to the city of Zurich, its headquarters.

ABB is keen on India, too, and the India team is watching the developments in the country closely, Duggan said. He said ABB was ready with a variety of charging solutions — slow AC, fast AC and slow DC. Different solutions would suit different applications — slow chargers at homes and the fast ones on highways. “We have to sectionalise the market,” he said.

Duggan, who once headed India operations of ABB, said that India was very important to the ABB group. A third of ABB India’s turnover (₹9,087 crore in 2017) comes from exports.

Substantial back office engineering and R&D work happens in India. The centres in Chennai and Bengaluru have over 3,000 engineers, between them, and the R&D centre in Bengaluru has another 700, who provide service to the ABB network worldwide.

The writer was recently in Zurich, Switzerland, at the invitation of ABB for the ABB-sponsored Formula E Zurich Grand Prix, an electric motor car race

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