Spotlight on Battery
Setting the right strategies along the value chain of the battery industry – and delivering on them. Data-driven and practice-proven advice to strengthen the market position of established companies and new entrants, with a global focus on technology, product and organization. From first idea to successful implementation, creating meaningful impact.
Battery Superiority
Fast Charge your Battery Strategy
At Porsche Consulting, we offer unique solutions dedicated to the battery industry, making our clients the benchmark in battery development, manufacturing, and application. Our support ranges from corporate development, market entry and technology strategies to their execution and implementation along the entire value chain. Being a management consultancy in the center of the Volkswagen battery network, Porsche Consulting leverages the knowledge of thousands of battery experts at group brands and cell producers.
We are the only consultancy embedded in the network of a global battery player
Our Advanced Technologies team combines a strategic mindset with profound technical expertise along the entire battery value chain – having decades of experience at global market leaders as well as leading scientific institutions. In the battery industry, it takes a global perspective to win. To cover regional specifics such as regulation, subsidies, and market, we have dedicated expert teams in Asia, Europe, and the U.S. – ready to provide detailed local advice. Proven methods, validated models and tools, and an extensive network of globally leading industry and scientific advisors are our key to create a competitive edge for our clients.
key questions
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What we do
Finding Solutions
The right strategy for OEMs: identify the best technology and maintain control of your value chain
R&D investments in battery technologies and adjacent technologies will increase the variety of battery technologies to over 100 by 2035 and will thus increase potential solutions in product portfolios. Innovations bring advantages in performance and cost but also involve new risks along the battery value chain. We support our OEM clients in taking the right technology decision and in safeguarding the required volumes and prices. Jointly with our clients, we scout available technologies that optimally match product requirements, find the right cell format, and quantify the impact on product performance, ESG and cost – always with the target customer in mind.
Furthermore, we bring transparency in the underlying value chain and associated market, regulatory and geopolitical risks. Step by step, we support make or buy decisions, develop an inhouse competence strategy and help our clients find the right suppliers. All of that in line with our clients’ corporate strategy and based on a solid business case.
Leverage global opportunities: define the right global footprint and ensure fast local ramp-up
For battery companies willing to expand, the global landscape offers locations with high subsidy support and low cost levels, at times in contrast to customer proximity and geopolitical goals. We support our clients in defining the strategy for their global footprint based on the right balance of company targets and growth strategy. We tackle complications such as navigating different subsidies and local content requirements, optimizing wages to balance efficiency and cost, and addressing labor availability challenges – with the outcome of the right factory in the right location at the right scale.
Furthermore, we support our clients in securing capital for their factory projects including finding the right investors. Together with our clients and local expert teams, we approach the ramp-up of the required organization from workforce planning and recruiting to production ramp-up support. All of that to secure the day one readiness of factory and team - right on time for start-of-production.
You are not alone: Identify the right partner for your business and ensure future-proof investments
Electrification is the biggest transformation for the mobility and energy sector. Rarely, new entrants possess all capabilities and assets needed for the transformation alone. Partnerships and M&A activities are thus crucial for the business success across the value chain. We guide our clients along the entire partnering process starting with a holistic scouting and evaluation of potential partners under technical, financial, and operational aspects. A collaboration model is jointly defined with key stakeholders – always in line with the client’s corporate strategy. After successful contacting and negotiation, we coordinate the M&A process and provide due diligence services.
Our technical due diligence service offering follows a clear framework assessing Product & Technology, Research & development capability, Industrialization progress, product cost structure, quality management and supply chain resilience of the acquisition target. We enhance our internal capability with a broad global senior advisor network with an average of over 25 years of industry experiences across the battery value chain.
Resilient and circular battery supply chain: Identify business opportunities beyond the cell
To build a resilient business, decision makers need to navigate through high-speed technological innovation, critical shortages of raw materials and components, intensifying geopolitical dependencies, and challenging ESG compliance goals. On the one hand, we work with our clients from the emerging European and North American component and raw materials industry on market entry strategies benefiting from the push for decoupling and local regulations. On the other hand, we craft well-thought-out oversea strategy for mature Asian players, including global footprint, adapted product, service and equipment offering and compliance to European and North American regulations to ensure continuous growth.
Another way to de-risk raw material supply shortage is to focus on battery recycling. Policy makers have recognized the importance of raw material circularity and introduced individual regulatory and incentive schemes regarding battery recycling. However, for businesses the challenge lies in setting-up holistic solutions across the value chain from battery return, over diagnostic and disassembly to extracting valuable metals from black mass. We help our clients with customized go-to-market strategies identifying the right value chain activities, the right partner and necessary competence build-up to ensure profitability of the business case.
Advanced battery development: Manage cell and pack technology complexity and synchronize with R&D process
Battery cell and pack development is at the core of future product development of battery and automotive companies. In the next years, the choices of available battery technologies will dramatically increase and so will the complexity of the battery development process. At the same time, product life cycles will shorten posing pressure on the development timeline.
Starting with the product specific requirement analysis, we help our clients to define their technology strategy, set-up product specific technology roadmaps and customize their battery development process – perfectly synchronized with cell component and automotive R&D to accelerate development cycles. We bring long-term experience in define the right level of competence, right-sizing the R&D organization and develop a global R&D footprint - balancing R&D cost, innovation potential and market access for our clients. Our global knowledge and engineering teams provides the required technology and market expertise right where it is needed, e.g. with industry benchmarks from global battery market leaders in Asia. We model your customized cell and pack concepts to forecast resulting performance and cost, before your R&D process even starts.
Building advanced gigafactories: Scaling battery cell production and build-up local supply chains
Until 2030, more than 5,000 Gigawatthours of battery cells will be demanded from various industries equaling to more than 200 Gigafactories to be set up globally. Each one of them facing similar challenges – scarce talent, long equipment lead times, high ramp-up cost. We help our clients along each step of setting up gigafactory operations. Starting from the market entry strategy for cell and machinery suppliers to factory & process planning to ramp-up and scaling support and shop floor management.
We benefit from our heritage in automotive production and safeguard both process and quality standards for our clients. Our projects aim to accelerate ramp-up timeline of cell factories by increasing resource efficiency and enabling a local manufacturing ecosystem by building up local turn-key machinery providers.
Reduce battery cost: take advantage of innovations and increase process efficiency
Established battery producers as well as new entrants face strong cost competition and need to deal with high R&D, material and production cost. The complications arising from these factors can impede growth and profitability. We support our clients in optimizing cost while maintaining customer value and growth targets. Together with our clients, we tailor strategies that pinpoint opportunities for cost reduction based on detailed material and production cost modeling.
Our benchmarking services enable clients to measure their performance against industry standards and identify key cost potentials inhouse and at suppliers. Efficiency programs streamline operations, enhance productivity and reduce production scrap. We further help our clients in reducing complexity, for example by standardization of chemistries, formats and factory set-up. It takes teamwork to define cost reductions measures comprehensively, but the resulting impact puts our clients in a stronger cost position.
Stationary Storage: develop the right business model to access an emerging market
The strong growth in renewables in the energy infrastructure drives the increase of the stationary energy storage market. A wide range of regional requirements and incentives as well as a multitude of technological solutions make entering the ESS market highly complex.
We support our clients from project design all the way to operation – targeting high profitability and fast time-to-market. Together with our clients, we analyze the accessibility of global markets, bring transparency into use cases, revenue streams and permitting processes and define a tailored market entry strategy. We help our clients in techno-economical evaluation, system and project design, and in sourcing competitive cells and packs. In addition, we support in finding the right customers and negotiating offtake agreements for the stored electricity.
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