SINGAPORE (Aug 26): Kelvin Lim, CEO of homegrown advanced battery technology company Durapower Technology Group, remembers the moment it beat some of the world’s largest companies to win a tender to power a fleet of electric buses in the city of Eindhoven in the Netherlands.
Lim recalls standing at the bus station, looking at the city’s first-ever fleet of 43 fully electric buses and knowing that Durapower’s batteries were powering the vehicles that millions relied on every day. With a gleam of pride in his eyes, Lim narrates how the other companies were surprised that a small, “nobody” Singapore company could snatch that deal from under their noses.
“When we won the tender, people started asking, who is Durapower? Where do they come from?” he says, thrilled that the company was able to hold its own against some of the world’s biggest names in lithium-ion battery production.
Durapower was established in 2009 through a joint venture with a Chinese company. At the time, Lim says, Singapore was not a robust market for electric vehicles (EVs), so the company chose to develop its technology and manufacture its batteries in China instead. Durapower’s holding company is New Resources Technology (NRT), a specialist in the design, manufacture and integration of lithium-ion batteries that is homegrown.
“We started developing lithium-ion batteries and the earliest batch of batteries that we delivered to the commercial market was in 2010. [In 2011], we supplied the batteries to a fleet of 30 hybrid electric buses in China. Since then, we have established a good track record there,” Lim says. “The year 2014, when I joined the company, was a turning point for Durapower. When most companies were going into China, we went the other way.”
He explains that the decision was driven by the need to be different. “I always felt that, if you were a small company, you shouldn’t follow what the big companies are doing,” he says. “But of course, you can’t go against the grain at will — you need to define who you are, what you can do and what would make you different from the rest. That was what we did, and today, our products are present in 40 cities across 18 countries.”
The company’s track record is impressive: It has a 100% safety track record with more than 100 million km of operational mileage and supplies thousands of battery systems integrated into thousands of EVs in 20 cities in China. It also supplies EV batteries to cities in Belgium, the Netherlands and Japan, including batteries to an “amphibian” EV that can drive through floodwaters. Durapower has also secured new contracts from around the world to supply ultra-fast EV chargers in Singapore and Thailand; battery systems to autonomous vehicles in Europe, electric cars and electric tuk-tuks in Thailand; and electric buses and battery swapping solutions in India.
And, most recently, it secured a major contract worth more than $10 million from PSA Corp to provide battery storage solutions for the port operator’s Automated Guided Vehicle (AGV) fleet at its new Tuas Mega Port.
Still, Lim is not resting on his laurels. For a start, he realises that the nature of the industry means that once these batteries have fulfilled their life cycle, there will be an immense amount of toxic e-waste to deal with.
The rise in EVs could leave behind one million tonnes of spent lithium-ion batteries in need of recycling between now and 2030, according to Canadian battery recycling start-up Li-Cycle. Furthermore, the environmental impact of the production of lithium — and the two ingredients also needed to make batteries: cobalt and nickel — is immense.
Lim does not see these spent batteries as waste, but rather as an opportunity. “There will come a time when a lot of the batteries that we supplied to vehicles will come back to us. That’s what we call the end of first life,” he says.
Those spent batteries will drive Durapower’s next leg of growth. “What we will do is overhaul, redesign and place them in stationary energy storage systems,” he explains. By this, he means that the batteries will be repurposed as generators or power sources for those who need them the most.
“We are very fortunate in Singapore [where we have a reliable and constant supply of power]. But there are many islands, cities and countries that do not, many of them in our region. They rely on diesel, for example, to power generators,” he says. “If we could bring these renewable energy storage systems to the needy in rural areas, we can really make a difference.”
Ultimately, Lim says, he wants to make sure Durapower leaves a positive impact on humanity. “To have a reliable and renewable energy source should be an entitlement, not a privilege. From vehicles to buildings, we hope that within our sector, we can play a role in reducing carbon emissions through EVs, and we hope to bring clean, sustainable energy to those who cannot afford it.”
When asked about the environmental impact of the manufacturing of lithium-ion batteries, which also have environmental implications, Lim is unfazed. “We are compliant with the European Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemicals regulation, and we comply with the regulations [in the markets we are in].” REACH is a piece of legislation enacted by the European Union that aims to improve the protection of human health and the environment from the risks that can be posed by chemicals.
Indeed, Lim seems to be motivated by far more than the bottom line. A graduate in engineering from Imperial College London, he was always interested in EVs and clean energy. He is, via holding company NRT, also a country representative on the board of the Electric Vehicle Association of Asia Pacific. He also sits on the advisory board at the Nanyang Technological University’s (NTU) School of Materials Science and Engineering and, in this capacity, he plans to do his bit to generate a pool of future talent for the industry.
“We lack trained talent in Singapore to serve this industry. We know this problem very well because we are hiring, and the experienced talent are often not Singaporean. Why? Because if you look at the university curriculum, it isn’t really teaching what we are doing today,” he explains. “We hope to nurture more Singaporeans, and so we have taken on the task of developing fresh graduates. We train them, nurture them and groom them, but that takes time. I’ve given this feedback to NTU and we hope by doing this, we are contributing to what the industry needs.”
