USA / Germany / Belgium - Battery producer, Akasol, which recently opened a new European HQ in Darmstadt, said its future flagship high-energy battery AKASystem AKM CYC, will be produced at Darmstadt, with start of production in 2021 and at its new US headquarters in Detroit starting in 2022 (see separate article in this issue) as part of a recently agreed production order from a global commercial vehicle manufacturer: Akasol at Busworld said it is the exclusive supplier to Volvo and its global brands including Nova Bus and has supply options with EvoBus,  Daimler Trucks and others.

The lithium-ion battery AKAModule CYC used in this third-generation system achieves an energy density of approximately 221kWh with the aid of liquid-cooled, scalable battery modules. With this high-energy solution for long-distance applications, Akasol claims it sets new standards for any bus applications in terms of energy content. All-electric city buses, for example, can be equipped with battery capacities of between 600 and 1,000kWh, depending on vehicle size, and have twice the storage capacity of today's battery generation.