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Battery expert engergizes business community
3/27/2010
By BEN BEVERSLUIS
The Holland Sentinel
Posted Mar 27, 2010 @ 05:30 AM
Holland, MI — Ann Marie Sastry on Friday took 90 area business people on a whirlwind tour of the future of rechargeable automotive batteries.
A University of Michigan professor and researcher as well as CEO of battery technology company Sakti3 in Ann Arbor, Sastry said research and business competition will solve the duel challenges of reducing manufacturing costs and improving power efficiencies.
She spoke at Trans-Matic headquarters, 300 E. 48th St. in Holland — about halfway between the future battery manufacturing sites of Johnson Controls-Saft and LG Chem.
Those plants are where the federal government has invested $450 million in stimulus money, pointed out Randy Thelen, president of Lakeshore Advantage, a private, nonprofit economic development agency.
Representatives of some 60 area firms were invited to learn more about the technology, a step toward a goal of making West Michigan the “leading North American center of excellence for advanced energy storage and power management solutions,” including an objective of 10,000 new jobs and $2 billion of investment by 2020.
“Think about how we want this community to look in five to 10 years,” Thelen said. “An incredible opportunity is staring us right in the face and we need to go after it.”
Sastry rapidly described the background of battery technology, educational efforts, the research, the commercialization and the markets, policies and next step.
Key, she said, is a new emphasis on partnerships between businesses and between industry and education. Her own research is funded by companies like DTE, GM and Ford. Her courses are offered as distance learning for working people around the country, and an intensive UM internship program has more openings than interns.
Her ABCD program – Advanced Battery Coalition for Drivetrains – has partners around the globe, as does UM’s Energy Systems Engineering program.
“Vehicle electrification solves a lot of societal problems at once,” said Sastry, who was featured on the cover of Inc. magazine last fall. “It’s a great problem to work on.”
She warned potential suppliers to prepare for rapid change as the industry evolves.
Asia locked up a competitive advantage with the current generation of lithium-ion technology – technology developed in the U.S. she noted, but ignored by U.S. carmakers until recently – she said, but “the future home of the second generation (of battery technology) is wide open.”
Concluding, Sastry pointed out the world market for rechargeable automotive power will dwarf by a factor of thousands the current global market for consumer electronics rechargeable power. And a supply chain will need to serve it, she said.
“That’s what everyone here is looking for – how can I support this, how can I be a supplier,” said a lunch participant Jim Warners, a Holland-based lean manufacturing consultant.
“This is big,” said Jane Clark, president of the Holland Area Chamber of Commerce. “It’s about growth, it’s about jobs, it’s about the future of our community.”
Trans-Matic President Patrick Thompson said the event was about how education, technology and commercialization can pull together.
Potential suppliers, he said, will need to have commercial abilities and patience – and probably a lot of up-front capital, making collaboration valuable.
He figures his company, which specializes in deep-drawn metal stampings, could eventually be a supplier, with large production still some three to four years off.
Meanwhile, he said, this area is well-positioned, particularly with its capable, stable workforce, to build the kind of supply chain that is needed.
Copyright 2010 The Holland Sentinel. Some rights reserved
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