What do coatings for M&M chocolate candies, O-Cedar floor mops and battery packs for electric trucks have in common?
All three come from German industrial conglomerate Freudenberg Group. The company operates many other seemingly incongruous businesses from filtration to home cleaning products.
A history of handoffs
Freudenberg’s battery business is an appropriate Truck Tech topic. But not as tasty than M&Ms, for which it makes the hard shell coatings through its Capol business unit.
The heavy-duty truck and bus battery cell and pack manufacturing plant in Midland, Michigan, is the survivor of Dow Chemical’s 2013 exit from a joint venture called Dow Kokam.
Freudenberg ePower Systems operates in Midland, Michigan, after a number of name changes. (Photo: Freudenberg)
Dow determined the battery business wasn’t worth pursuing, but it continues making materials for batteries. South Korea-based Kokam Co. became partly owned by private equity and real estate investor Townsend Ventures. Townsend bought 48% of the company in 2008. Dow held 50.1% of Kokam when the joint venture with Townsend was formed in 2009.
Back then, established companies and startups plowed resources into powering electric vehicles. But the slow adoption of EVs forced several to go out of business.
After Dow sold its stake in Kokam to Townsend, the business was renamed Xalt Energy. In 2018, Freudenberg purchased 50.1% of Xalt. It acquired the rest in September 2023, doing business as Freudenberg e-Power Systems.
Diversification play
“Freudenberg decided [it] wanted to get into the battery industry just for product diversification,” Lisa McKenzie, Freudenberg e-Power Systems president and general manager, told me. “We have always focused on the heavy-duty market … let’s say the more niche markets, which heavy duty still really kind of is.”
Lisa McKenzie, president of Freudenberg’s ePower Systems (Photo: Freudenberg)
Freudenberg’s $12.5 billion in 2023 total revenue contrasts with some less well-heeled competitors. Think about startup Romeo Power, whose Nikola-owned battery pack manufacturing assets were sold to Mullen Automotive in September 2023.
The Proterra Powered battery business was sold for $210 million to Sweden’s Volvo Group in its parent’s bankruptcy auction in November 2023.
McKenzie said her unit’s ability to design battery cells and the packs that contain them separates Freudenberg from competitors that offer only packs.
“It really helps to provide the pack team all of the necessary information about that cell to design around it, how to optimize its performance and ultimately keep it safe,” she said. “Having that all under one roof is one of the unique things about us.”
Challenges facing battery-powered trucks
Freudenberg is clear-eyed about the challenges batteries face in wide adoption for heavy-duty trucks. Energy density – how much charging power a battery provides – is chief among them. It has looked at chemistries like sodium but determined it is not ready for prime time.
“We’re absolutely open to developing products with a company that has some type of novel technology,” McKenzie said. “We’ve had a lot of conversations with organizations that have these great PowerPoint presentations. [But] when you try to dig into their data, you’re like, ‘No, you’re not there yet.’”
Freudenberg ePower Systems batteries in Midland, Michigan (Photo: Freudenberg)
Despite broad industry support for lithium iron phosphate (LFP) chemistry, lithium ion battery chemistry consisting of nickel, manganese and cobalt (NMC) is making progress in adding energy density.
“You now have what’s called cell-to-pack concepts, so you’re trying to take out as much of the structural, or non-energy, component, out of the battery pack to get the most out of it,” she said.
But the answer to better batteries lies in designing vehicles intentionally for battery packs. Most efforts today hack into an internal combustion engine design, McKenzie said.
“Trying to put battery packs on rooftops [or] shove them underneath, it’s just not efficient. It works, but it’s not the most efficient.”
Avoiding battery fires
Then there’s safety, about which McKenzie has a lot to say. Battery fire gets a lot of media attention, much more than traditional internal combustion engines that power most cars and trucks.
The euphemistic term “thermal runaway” has impacted several OEMs in the early days of Class 8 battery-electric trucks. Nikola, Volvo and Freightliner all have recalled trucks for actual or potential battery fires.
McKenzie questions whether LFP is safer than NMC chemistry.
“NMC has a really bad rep right now, and I think it’s a little unfair,” she said. “As long as you have a well-designed cell, it’s manufactured with good quality, you have a good BMS [battery management system] and a good battery pack design, then NMC is just as safe.”
Cummins Inc., Paccar Inc. and Daimler Truck North America are investing $2 billion to build an LFP cell manufacturing plant in Mississippi. Chinese battery giant Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. provides LFP batteries for the Mercedes-Benz Trucks in Europe. The new eActros 600 can travel 310 miles on a single charge.
“LFP has really been promoted heavily, but it will also go into a thermal runaway situation,” McKenzie said. “It’s not a hundred percent safe.”
Tipping the scales for RNG
California’s recent changes to its Low Carbon Fuel Standard give a boost to renewable natural gas (RNG) over other drop-in fuels.
The LCFS changes help solidify RNG as a transition fuel in California. The state is pushing for all-electric commercial vehicles in the next decade. The California Air Resources Board recently added $35 million to the incentive pot for electric truck purchases. That includes $5 million for the Zero Emission Truck Loan Project.
“The CARB LCFS amendments placed caps on the amount of soy and corn oil that can be used in renewable diesel production,” Allen Schaeffer, executive director of the Engine Technology Forum, told me. “This will force renewable diesel fuel producers to make up the difference with other potentially more expensive feedstocks to produce renewable diesel.”
CARB’s adoption of carbon intensity reduction targets – 20% by 2030 and by 90% by 2045 – favors fuels like RNG. Additionally, a CARB regulation requiring dairy farms to manage their methane emissions could lead to additional RNG production.
About 98% of natural gas sold in California already comes from renewable sources like landfill gas, wastewater and dairy waste.
Hexagon Agility sees future LCFS benefits
“From an overall perspective, we see the LCFS amendments as a positive outcome and a reinforcement of CARB’s endorsement of RNG,” Ashley Remillard, natural gas system and tank maker Hexagon Agility senior vice president of legal and government affairs, said in an email.
“While we can’t necessarily quantify what sort of indirect benefit the LCFS program will bring to Hexagon Agility, we believe it will promote RNG investment and support the ultimate decarbonization of transportation fuel in California. The amendments will also be important in stabilizing LCFS credit pricing, which the industry has needed over the past several years.”
RNG’s negative carbon footprint compares favorably to diesel. But natural gas is less energy-efficient. A CNG system and tanks add about $100,000 to the upfront cost of a Class 8 truck. RNG works best when diesel is in the $3.75-to-$4-a-gallon price range. Diesel is selling for about $3.54 nationally.
Hexagon Agility in November showed off its new assembly plant that will install ultra-low-emission natural gas fuel systems onto refuse trucks, buses, street sweepers and semitrucks. The facility is in Rialto, near San Bernardino, California.
Refuse trucks running on compressed natural gas – usually renewable natural gas – will be upfitted at a new Hexagon Agility facility in Rialto, California. (Photo: Hexagon Agility)
“A combination of increased CO2 regulations in the transport sector and the introduction of Cummins’ next generation natural gas X15N engine, is propelling the energy transition in the U.S. heavy-duty truck sector,” Hans Peter Havdal, CEO Hexagon Agility, said in a Nov. 25 news release.
“The U.S. heavy-duty truck addressable market for natural gas solutions is expected to grow three-fold, from 100,000 vehicles/per year today, to 330,000/year starting in 2025.”
Briefly noted …
Multiple media reports say financially beleaguered Lion Electric has laid off 400 employees and paused production at its electric bus plant in Illinois.
Hyundai is following through on plans to use hydrogen-powered fuel cell Xcient trucks for inbound logistics. It has deployed 21 of them at its Metaplant in Ellabell, Georgia.
Hyundai Xcient fuel cell trucks arriving in Georgia for use in inbound logistics at the automaker’s Metaplant. (Photo: Hyundai)
Autonomous truck developer Torc is winding down operations in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and Stuttgart, Germany, in favor of new operations in Dallas/Fort Worth and Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Truck Tech Episode No. 93: Volvo shooting for best-in-class marks with Volvo VNR over-the-road flagship
That’s it for this week. Thanks for reading and watching. Click here to subscribe and get Truck Tech delivered to your email on Fridays. And catch the latest episodes of the Truck Tech podcast and video shorts on the FreightWaves YouTube channel. Send your feedback on Truck Tech to Alan Adler at aadler@firecrown.com.
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