On October 12th, European Commission's DG RTD/Transport and the European Green Cars Initiative Association (EGVIA) organised a joint workshop for advanced automotive batteries research – European projects’ contributions to key user requirements.

Clara de la Torre, RTD/Transport Director, opened the discussions highlighting challenges ahead of the research community in terms of battery electrochemistry, battery integration at pack and vehicle levels, and battery cell production. After a short overview of past activities and funded topics related to batteries, Stephan Neugebauer, EGVIA Chairman, emphasised the importance of taking into account the customer perspective to ensure market success for electromobility, more specifically by focusing on activities to improve range performance, decrease the cost and improve charging procedures. He also stressed the added value of the work currently performed by the JRC (Joint Research Centre) on battery ageing and testing in the framework of the Collaboration Agreement signed with EGVIA.

Lois Brett presented the activities performed in the JRC battery testing laboratories in Petten - on cell performance and degradation, second use and safety - as well as the policy support activities of the JRC, with a focus on Action 7 of the Integrated SET-Plan 'Become competitive in the global battery sector to drive e-mobility forward'.

Axel Barkow presented the outcomes of the UNPLUGGED project leading to fruitful discussions on social acceptance of inductive charging technologies, the impact of EV charging on the electricity grid, the standardisation needs at international level in this area as well as the potential impacts of electromagnetic fields on human health.

The second session started with presentations of EUROLIION (Erik Kelder), STABLE (Silvia Bodoardo), ALISE (Christophe Aucher) and MARS-EV (Idoia Urdampilleta) projects with the objective to highlight their potential contribution to range improvement of EVs. Those presentations led to intensive discussions on the advantages and challenges of each of the electrochemistry solutions, leading to the conclusions that it remains challenging to pick-up a winner today as long as electromobility is concerned. Different opinions were expressed on the potential offered by each technology and research needs at various TRLs; while private companies are willing to fund part of research activities on their own resources, there is still a strong need from public support. The game is still open for current and post lithium technologies but the international competition is strong and we need to move quickly.

The third and last session was dedicated to the key topic of EV competitiveness, and discussions were launched following the presentations of eCAIMAN (Boschidar Ganev), BATTERIES2020 (Elixabet Sarasketa) and INCOBAT (Eric Armengaud) projects. Issues such as 2nd life, battery recycling opportunities, and the competitive advantage of Europe regarding the high level of competencies in the BMS were discussed.

All the workshops were a great opportunity to get an overview of project process and led to an exchange of various views between projects coordinators, researchers and industries representatives.