Stellantis gives EV jolt to Fiat's longtime home base

TURIN – Stellantis opened its first battery cell and pack testing facility for Europe in Fiat's ancestral home of Turin. The site will be used to certify supplies before they are approved for production.

Stellantis has invested 40 million euro ($43 million) to repurpose 8,000 square meters (86,111 square feet) of the Mirafiori production plant, install machinery and retrain workers who will perform durability tests on batteries initially bought in by external suppliers.

Soon the center will also test batteries made by through the ACC joint venture that includes Stellantis, Mercedes-Benz and TotalEnergies.

The location, which will be called the Turin Battery Technology Center, is expected to grow to 100 people, most engineers, from 45 now.

A durability test of a cell or a pack could last from 15 days to one year, discharging and recharging them under controlled temperature and humidity.
The test center's 24 climatic chambers can test two battery packs at the same time. In addition, the facility has eight smaller chambers, each with the capability to test 12 cells.

A similar but bigger test center that is under construction in Windsor, Ontario, Canada, will serve the North American market. The Canada facility will have 35 climatic chambers for battery packs and 11 smaller chambers, each with the capability to test 12 cells.

The climatic chambers at both locations can deliver temperatures ranging from -40 degrees to 60 degrees Celsius (-40 to 140 degrees Fahrenheit), and they are capable to slashing temperatures by 20 degrees Celsius in a minute.

“We need such a speed in decreasing temperature to simulate what happens in winter in Northern Europe, where a car could exit a garage at about 0 C and suddenly faces temperatures -30 to -40 C,” said Paola Baratta, head of the Turin's lab.

The Turin tech center calibrated its equipment with battery packs supplied by Samsung SDI for the Fiat New 500 small electric car that is built on the same campus.

In early September the center began testing battery packs and cells that will be used in vehicles underpinned by the new STLA Medium architecture. The Peugeot e-3008, which goes on sale next spring, will be the first vehicle to use the STLA Medium architecture.

The STLA Medium platform, one of four new architectures that Stellantis is deploying to help it reach its global goal of 50 percent full-electric sales by 2030. Its European brands, including Alfa Romeo, Citroen, DS, Fiat, Maserati, Opel and Peugeot, will sell only full-electric vehicles by then, CEO Carlos Tavares has said.

Stellantis earlier this year opened its first European gigafactory, which is in Douvrin, France. That plant will be followed by gigafactories in Kaiserslautern, Germany, in  2025, and Termoli, Italy, in 2026, all through the ACC joint venture.

The each gigafactory in Europe will have a planned capacity of 40 gigawatt hours.

Meanwhile, three gigafactories are planned for North America. Two of the locations have been revealed: Kokomo, Indiana, in cooperation with Samsung SDI and Windsor, in cooperation with LG. The location of the third, which will be in cooperation with Samsung, has not been revealed.
"We have committed to delivering six gigafactories around the world, and more to come," Stellantis' head of global propulsion system, Micky Bly, said while inaugurating the Turin center this month.

"We have already announced about 250 gWh of capacity around the world. We believe we need to go to 400 gWh of capacity around the world," Bly added.

Baratta said that when a battery pack or cell arrives at the lab, it is monitored for 72 hours to check its integrity and stability before being moved to the test area.

If a cell or pack looks unstable, it is put in a quarantine area before being tested.

In addition to durability of cells and packs, the Turin's center will calibrate battery management system software.

A teardown area will be used to check cell and pack status after being certified for use in future Stellantis models. The center also tears down cells and packs made by third parties to benchmark technology and materials used by competitors, Baratta said.