Click image for a hi-res gallery of the Golf TDI Hybrid Concept

Volkswagen Group CEO Martin Winterkorn has announced that the company will be partnering with Sanyo to further develop lithium ion batteries for automotive applications. Earlier this month, the group's Audi division announced that it would use Sanyo's nickel metal hydride batteries in upcoming Q7 hybrid. This agreement goes beyond that with the focus being on lithium for both hybrid and all electric vehicles. In the past nine months, VW has shown two concepts using lithium ion batteries, the A1 project Quattro and the Golf TDI Hybrid. Volkswagen's target is to get a lithium ion battery hybrid to market by 2010. That time line is also likely to be when the first VW/Audi hybrids start coming to the U.S. market. When I spoke to Audi engineers in Europe last month, they indicated that they didn't plan launch a U.S. market hybrid until they could do a lithium ion battery. Eventually the VW Group plans to introduce full battery electric vehicles, probably powered by Sanyo lithium batteries.

Following Audi CEO Rupert Stadler's declaration that the German automaker would be building an EV within the next decade, things seem to be moving along inside the VAG group. Although a pilot project, Audi has signed an agreement with Japanese supplier Sanyo to develop batteries for hybrid and electric vehicles. The automaker intends to use the lithium-ion batteries in the second and third generation of Sanyo's technolgy. The upcoming Q7 Hybrid will have nickel-metal batteries supplied by Sanyo.

The project is eventually expected to reach €1 billion, but the scope is developing the technology for the highest number of models possible, including small cars (VW Up, Audi A1). Sanyo will benefit from a solid project after three years of restructuring the company.

Despite Europe's love affair with diesels, which seems to have largely kept Europeans away from embracing hybrids, most trips are less than 40km, a territory where hybrids, plug-in hybrids and EVs have a lot to say.

[Source: Süddeutsche Zeitung]

Sanyo knows a thing or two about making batteries for vehicles. The company's batteries are in the 2008 Ford Escape hybrid and the Honda Accord hybrid, for example. The Asia Pulse reports this week that the company announced that it will spend over three billion dollars over the next three years on new rechargeable battery technology (as well as solar cells and other electronic parts). The money the company will spend in the next three years is 40 percent more than similar investments in the preceding three years.

The billions will be spent on 1,000 engineers and to reach Sanyo's goal of mass producing "lithium ion batteries for hybrid vehicles by fiscal 2009 or fiscal 2010," the Asia Pulse writes (sorry, the article is behind a Lexis-Nexis wall and can't be linked to).

[Source: Asia Pulse]