Two initiatives have got underway in Europe, one in Germany and the other in Britain, aimed at accelerating battery development for electric vehicles and stationary storage respectively, while vacuum cleaner company Dyson has pledged a US$1.44 billion commitment to batteries – for cordless cleaning devices.

German mechanical engineering company Manz has supplied a lithium-ion battery production line to a research centre for the commercial production of the batteries, initially for the e-mobility sector, at the Center for Solar Energy and Hydrogen Research Baden-Wuerttemberg (ZSW) in Ulm.