EVT-M3 - Manufacturing the transition to zero emission fleets

Project EVT-M3 focuses on making affordable and climate-friendly energy storage systems to support EV charging. Such energy storage systems are needed to smooth-out the flows of power from (and to) the electricity grid so that very expensive grid upgrades can be avoided and so that maximum use can be made of locally-generated renewable energy from wind turbines and PV panels.

EV-Tanker represents a breakthrough in the affordability of energy storage technology for charging EV fleets whilst having an environmental footprint approximately 20% that of an equivalent lithium-ion battery system. It is based on innovative design work by Cheesecake Energy Ltd (CEL), a spin-out from over a decade of research at University of Nottingham. To date CEL has filed 10 patents for its designs which bring together the low cost of thermal storage, the turnaround efficiencies of compressed air energy storage, together with the long life and robustness of a mechanical system, making a game-changing technology in a modular containerised package.

The EV-Tanker designs have been assembled into a first-of-a-kind minimum-viable low-pressure system. The EVT-M3 project will design the remaining two stages of the air compression system, doubling performance and capacity. It will also "productionise" the already completed low-pressure stage, driving out cost and preparing the scale-up of manufacture and assembly processes to reach economies of scale.

With EV-Tanker in the market place, EV charging solution providers will be able to incorporate it into their customer offerings displacing mainly Chinese lithium-ion based products. It is expected that this could lead to over 400 high value UK manufacturing jobs within 5 years, and a $1bn export opportunity by 2030\.

Fleet operators can charge double the number of vehicles from the same size of grid connection, making the transition of a fleet of diesel vehicles into EVs economically and technically feasible where it would not otherwise be. It also facilitates charging these vehicles using on-site renewable generation at any time of day or night. Taken together these benefits could result in lifetime savings of over 13MT of CO2 emissions from EV-Tanker units anticipated to be shipped in 2026 alone, with manufacturing scaling up rapidly after that.