All Battery supply chain articles – Page 20
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FeatureMercedes-Benz to produce batteries in Poland
Markus Schäfer (left), Mercedes-Benz Cars divisional board member with responsibility for production and supply chain, with Polish prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki Mercedes-Benz Cars is to build a lithium-ion battery factory in Jawor, Poland, at the same site where the German OEM is building its new engine plant. ...
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FeaturePacking a punch
Electric cars could revolutionise transport by providing a cheaper, safer and more environmentally friendly way to travel. The International Energy Agency forecasts that there will be 13m electric vehicles (EVs) on the road globally by 2020, while PwC Autofacts predicts that 55% of all new vehicle sales will be fully ...
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FeatureDaimler to spend €20 billion on battery cells
German carmaker Daimler says it will buy battery cells costing more than €20 billion ($22.6 billion) over the next decade as it prepares to introduce 130 electrified variants of Mercedes-Benz cars by 2022.The group is investing €10 billion to make the models, plus another €1 billion on an in-house global ...
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FeatureBMW moves to drive battery development
German carmaker BMW has formed a technology consortium with battery developer Northvolt and Umicore, a producer of active materials for battery cells, to develop a complete and sustainable value chain for batteries for electric vehicles (EVs) in Europe.BMW said its chief objective was to make battery cells sustainable by establishing ...
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FeatureSmart logistics underpins Audi e-tron assembly
Audi officially premiered its e-tron electric SUV at a summit event in San Francisco this week but production has been underway for a couple of weeks already at its plant in Brussels, Belgium, which is making the e-tron for global markets. Patrick Danau (left), managing director of Audi ...
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FeatureMaking sense from the noise for the future of logistics
Convergence between the automotive and high-tech sectors isn’t a theory or prediction any more. Vehicles are as connected as smartphones, programmed with millions more lines of code than any computer, and increasingly powered by the same electric components and batteries – just on a much larger scale.
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FeatureReal-time tracking: Is it Here yet?
Real-time cargo tracking has always had its appeal. The problem has been finding a technology that could actually deliver on the aspiration
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FeatureThe ethics of sourcing for electrics
As the march towards mass-market take-up of electric vehicles continues, there is a growing focus on the sustainability of the raw materials used in the EV and battery supply chain, such as copper, nickel, cobalt and lithium. Generally speaking, the social and environmental impacts of raw material production will depend ...
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FeatureSettling into steady growth
China has the biggest car market in the world and is expected to make 25.3m vehicles this year. The city of Chengdu has 4.5m of them driving around it, making it the second largest in China for vehicle numbers behind Beijing – and it was to Chengdu that delegates headed ...
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FeatureMercedes-Benz: Taking an end-to-end approach
It may have taken Mercedes-Benz around 120 years to reach 1m cars per year, breaching the mark around the turn of the 21stcentury. However, the recent surge in growth of the brand has seen it rise by around 1m units in sales and production in just five years, with passenger ...
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FeatureVolvo Cars: Outbound evolutions
The vehicle yard at Torslanda, at Volvo Cars’ global headquarters in Gothenburg, Sweden, is just one part of the OEM’s growing global logistics operations, but it is a good place to glimpse some important changes and innovations. For example, the global shape of the Geely-owned carmaker’s expanding production footprint ...
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FeatureAudi’s logistics part 1: Prepared for a new reality
The recent history of the Audi brand is written deeply into the company’s supply chain and logistics, and can be read across the carmaker’s expanding geography, plant and parts handling operations
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Feature2018 predictions: The hot spots
A year ago, previews of 2017 would have pointed to potential renegotiations of the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta) and Brexit as two of the most obvious threats to global free trade and the smooth-flowing automotive supply chains that have become so embedded across the wider regions of North ...
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FeatureVW pushes its suppliers to raise supply chain sustainability
Volkswagen Group has said it is engaging in “intensive” discussions with its suppliers to determine how the sustainability of its supply chain can be improved, especially for the raw materials used in electric vehicles.“We are engaging in intensive dialogue with companies from the mine through to our direct suppliers. It ...
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FeatureSiemens Financial Services calls for careful investment in digitalisation
The automotive sector needs to invest carefully to reap the benefits of a potentially more efficient manufacturing and distribution model as the fourth industrial revolution – also referred to as industry 4.0 – takes hold, Siemens Financial Services (SFS) has warned.Advising the sector to get ready for “extended disruption” in ...
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FeatureHolding on to the hard-won gains in Brazil
The Brazilian economy has had it rough over the past few years, experiencing its deepest recession since the 1930s, with GDP growth shrinking for eight consecutive quarters. That contributed to a drought in new vehicle sales from 2013 through to 2016. This long crisis laid waste to many parts of ...
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FeaturePlugged in for progress
Evolution of CCS charging technology for e-cars towards 350 kW" width="500" height="500">The last two decades have seen the emergence of the alternative propulsion vehicle market from almost nothing. According to PwC Autofacts data, sales in 1997 across all hybrid and electric vehicles numbered about 6,000 vehicles. This year, the ...
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FeatureService parts part 2: Next-generation service
Executives we spoke to… BMW GroupWolfgang Baumann, vice-president of parts logistics management, has been with the company since 1985 and spent most of his career in sales planning and commercial operations in Germany, before moving into his current role in service parts logistics in 2010. While he claims ...
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FeatureProduction & logistics part 2: Questioning the future
This article is one of a series of pieces celebrating Automotive Logistics’ 20th anniversary issue that together take an extended look at the way top executives feel automotive production and logistics have changed in the last two decades – and where they see them heading in the future.
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FeatureNorthvolt picks Skellefteå in Sweden as home for battery factory
Northvolt has announced a partnership with the two Swedish municipalities Skellefteå and Västerås for the establishment of Europe’s largest lithium-ion battery manufacturing plant.After an initial assessment of eight Swedish and two Finnish municipalities, Northvolt narrowed its choice down to Västerås and Skellefteå. The company has since decided to base activities ...