American Battery Solutions, maker of lithium-Ion batteries, has announced the strategic expansion of its Innovation Center, significantly growing its footprint in Michigan as it adds to its team. The company is tripling the size of its facility, growing from 40,000 sq. ft. to 115,000 sq. ft., and creating an additional 75 professional jobs in Lake Orion.
The Innovation Center expansion and employment growth supports the company's growing customer base and contract awards. ABS is growing its talent pool to create solutions capable of meeting the energy demands of a wide range of market applications.
ABS has added engineering, test and research jobs to support both internal product development and custom battery pack contract awards. These additions bring the ABS headcount in Michigan and Ohio to 155 team members. As ABS continues to rapidly add team members throughout the rest of the year the total headcount will continue to rise.
"ABS has seen continued growth despite the Covid-19 pandemic and needs to expand our Lake Orion facility and staff to support our growing customer base and line of renewable modular battery pack technologies," says Subhash Dhar, founder, chairman and CEO of American Battery Solutions. "This expansion of the Michigan Innovation Center reflects the success of our promise to pursue business opportunities in underserved and emerging market segments. Product features that include modularity and scalability with advanced management and control systems have proven very attractive to our industrial, commercial and heavy-duty vehicle customers."
The facility and employment growth is driven in part by customer adoption of ABS' recently launched product line, the ALLIANCE Intelligent Battery Series of lithium-ion batteries for motive and industrial applications. The all-new Alliance E48-2.0 is the first product in the ALLIANCE Intelligent Battery Series. This is a scalable architecture in 2kWh increments designed for light electric vehicles and new OEM designs to optimize the packaging space and vehicle range.
ABS will follow on later this year with the introduction of its Industrial Series batteries. These will be available as the I24-3.0 and I48-3.0 series for industrial applications. The I24-3.0 is perfect for low-voltage lithium-ion batteries drop-in retrofits of lead-acid batteries in motive power applications such as utility vehicles, floor cleaning machines, pallet jacks and mobile elevated work platforms. The I48-3.0 comes in the popular GC2 size (a.k.a. T105) form factor with the highest energy content on the market. The I48-3.0 is ideal for drop-in retrofits of lead-acid batteries in motive poser applications like golf carts, mobile elevated work platforms and floor machines.
Expansion in the facility is also being driven by several recent customer awards for high-voltage battery packs and solutions for light commercial delivery and heavy-duty commercial vehicles. The new areas will house additional engineering test labs, a Hardware-in-the-Loop BMS development lab, and a prototype battery pack assembly line that will complement the existing module prototype line and space to house the growing employee base. In addition to the customer projects, the team is also developing a new line of standardized, high-voltage battery packs branded as the ProLiance Intelligent Battery Systems.
To extend its reach and maximize the impact of the Innovation Center, ABS is also joining with mission-aligned organizations and experienced technology and business consultants, to provide world-class Li-Ion battery technology support and assistance.
