BorgWarner is demonstrating efficient processes for battery systems in Darmstadt. Around 65,000 NMC and LFP batteries have been developed and delivered since 2018.
BorgWarner invited guests to the Battery Press Day in Darmstadt.
Michael Reichenbach | ATZ
The Hessian location, newly built in 2020, has a long tradition. The nucleus of BorgWarner in Darmstadt was the student start-up Akasol, founded in 2008. Even back then, experts such as Felix von Borck, Björn Eberleh (still with the company today as Manager Product Integrity at BorgWarner) and Michael Rinker were working intensively on improving the efficiency of traction batteries – for example, for the Oscar small car. See the technical article by these three authors in ATZelectronics worldwide 1/2008: "Here electrodes of manganesenickel-cobalt alloys and the approach with iron phosphates primarily pursued in the US are promising", the authors stated 17 years ago.
These LFP cells from various manufacturers such as CATL, BYD, Gotion, and Svolt are now standard in many applications, for example in electric cars such as the BYD Han, Ford Mustang E-Mach, Tesla Model Y, and Volvo EX30. BorgWarner in Darmstadt is expanding the range of applications to include commercial vehicles such as city buses, trucks, and freight trucks, as well as off-highway applications in construction, agriculture, and shipping, and special applications with tailor-made customer solutions (mobile cranes and pile drivers). One in five electric city buses in Europe and North America uses BorgWarner products. For example, the Mercedes-Benz eCitaro with the 400 V AxTrax AVE electric drive from ZF uses the NMC battery from the Darmstadt-based company, among other components.
Three-Part Product Strategy
However, the newer LFP cells will not replace NMC cells internationally, as each type has its own advantages and disadvantages and its specific application. The sports car sector, for example, with Porsche, will continue to rely on NMC technology for high battery performance, which impresses with its energy density but cannot match the LFP variant in terms of cost. "We are pursuing a three-part strategy for our global electric mobility product strategy", says Johannes Rossmanith, Director of R&D EU Battery & Charging Systems at BorgWarner in Darmstadt. First, he is focusing on NMC batteries called GrowNow, second on LFP batteries under the GoBroad label, and third on the future GoNext platform.
GrowNow technology sets the standard in terms of energy density, and continuous improvements can be achieved with this relatively new technology. It also ensures that vehicle legislation requirements are fully met. The GoBroad strategy focuses on a product with the best price-performance ratio based on the latest generation of LFP blade cells from BYD. The flexible platform meets all the requirements of the demanding electric commercial vehicle market. Incidentally, the partnership with BYD (FinDreams Battery) gives BorgWarner exclusive rights to use the blade cells as the only non-OEM battery manufacturer in Europe and other global commercial vehicle markets, after BYD itself originally developed them for passenger cars and then further developed them for commercial vehicles.
The final point is GoNext and the issue of total cost of ownership (TCO) – this is the most important criterion in the commercial vehicle industry. According to Rossmanith, BorgWarner wants to become the industry leader by setting new TCO standards in the European market. The three-part strategy is based on the Hardware Foundation (HWF) as a modular hardware platform and the Software Foundation (SWF) as a hardware-independent software platform. These two foundations form a modular system so that the batteries can be assembled in a modular fashion. Rossmanith cites the 3AKM, 6AKM, and 9AKM series as examples of modularity: Here, an AKM (the acronym stands for AKasol Module) consists of a battery with a 20s30p cell configuration, an installed energy content of 68.4 kWh, and a voltage of 665 V.
Specializing in the Off-Highway Sector
For several years, BorgWarner has been expanding the standard and large-scale series application of batteries for passenger cars to include the diverse and specialized field of on-highway and off-highway vehicles with small batch sizes. These special applications benefit from the high-volume production of NMC and LFP cells for passenger cars, such as those supplied by LG and Samsung in South Korea and BYD in China. The supplier has extensive expertise in this field, with 19 technology centers and 61 locations where drive modules and systems are developed and manufactured. With 38,000 employees worldwide, it is equally positioned in the three regions of America, Europe, and Asia. In addition to Darmstadt and Langen in Germany, where a technology center and a factory work together, the Battery Systems division also includes technology centers in Shanghai (China) and Auburn Hills (USA) as well as factories in Seneca (USA) and Piracicaba (Brazil). In 2024, the division produced around 3.0 gigawatt hours of third-generation NMC battery packs (Ultra-High-Energy – UHE Gen-3) and aims to produce 5.4 gigawatt hours in 2025, which would represent an increase of 46 %.
This is based on the cylindrical NMC battery cell in the 21700 format. It has a diameter of 21 mm and a length of 700 mm. Borg Warner does not manufacture cell chemistries or cells itself, but purchases them on the market. Instead, the company specializes in the development, packaging, and assembly of batteries. Series production began in Darmstadt in 2022 on two lines. After some initial learning curves, line 1 is now fully operational. Line 2 is expected to be fully active by the end of 2025. 850 employees manufacture in Darmstadt on 15,000 m2 of floor space and in Langen on 4,000 m2 of floor space in accordance with certifications such as IATF 16949, ISO 14001, and ISO 45001. The main products are third-generation Ultra-High-Energy (UHE) batteries. These are complemented by the battery management system and the replaceable contact box, as well as customer-specific vehicle interface solutions and subsystems such as multistring managers, distributors (junction boxes) and data loggers. BorgWarner invited more than 15 journalists from Europe to the Battery Press Day in Darmstadt on March 19, 2025.
This is a partly automated translation of this German article.
