Battery Show 2024
Last week, Marc and Dirk visited The Battery Show Europe 2024 in sunny Stuttgart to check how aerogels as materials have fared in the electromobility industry and to also catch up with various contacts. The show was very crowded, and other than sausages and beer against cash - no cards accepted - at premium prices it was hard to get anything.
There were great discussions with Aspen Aerogels, Enersens, Tecman, Henkel, ISOVOLTA Group, Freudenberg Group, ALT Technologies and Culimeta, but also with former colleagues from BASF.
Compared to the previous years, the show had grown quite a bit but there was also a change of exhibitor line-up where some exhibitors from 2023 did not return to exhibit again.
Interestingly, aerogel was much more present in 2024 than it was in 2023 when it was still quite a secretive ingredient. Numerous cell-to-cell heat shields based on aerogel were exhibited this year.
In general, it was discussed that the battery safety regulations would now move towards full containment of thermal runaways as opposed to a 5 min time window. The discussion partners agreed that if valuable space needed to be conserved and the cell expansion accommodated at the same time, this would only be possible with aerogels.
It remains to be seen how the EV battery aerogel market will develop. China has seen an extreme increase in aerogel production capacity over the last years, and prices have fallen. Aspen Aerogels is dominating the US market and will continue to do so. Only in Europe there is no aerogel supplier as of now, even though there are various startups such as Keey Aerogel, Enersens and us from aerogel-it working on solutions. Cabot seems to have suspended production for the time being.
As aerogel-it, we are working on the most cost-effective production technology in combination with powerful aerogel formulations at lower cost that were previously not accessible. We are eager to see if we get to play our role in this challenging market!
Marc and Dirk at the Battery Show 2024 - having a much-needed break.