Fully loaded into the future

Fully loaded into the future

Franz Märzinger, sales and marketing manager at Banner Batterien, has a good laugh: The Upper Austrian company is in great health and is constantly making new investments. Goal: Growth – healthy, sustainable. Six million starter batteries will soon be sold worldwide. The export quota is 95 percent. Banner batteries can be found throughout Europe, Africa, Australia, Asia and the USA. “We specialize in lead-acid starter batteries and we expect further market growth over the next ten years,” says Märzinger. Where does the great optimism come from, given that a subtle, global automobile crisis is currently being outlined? "The number of vehicles worldwide will continue to grow. There are up to 100 million new vehicles every year. And each one still has a conventional lead-acid battery. In Europe alone there are currently around 290 million vehicles on the road, all of which need starter batteries." Banner currently has a market share of seven to eight percent across Europe. “We expect starter batteries to grow by six percent worldwide over the next ten years.” So there is still a lot of room for improvement for banners.

ELECTRIC CARS YES AND NO

Helmut Diermaier, head of technical development at Banner, supports Märzinger's assumption: "Practically every modern car has start-stop technology. This requires our EFB and AGM batteries. AGM technology is also unavoidable in micro-hybrid models. The fact is: the demands on the batteries will increase." The reason for this: On the one hand, the batteries have to be able to charge and release energy more quickly, and on the other hand, they have to withstand ever higher thermal loads. "Due to the extremely compact design of the industry, we repeatedly measure ambient temperatures of 70 to 100 degrees Celsius around the battery. This is an enormous burden. Because many people mistakenly believe that cold damages batteries, when in fact it is the heat." Therefore, the potential trend towards e-mobility is viewed neutrally: "E-cars are both an advantage and a disadvantage. On the one hand, every e-car today has a blue-acid starter battery installed, as this means that the on-board network is started before the large lithium batteries are ready. On the other hand, the lead-acid batteries in e-cars are becoming smaller because the lithium package then takes over the power supply." However, as more and more manufacturers are setting up a dual on-board network, the market for lead-acid batteries is secured in the long term. There is also a trend towards back-up batteries, which are necessary for electronic steering or redundant safety systems, for example. “It’s still a niche now, but it will increase significantly,” says Märzinger. However, these are smaller batteries.

“We specialize in lead-acid starter batteries and expect growth over the next ten years.”FRANZ MÄRZINGER, SALES AND MARKETING MANAGER BANNER

THE KICKPOINT RECYCLING

Banner is extremely critical of lithium technology. Recycling expensive, high-performance electric car batteries is a problem: "A cyanide battery can be 99 percent completely recycled. Lead has the great property that it can be 100 percent reused - without any loss of quality." Due to their complex design, lithium batteries are not only expensive to purchase, but also expensive to recycle. "We pay our customers 500 euros for a ton of old batteries. If you want to return a ton of lithium batteries, the company would have to pay 3,000 euros for it," explains Märzinger. This means that the lead-acid battery has a clear advantage from an ecological perspective.

SAFETY RELEVANT

Another sticking point is the safety of lithium batteries. "Once the system has a short circuit and starts to burn, there's nothing you can do. Except watch and try to control the fire," explains technician Diermaier. This is why the technology is so expensive because the vehicle industry has to take into account and install enormous safety precautions. “And then the question still remains: What do we do with all the old electric car batteries that cannot be recycled economically,” asks Märzinger. Suddenly the traditional and simple lead-acid battery seems much more likeable.