InoBat announces first battery order for commercial vehicles

The Slovakian battery company InoBat Auto has won its first commercial vehicle customer. It is the Czech bus manufacturer SOR, which wants to electrify its city and intercity buses.

According to media reports, the framework agreement between InoBat and SOR, which was concluded at the end of April, covers research and development as well as the production and delivery of battery modules, packs and battery management systems based on NMC cells. Details on the commercial vehicle batteries and the exact scope of the agreement are not yet available.

InoBat Auto has set itself the goal of supplying its customers with customised battery cells for their intended use with high-throughput screening (a method from pharmaceutical research) and artificial intelligence, InoBat Auto wants to find the individually suitable cell chemistry. So far, the communication has mainly been about car batteries.

“We are pleased to have found a partner in InoBat that is regionally close and yet has the prerequisites to raise the cooperation to a level that is relevant in the European context,” says Vítězslav Tymr, a member of SOR’s board of directors. InoBat founder and CEO Marian Boček calls the partnership an “important milestone for InoBat and the European commercial vehicle market”.

SOR is based in Libchavy in the Czech Republic and counts itself among the largest manufacturers of city and intercity buses in Central Europe. Libchavy is about three hours’ drive north of the Slovakian capital Bratislava. In Voderady, about 40 kilometres east of Bratislava, InoBat Auto is building its first research centre and a 100 MWh production line.

spectator.sme.sk, batteryindustry.tech, ipmllp.com (IPM Group statement, to which InoBat belongs)