Swedish commercial vehicle maker Scania and Swedish battery startup Northvolt today unveiled a battery cell that they claim can power a heavy electric truck for 1.5 million kilometers (932,056 miles).

Scania and Northvolt have been working together since 2017 to develop a battery cell for heavy-duty commercial vehicles. They assert that in validation tests, their lithium-ion cell has successfully demonstrated the capacity to power a truck for its lifetime. The cell has a capacity of 157 Ah and a nominal voltage of 3.6 V. The companies also claim that their cell’s carbon footprint is approximately one-third that of a similar industry battery cell.

The prismatic cell – it’s rigid and rectangular – is being produced with fossil-free electricity – hydro and wind – at Northvolt Ett gigafactory in northern Sweden. Later this year, Scania will launch a new battery factory in its home base of Södertälje, Sweden, where the battery cells will be assembled into battery packs for the start of heavy-duty electric truck production.

Scania CEO Christian Levin said:

As the development of the battery cell started, we targeted high performance, low operating costs and long lifetime. We decided on a requirement for the cell to enable a 1.5 million kilometers long lifetime for a heavy-duty Scania vehicle. The tests show that this requirement can not only be met, but also exceeded.

Scania AB is a subsidiary of Traton Group, which is, in turn, a subsidiary of Volkswagen Group.

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