Volvo Group to reutilise electric truck and bus batteries
Volvo will give batteries from heavy electric machinery a second life in energy storage systems in cooperation with Connected Energy. The British company specialises in utilising end-of-life vehicle batteries, and Volvo Group set eyes on it last year.
Volvo Group was among the investors in June 2022 when Connected Energy raised £15 million, with four million coming from Volvo. The Volvo Group is not to be confused with Geely-owned Volvo Cars and is still in Swedish hands manufacturing heavy-duty vehicles. The Group joined new Connected investors such as Caterpillar or energy business Mercuria last year.
Today’s new deal between Connected and Volvo Energy will begin this year as Volvo wants to launch the battery energy storage systems (BESS) in Europe by early 2025.
The partners will recover batteries from Volvo electric buses, trucks and machines and create a second life in Connected Energy’s installations.
While the company will develop a system specific to Volvo, Connected Energy has rolled out its existing E-Stor technology with partners like Swarco in the UK or Renault in France. It counts Engie among the investors as well.
Among the most recent projects is the large-scale vehicle-to-grid (V2G) demonstrator in Nottingham, where reused batteries connect to solar arrays and charge electric vehicles again.
Volvo Energy has also recently installed Connected Energy’s existing E-Stor technology at its facility in Gothenburg, Sweden, to test and review its response rate to the Swedish grid.
“The Volvo Group is driven by ensuring that every battery that powers our vehicles is used to its full potential before being recycled,” says Elisabeth Larsson, Senior VP of Sales & Services from Volvo Energy. The deepened collaboration would be “a key milestone in our mission to move from a linear business model to a circular one by optimising the batteries’ full lifecycle whilst creating a product that will enable the transition to a world powered by renewable energy,” she said.
Matthew Lumsden, CEO of Connected Energy, called the cooperation an “exciting next step in our existing relationship with Volvo Energy with the potential to enable us to take our technology at scale into the European market”.
The partners have not named volumes or targeted capacity but expect volumes of returning batteries from first-life applications will “substantially increase” over the next few years.
Volvo Group reportedly delivered 1,442 electric trucks in the first half of 2023, up from 409 in the same period last year (+235%). This includes commercial vehicles from Group brands Renault and Mack Trucks.
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