The newly formed American Battery Solutions Inc. announced it has signed an agreement to acquire manufacturing and testing assets for high-voltage battery systems from Robert Bosch Battery Systems. The terms of the sale will not be disclosed.
Under the agreement, ABS will acquire the testing lab assets for high-voltage battery systems and will lease 40,000 square feet of space for prototype battery pack assembly and offices located in Lake Orion. In addition, ABS will acquire the 172,000-square-foot facility located in Springboro, Ohio, where Robert Bosch Battery Systems has assembled lithium-ion battery packs for use in the automotive industry since 2009.
“We are proud to offer capabilities to the market through the acquisition of high-voltage assets,” American Battery Solutions CEO Subhash Dhar said in a statement.
ABS was founded by Dhar and by KCK Group, a principal investment firm with global offices in London, New York, the San Francisco Bay Area and Dubai. KCK Group has committed over $50 million in capital to the enterprise to bring electrified mobility battery systems to new emerging transportation, industrial and commercial markets.
ABS will supply modular battery solutions to underserved transportation, industrial and commercial markets, primarily in North America and Europe. It will partner with the world's leading OEMs, system integrators and battery manufacturers to supplement and extend their brands with a combination of engineering, testing and manufacturing services. The venture will partner with leading cell manufacturers to offer a variety of chemistries and cell form factors to optimize each application.
“We will leverage our significant automotive experience to bring electrified mobility battery systems to new emerging transportation, industrial and commercial segments,” Dhar continued. “We see tremendous opportunity for growth in robust battery systems with flexible business models as the business cases in these new segments are enabled with lower cost lithium ion batteries.”