Evonik has strategically launched on fundamental research in China

Left to right: Patrik Wohlhauser, Gregor Hetzke, Dr. Dahai Yu

Patrik Wohlhauser

Chairman of the Board, Evonik Degussa GmbH (i.e. the chemical business of Evonik AG)

Gregor Hetzke

Head of the Business Unit Performance Polymers, Evonik Industries AG

Dr. Dahai Yu

President of Evonik Greater China region and Chairman of Evonik Degussa (China ) Co., Ltd.

Gasgoo.com: Evonik has set up a joint venture with Daimler AG to develop and market lithium-ion batteries for electric cars. Can you tell us something about your progress on that promising technology, and the cost positions? How do you overcome the cost issues that hinder the mass production of lithium-ion batteries?

Patrik Wohlhauser: The joint venture with Daimler is to produce lithium-ion cells, not lithium-ion batteries. We have developed a very special separator "SEPARION". We are producing the cells which consist of anodes, cathodes and "SEPARION", and which is a very important component of the lithium-ion battery which consists of a hundred cells or so. We are just at the beginning of that very broad future. Daimler will use our cells for their e-Smart, a full electric vehicle to be sold at the end of the third quarter of 2011, so we still have time to streamline our production.

But it's too early to talk about production cost, as we do expect quite significant economies of scale.

Gasgoo.com: To reach economies of scale, you must develop some other customers except Daimler?

Patrik Wohlhauser: Absolutely. The joint venture with Daimler is non-exclusive. We will be producing the cells for the e-Smart, and yet we are working together with other important car manufacturers, such as GM's Opel and French car makers, and some Tier-1 automotive suppliers producing lithium-ion batteries, such as Continental. We are even working with industrial applications in the area of energy storage, with Siemens as one of our customers as well. We want to leverage this terrific technology across different industries.

Gasgoo.com: Can you introduce some of your chemical products that can be used for weight reduction in the automotive industry?

Gregor Hetzke: One example is polymers which can be widely used on the automobiles. PMMA (polymethyl methacrylate), which has high brilliance, and high weather resistible, is not just for the public lighting application, but more and more automotive body parts are recreated from steel to polymers material to save weight.

Another interesting future application will be automotive lasing, that means replacing the windows from glass to PMMA. PMMA is an ideal material for this, because of its high light transparency and weather resistance. It can be used in the car for 20 to 30 years, and of course, we can save every car up to 20 kilogram's weight, if we don't use glass any more.

So for the next generation of cars, which will be developed in the next 5 to 7 years, we will see a lot of PMMA or lasing application. As for PMMA, we produce high temperature resistance polymers, like polymers 12, PEEK, for the engine area of the car, where Polymers is used in the areas where we see temperatures of 500?F or 260℃.

Patrik Wohlhauser: And in disposable tire industry, we are producing PCS (poly-crystalline silicon) to reduce the rolling resistance, and so to reduce fuel consumption and CO2 emissions. We have many other few subjects to help our customers reduce CO2 emissions.

Gasgoo.com: Globally 55% of Evonik's R&D expenditure goes to new product development and fundamental research, but in China, Evonik's R&D activities are mainly just application development. Right?

Dr. Dahai Yu: International companies normally start their R&D in China from application development, so does Evonik. But we have been doing more fundamental research in China since last year, because we want to be more localized in technology. Evonik has 300 new patents a year globally every year, and I believe in the future many of the patents will come from China . We have developed a special team in China for our automotive business, whose major work is to enhance the cooperation between different automotive-relevant business units and sharing of advanced technologies, therefore, to make the best use of the group to develop the technologies and business for China's automotive industry.

About Evonik

Evonik Industries is the creative industrial group from Germany which operates in three business areas: Chemicals, Energy and Real Estate. Evonik is a global leader in specialty chemicals, an expert in power generation from hard coal and renewable energies, and one of the largest private residential real estate companies in Germany. Our strengths are creativity, specialization, continuous self-renewal, and reliability. Evonik is active in over 100 countries around the world. In its fiscal year 2008 about 41,000 employees generated sales of about €15.9 billion and an operating profit (EBITDA) of about €2.2 billion.

Evonik Industries has been producing specialty chemical products in China since the early 1990's, with wide-ranging trading relations already in place prior to this. The Group now has a total of 20 companies and 16 production sites in the region. In fiscal year 2008, 4,000 employees generated sales of over €820 million. Evonik regards China as one of the driving forces of the global economy, and we consequently intend to increase our business in Greater China to around €2 billion in the medium team.