Tesla is taking things a notch higher with its engineers and decided the best move forward is not to rely on other companies to make batteries for it and rather create its own.
The electric-car maker recently acquired Hibar Systems Ltd, a Canadian battery expert, as Tesla has been reported to have ramped up its production to make its own battery technology to power its electric vehicles. The acquisition happened without much fanfare from the media.
Tesla has chosen Hibar as its wholly-owned company on October 2 under a registration filing with the federal Office of the Commissioner of Canada. Canadian online news outfit Electric Autonomy first disclosed the Hibar acquisition on October 4.
This is not Tesla's first major buyout in this department. The company recently took over Maxwell, a California-based firm engaged in the development of advanced lithium-ion electrode systems and ultracapacitors.
In addition, Tesla also inked a 5-year research deal with Canadian researcher Jeff Dahn that analysts said was a positive move. Tesla owner Elon Musk pointed out that the company was making great strides to achieve its "million-mile battery" goal, which Dahn - a Dalhousie University Physics professor - and his team said in a research paper that batteries with this kind of capacity were possible to make.
Tesla's purchase of Maxwell Technologies in May this year proves it is serious in building its own superbatteries. Tesla has relied heavily on Panasonic - which jointly controls and operates a battery facility in Nevada, and LG Chem - for its battery systems since 2014, but their partnership may soon be over as Tesla now turns its attention to Hibar.
Privately-controlled Hibar has divulged that the company's exports represent over 95 percent of the business. In April, it was given a $2 million-dollar grant by the National Research Council of Canada to support research and development for a new generation of batteries.
Hibar, though not an industrial giant, is an international entity. The company currently has offices in Asia and Europe. In China, Hibar is a popular name when it comes to superbatteries, as the Chinese markets rolled out over 50 percent of Hibar's total sales in 2014. While in Shanghai, Tesla's state of the art Gigafactory 3 may already be collaborating with Hibar China, especially when reports of the takeover broke out.
