Mass Production to Begin in 2019
Doosan Corp. has chosen fuel cell powerpacks for drones as one of its three future growth engine items. The other two are collaborative robots, a new type of robot used for building smart factories, and elecfoil, a key material for electric car batteries.
On September 6, the company announced it would enter the drone fuel cell powerpack business on a full scale. It exhibited its own fuel cell products for drones for the first time at the 2018 Inter Drone Exhibition in Las Vegas, the U.S. on September 5-7.
Doosan established Doosan Mobility Innovation in 2016 and has developed a fuel cell powerpack for drones through its own technology. The fuel cell powerpack is a collection of cells that generate electricity through electrochemical reaction between hydrogen and oxygen.
Doosan's new product is easy to use and boasts high fuel efficiency. The quick-coupler allows anyone to easily install the hydrogen tank to the powerpack. The company developed ultralight hydrogen tanks by optimizing the design of carbon fiber winding for use in mobile fuel cell powerpack.
Doosan Mobility Innovation is developing various solutions for hydrogen supply and charge, delivery service, mobile app for flight convenience, integrated service based on the Internet of Things (IoT), said Lee Doo-soon, CEO of Doosan Mobility Innovation. "We will lead the global drone fuel cell market through differentiated services based on our fundamental fuel cell technology."
Doosan plans to mass-produce fuel cell powerpacks in the first half of next year after demonstration projects and tests at home and abroad. The drone industry forecasts that the industrial drones market will grow to about 7 trillion won by 2025.
In addition to the fuel cell business, Doosan is also stepping up its efforts to develop battery packs, a core component of collaborative robots and electric vehicle batteries. Doosan announced its plan to enter the collaborative robot market in September of last year. At the moment, Doosan Robotics is rolling out four models with a maximum working radius of 1.7m and a load capacity of 15kg.
In addition, as demand for eco-friendly electric vehicles is on the rise worldwide and the elecfoil industry is expected to grow 40% annually on average until 2025. Doosan announced a plan to build a new battery production plant on a 140,000-square-meter site in the Tatabanya Industrial Complex in Hungary, Eastern Europe in order to preempt the battery pack market. The company will break ground for the plant in the second half of this year and complete it around October of next year. The plant will have an annual production capacity of 50,000 tons of battery packs, which can be loaded into 2.2 million electric vehicles.