Liberty Access Technologies

Epsilon Advanced Materials to build $650-million battery anode manufacturing facility in North Carolina

Epsilon Advanced Materials (EAM), an Indian battery materials manufacturer, will build a $650-million graphite anode manufacturing plant in Brunswick County in North Carolina.

The company will start construction in 2024 and begin manufacturing in 2026, achieving full capacity by 2031. The plant will make high-capacity EV battery anodes using green technology. EAM is in talks with local raw material suppliers and transportation partners to support the operation. When fully operational, the EAM facility will generate 50,000 tons of graphite anode per year.

“Having an environmentally friendly facility in North Carolina resolves supply chain concerns that the automotive industry has experienced in recent years,” said EAM CEO Sunit Kapur. “With our tech capability to manufacture both natural and synthetic graphite, we will be able to provide graphite anodes to the growing EV battery industry faster, more reliably, and at a competitive cost without import challenges.”

Source: Epsilon Advanced Materials

Source: Electric Vehicles Magazine

ChargeX consortium recommends common EV charging station error codes

The National Charging Experience Consortium (ChargeX) is a collaboration among DOE national labs, EV charging industry players and consumer advocates. Its mission is to gauge and improve the customer experience with public EV charging infrastructure in the US.

Now the consortium has released a report that recommends 26 common EV charging error codes to enable faster error reporting, diagnostics and resolution.

The new report, Recommendations for Minimum Required Error Codes, aims to reduce confusion among charger manufacturers, vehicle OEMs and charging station operators, who currently use different messages to report similar errors. The common codes should help simplify diagnostics when a charging session fails, streamlining EV charging network operations and improving the charging experience for drivers.

“To make an electrified road trip convenient and reliable, companies in the EV charging ecosystem must be on the same page about how they communicate, especially when issues arise,” said Gabe Klein, Executive Director of the Joint Office of Energy and Transportation, which funds ChargeX.

ChargeX industry participants ABB and EVgo demonstrated some of the error codes during the recent CharIN Testival in Cleveland, Ohio.

“We are proud to work alongside ChargeX to implement root-cause solutions that will lead to an elevated customer experience,” said Ivo Steklac, Chief Technology Officer at EVgo. “Standardized error codes, which apply to both vehicles and chargers, are foundational for understanding customer experience so the full EV ecosystem can march forward together towards solutions.”

“We are excited to begin implementing these codes,” said Cuong Nguyen, Manager of Industry Affairs and Standards at ABB, and co-chair of the working group that led the report. “As a company that helped develop these common error codes, we hope to now demonstrate their value to others in the industry, leading to widespread adoption.”

Source: Idaho National Laboratory

Source: Electric Vehicles Magazine

ubitricity to provide public EV charge points in London borough of Bexley

London- and Berlin-based EV charge point operator ubitricity, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Shell Group, has been selected by Bexley Borough Council to supply and maintain a hundred 5 kW public charge points to be installed in existing on-street lamp posts and bollards.

The charge points take as little as two hours each to install. They will be deployed on residential streets across Bexley, with at least two per ward. Ubitricity, which also operates in Germany and France, currently hosts 7,000 public charge points in the UK.

“Installing these chargers using existing lampposts means that there is less physical infrastructure to install, and disruption will be kept to a minimum,” said Councillor Richard Diment, Cabinet Member for Places in Bexley.

Source: Ubitricity

Source: Electric Vehicles Magazine