As of today, Europe remains not competitive in terms of Lithium battery cell development and especially manufacturing. This lack of competence and competitiveness could quickly spiral down into a complete loss of this key technology for electrification in the EU. Thus IMAGE will significantly contribute to sustainably develop the European Li-battery cell manufacturing competence and capability by creating a competitive, production-oriented research & development framework within Europe. A realistic and well-documented roadmap towards the manufacturing of cost-effective and competitive battery cells within Europe will emerge. This will be enforced by establishing a distributed battery cell production base that will be able, after careful upscaling of production, to supply the now burgeoning electric vehicle industry. From this context, the main goal of IMAGE is to push European’s Li-battery industry and academia to take over a leading role in the development and manufacturing of Next Generation Li-Ion cells. IMAGE has the following major objectives: 1) Develop generic production techniques for next generation battery cells based on high specific energy Li-metal battery cells. This will include a modular development approach that will be easy to up-scale while remaining flexible and safer to replace in case of any contingencies and market/ manufacturer configuration changes. 2) Identify energy and resource efficient cell manufacturing technologies and assets tailored to the existent European industrial infrastructure. This will include the identification of bottleneck factors and challenges that could be addressed in the present European industrial context. 3) Develop a progressive, multiple-tier technological and production framework that is able to cope with the inherent technological changes and advancements characteristic to this dynamic field. Thus, there will be several technologies covered by IMAGE, each having different technological maturity level.

3beLiEVe aims at delivering the 3b generation of LNMO cells for the electrified vehicles market of 2025 and beyond. The project addresses the full scope of the LC-BAT-5-2019 call by delivering: • 3b generation batteries with LNMO cathodes, LiFSI electrolyte, and a 10-20 wt.% Si-C anode in a cell architecture capable of 750 Wh/l, 300 Wh/kg, 1.4 kW/kg, and 2,000+ deep cycles, of which 10% at 3C+; • a portfolio of internal and external sensors (22 sensors per module) and an adaptive liquid cooling system managed by a smart BMS with advanced diagnostic and operational functions; • cradle to cradle approach, including cell/module/pack green manufacturing processes (gigafactory level), optical equipment for inline quality inspection, 1st and 2nd life performance and recyclability demonstration, achieving 90 €/kWh life cycle cost. The project will deliver 250 cells of generation 3b in total and two demonstrator battery packs of 88 cells and 12 kWh capacity each at TRL 6 / MRL 8. These aim at demonstrating the 3beLiEVe technology performance for applications in light duty (i.e. passenger cars, freight vehicles) and commercial vehicles (i.e. city buses and trucks) in fully electric/plug-in hybrid (BEV/PHEV) configurations. 3beLiEVe technology is free of critical raw materials (cobalt and natural graphite), scalable and sustainable, aiming at 12.7 GWh production by 2025 and 33.7 GWh in 2030, for a market ranging from 1.1 to 2.5 billion €/year, i.e. 7% of the global manufacturing capacity. All the technological domains and innovations addressed in 3beLiEVe are essential for strengthening the position of the European battery and automotive industry in the future market of xEVs.