American Battery Solutions adds jobs, expands innovation center

American Battery Solutions Inc. (ABS), a maker of lithium-Ion batteries, has announced the expansion of its Innovation Center, significantly growing its footprint in Michigan as it adds to its team of battery professionals. The company is reportedly tripling the size of its facility – growing from 40,000 sq. ft. to 115,000 sq. ft. -- and creating an additional 75 jobs in Lake Orion, Mich. Financial details of the expansion, nor customer contracts driving the growth were not disclosed.

The Innovation Center growth supports the company’s expanding customer base and contract awards. ABS has added engineering, test and research jobs to support internal product development and custom battery pack contract awards. These additions bring the company’s headcount in Michigan and Ohio to 155 team members.

“ABS has seen continued growth despite the COVID-19 pandemic and needs to expand our Lake Orion facility and staff to support our growing customer base and line of renewable modular battery pack technologies,” said Subhash Dhar, founder, chairman and CEO of American Battery Solutions. “This expansion of the Michigan Innovation Center reflects the success of our promise to pursue business opportunities in underserved and emerging market segments. Product features that include modularity and scalability with advanced management and control systems have proven very attractive to our industrial, commercial and heavy-duty vehicle customers.”

The company said the growth is driven in part by its recently launched product line, the Alliance Intelligent Battery Series of lithium-ion batteries, for motive and industrial applications. The Alliance E48-2.0 is the first product in the series. It has scalable architecture in 2kWh increments designed for light electric vehicles and new OEM designs to optimize the packaging space and vehicle range.

ABS said it will follow later this year with the introduction of its Industrial Series batteries. These will be available as the I24-3.0 and I48-3.0 series for industrial applications. The I24-3.0 is designed for low-voltage lithium-ion batteries drop-in retrofits of lead-acid batteries in motive power applications such as utility vehicles, floor cleaning machines, pallet jacks and mobile elevated work platforms. The I48-3.0 comes in the GC2 size (a.k.a. T105) form factor. The I48-3.0 is ideal for drop-in retrofits of lead-acid batteries in motive poser applications like golf carts, mobile elevated work platforms and floor machines.

Expansion in the facility is also being driven by several recent customer awards for high-voltage battery packs and solutions for light commercial delivery and heavy-duty commercial vehicles. The new areas will house additional engineering test labs, a Hardware-in-the-Loop BMS development lab, and a prototype battery pack assembly line that will complement the existing module prototype line. In addition to the customer projects, the company said the team is also developing a new line of standardized, high-voltage battery packs branded as the ProLiance Intelligent Battery Systems.