The latest news from 16 ELBC, Vienna • September 4-7, 2018
A Batteries International publication
16ELBC Opens With a Rallying Call to Arms Full Technical Programme to Open New Business Vistas By Mike Halls Andy Bush, head of the ILA, gave the opening address on Wednesday morning to what may arguably be regarded as the most successful European Lead Battery Conference in its history. The technical programme is probably both the most comprehensive in its history and oddly, given the sea of challenges that the battery industry is facing, the most positive. Bush’s opening remarks quickly surveyed the new industry landscape the battery business is experiencing. “We are facing, right here in Europe — in fact right now during the Austrian presidency of the EU — the very real possibility of regulatory restrictions that could ultimately jeopardize our entire industry,”
he said. “We have to persuade the European Commission of just how much harm these restrictions would do and crucially not just for our own industries but also for the Commission’s very own aspirations to reduce harmful emissions and boost electrification.” Bush said the message
to European legislators is a straightforward one, that “we can help deliver the aspirations set out in Europe’s batteries action plan, that we are a key European industry supporting electrification and decarbonization and we absolutely deserve the right to compete on a level playing field with other technologies and there must not be any attempt to restrict EU lead battery manufacturing through the REACH regulations.” Bush then went on to outline the still evolving position of the ILA, which is working with EUROBAT and Battery Council International on what effectively will probably end as a worldwide campaign endorsing the lead Continued on page 7 >
Standardize Auxiliary Car Batteries — a Must For Lead Industry, Says Workshop Battery makers and OEMs at a special workshop on the eve of the 16ELBC agreed to work together in a joint effort to address technical issues with lead batteries including better testing, functional safety and standardizing auxiliary car batteries. Failure to do so could allow lithium batteries greater penetration of the lead battery market, attendees were told. Improvements are vital now that stop-start batteries have become the norm in new European cars and are becoming more
widely used in North America. The workshop, held on Tuesday before the official opening of the conference the following day, was chaired by Geoffrey May, Focus Consulting, and consultant to the Consortium for Battery Innovation, CBI (the association formerly known as ALABC). The workshop followed previous discussions held by OEMs and battery manufacturers in Spain earlier this year and in Germany in 2017 through the European Committee for Electrotechnical Standardization
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(CENELEC). Also on the panel were Eckhard Karden, technical expert with the Ford Research and Innovation Centre in Germany; Torsten Hildebrandt, who sits on the CENELEC; and Joern Albers, technical leader requirements and standards with Johnson Controls. The workshop also saw a prototype electronic gas analysis system, eGAS, being demonstrated for the first time. For more details of the workshop, turn to page 7.
What’s News n Good night Vienna! 16ELBC opened with a bang as the traditional cocktail reception attracted record figures and a packed conference hall attracted some of the finest in the industry. Excitement was very much the order of the day as anticipation for the conference built up. Pages 4, 5 n Round and about. Battery Street Journal spoke to exhibitors and delegates for news of what’s going on in parts of the conference and views on the industry. Featured here — Abertax, Bertola, Bitrode, EUROBAT, MAC Engineering, Microporous and Wirtz Manufacturing. Page 6, 8, 10 n Workshop review. Now a regular feature of ELBC meetings, the pre-conference workshop continues to focus on some of the more controversial challenges facing the lead battery industry. The subject matter — the need for standardization of the auxiliary batteries in EVs — is all the more important in that a wide range of automotive OEMs will need an industry standard to keep the lead battery business thriving in an often difficult future. The chair was Geoffrey May, FOCUS Consulting. The panel was: Eckhard Karden, Ford; Torsten Hildebrandt, Cenelec; Joern Albers, Johnson Controls. The facilitator was David Rand, CSIRO. Page 7 n The Last Word — Tales of darkness and distress as the debate over the change of name intensifies. Will the Community of Iowa Bankers really be taking the ILA to court? And will they win? The mystery over Maura’s daughter’s wedding continues. Where are the dead bodies being kept? Hmm… strange choice of venue here. Page 11
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