Voltfang, an Aachen-based greentech company founded in 2020, built its business around one straightforward premise: electric vehicle batteries still have significant useful life left when automakers retire them, and that life is best spent in stationary energy storage. Five years on, the honest answer to this article’s title question is more nuanced than the headline suggests — and more interesting. Voltfang designs, manufactures, and operates battery energy storage systems (BESS) for commercial, industrial, and grid-scale customers, drawing on three distinct battery streams: genuinely used EV packs requalified for a second life, brand-new modules from automotive overproduction that never entered a vehicle, and — for its newest grid-scale generation — new large-format LFP cells. Second-life is where the company comes from. The European automotive battery supply chain is what it is actually betting on.
With production scaling rapidly from just 5 MWh in 2023 to 20 MWh in 2024, and a new 6,000-square-meter factory in Aachen now operational, Voltfang is building the infrastructure to become a meaningful force in Europe’s energy storage market. A €250 million partnership with infrastructure investor Palladio Partners, announced in September 2025, marks the company’s move from supplying individual commercial sites to deploying grid-connected storage at scale across Germany. For a company that started when its three founders converted a campervan using second-life EV batteries, the trajectory has been steep.
Key Facts & Figures
- Founded: 2020 (RWTH Aachen University spinoff)
- Headquarters: Aachen, Germany
- Employees: ~120 (early 2026)
- Market Cap: Private company
- 2024 Production: 20 MWh
- 2026 Target: 250 MWh annual capacity
- 2030 Target: 1 GWh annual capacity
- Total Funding: $41.2M across 4 rounds, incl. €15M Series B (2025)
- Infrastructure Commitment: €250M (Palladio Partners, through 2029)
- Certifications: ISO 9001, IEC62619, UL1973, UL9540A, UN38.3, NFPA855
Company Background & Market Position
Voltfang was founded in 2020 by David Oudsandji (CEO), Roman Alberti (CSO), and Afshin Doostdar — three engineering students at RWTH Aachen University whose initial work involved repurposing used EV batteries for a campervan. That proof-of-concept grew into a commercial operation addressing a real gap: as EV adoption accelerated across Europe, significant volumes of decommissioned battery packs with 70–80% remaining capacity were entering the waste stream prematurely.
The company operates and supplies systems exclusively in Germany and Austria today, serving a client base that includes Aldi Nord, McDonald’s, Stuttgart Airport, JET Hamburg, and various logistics operators. Voltfang has also accrued recognition within the industry, earning the ees AWARD 2022 and the DNP 2025 Sieger designation, while holding ISO 9001 quality certification.
Competitively, Voltfang occupies a distinct position. While numerous BESS manufacturers source new cells from Asia, Voltfang draws the bulk of its battery supply from European automotive manufacturers, requalifying modules through proprietary testing processes. Crucially, “requalified” does not always mean “used”: alongside retired EV packs, a substantial share of this feedstock consists of factory-new overproduction modules that never saw a vehicle — batteries automakers built for demand that did not materialize. Voltfang does not publish the ratio between the two streams, but the founders themselves describe the overproduction channel as the larger one. This supply chain proximity, combined with in-house manufacturing in Aachen, gives the company a differentiated cost and sustainability profile — whichever stream a given module comes from.
🎧 From the BatterE Podcast: How Voltfang Turns Automotive Batteries Into Bankable Projects
In a recent BatterE Podcast episode, our colleague Simon Voß travelled to Aachen to sit down with Voltfang co-founders Roman Alberti and Afshin Doostdar. The conversation goes beyond the origin story to focus on what turns a clever prototype into a commercial business — the supply, software, operations, and financing that customers now expect.
One point that stands out: alongside used packs from the market, Voltfang taps a second, larger stream by contracting directly with automotive OEMs for overproduction batteries — cells that never reached a vehicle over minor cosmetic issues. As Doostdar puts it, “a small misalignment” in automotive output can leave “enormous amounts of batteries sitting in stock.”
The founders are equally candid about the commercial reality. “A customer doesn’t want a battery… he wants to cut energy prices,” Alberti notes — the mindset that pushed Voltfang from selling hardware into site analysis, installation, operations, and its own energy management software. They also weigh in on Europe’s growth barriers, from hardware financing to policy volatility, and on why raw-material access is decisive: China holds only “around 18%” of reserves domestically yet “controls around 70–80%” globally.
Manufacturing Capacity & Infrastructure
Voltfang’s production history traces a clear upward arc. The company delivered 5 MWh of storage in 2023, scaling to 20 MWh in 2024 — a fourfold increase. In August 2025, Voltfang opened the Future Fab, a 6,000-square-meter manufacturing facility located in TRIWO Technopark in Aachen on the former Next.e.GO site. The company describes this as Europe’s largest factory dedicated to second-life battery storage production.
The facility supports 250 MWh of annual production capacity by end of 2026 and forms the foundation for the company’s longer-range target of 1 GWh per year before 2031. As of mid-2025, Voltfang had requalified and repurposed over 6,900 battery modules from premature disposal.
Beyond the factory itself, Voltfang’s pipeline includes active large-scale projects: a 540 kWh system at Stuttgart Airport (with a planned 10x expansion to 5.4 MWh), and a 20 MWh / 9.5 MW grid-serving storage facility in Alsdorf near Aachen, which was connected to the medium-voltage grid of distribution operator Regionetz in January 2026 and is operated by Icecreek Energy. Notably, Voltfang’s own communications around the Alsdorf commissioning no longer mention second-life at all — the company now presents itself as a provider of “high-performance, European-made energy storage systems.” All manufacturing takes place at the Aachen site.
The company also runs a Pachtdirekt program, enabling landowners and municipalities to lease land for grid-scale battery storage parks, with guaranteed lease income for at least 15 years — a model that expands Voltfang’s project pipeline without requiring it to own the underlying land.
Technology & Product Portfolio
Voltfang’s product line centers on two hardware generations with a shared software backbone — and the battery sourcing differs meaningfully between them.
The Voltfang Industrial / Commercial BESS serves business and industrial customers with systems ranging from 180 kWh capacity and 184 kW power upward, designed for peak shaving, solar self-consumption, and EV fleet charging support. Documented commercial installations include:
- Kerschgens Stahlhandel: 2.8 MWh system, achieving a 37.5% peak demand reduction (from 400 kW to 250 kW)
- Teveo Logistics Center: 750 kWh battery integrated with 749 kWp PV and 16 charging points across 20,000 m²
- Frenger Ladepark: 360 kWh battery supporting 300 kW high-power charging with only an 80 kW grid connection
The established grid-scale product, the Voltfang 2 Plus, starts at 5.3 MWh capacity and 2.5 MW power output, deployed in standard 20-foot containers with IP55 protection. It uses requalified NMC (Nickel Manganese Cobalt) modules from European automotive applications, operates from -35°C to 55°C, and achieves up to 98.26% round-trip efficiency, backed by a 10-year warranty and an expected service life of 15–20 years.
The newest generation tells a different sourcing story. The Voltfang 3 commercial system and the grid-scale Voltfang 3 Plus are built on LFP (Lithium Iron Phosphate) chemistry — and here the cells are new, not requalified. The Voltfang 3 Plus datasheet specifies a 530 Ah cell, a large-format stationary-storage cell class that has never existed in any production EV and therefore cannot come from a second-life stream. LFP’s longer cycle life and thermal stability make it the industry-standard choice for front-of-the-meter storage, and Voltfang has followed the market. The Voltfang 3 Plus DC Block additionally supports direct DC-coupled integration with photovoltaic systems, allowing PV surplus absorption without additional conversion losses.
In short: second-life and new-life NMC modules power the commercial fleet and the Voltfang 2 generation; the grid-scale future is increasingly new LFP. That is not a contradiction of Voltfang’s circular story — it is a pragmatic hedge, and readers should understand the distinction.
On the software side, the Voltfang EMS (Energy Management System) serves as the central integration platform, connecting storage hardware to building systems and energy markets in real time. The EMS supports intraday trading, cross-market optimization, peak load management, and renewable energy integration. Voltfang also develops Venma, a more advanced energy management platform with automated optimization across multiple energy sources.
A note on terminology: ‘second-life’ is often used loosely in this market. In Voltfang’s case the requalified feedstock includes both used EV packs and never-installed overproduction modules — the latter are new batteries by any definition. And for its newest grid-scale systems, Voltfang has moved to new LFP cells entirely. The circular-economy story is real, but it describes the company’s origin and part of its commercial product line, not its entire grid-scale future.
Strategic Initiatives & Market Context
Germany has set a national target of 100 GWh of battery storage capacity by 2030, creating substantial structural demand for the type of large-scale, domestically produced storage that Voltfang is now positioning to deliver.
The September 2025 partnership with Palladio Partners is the company’s most significant strategic development. Under the binding agreement, Palladio commits €250 million by 2029 to finance and commercialize grid-connected storage projects, with Voltfang serving as the sole operational partner — responsible for planning, engineering, constructing, operating, and maintaining the facilities. The initiative targets several hundred megawatts of combined storage capacity and is structured to attract institutional capital from pension funds and insurance companies seeking long-duration infrastructure assets.
Voltfang’s Series B funding round, closed in June 2025 and totaling €15 million (~$17.3 million), was led by Dutch deeptech investor FORWARD.one, with participation from Interzero, Helen Ventures, Daphni, Fiege Ventures, and Newberry Investments. Total funding across all rounds stands at approximately $41.2 million.
On the sustainability front, the requalification model directly reduces demand for virgin lithium, cobalt, and nickel — materials with complex and often carbon-intensive supply chains. Every requalified module that enters a Voltfang system is one that avoids early recycling or unproductive warehouse stock, and the company has framed this circular economy approach as both an environmental commitment and a commercial advantage. The sustainability case is strongest for the genuinely used packs; for overproduction modules and new LFP cells, the advantage is better described as supply chain resilience and European content than as circularity.
Looking Ahead
Voltfang’s real bet is not on second-life batteries per se — it is on the European automotive battery supply chain, in all its forms. As European automakers produce growing volumes of both retired packs and surplus new modules, Voltfang gains access to a domestically available feedstock that competitors reliant on Asian cell imports cannot easily replicate. Where that feedstock cannot serve — large-format grid storage — the company has shown it will buy new LFP cells rather than force the circular model where it does not fit. Combined with in-house manufacturing, EMS software, and a committed institutional infrastructure partner in Palladio, the building blocks for meaningful scale are in place.
The path from 20 MWh in 2024 to 250 MWh in 2026 and 1 GWh by 2030 is ambitious but grounded in confirmed factory capacity and secured investment. The Pachtdirekt land-lease model adds a low-capital channel for project origination, while the Palladio partnership provides the balance sheet support for front-of-the-meter deployments that single-site commercial contracts cannot.
Risks remain: second-life battery quality and availability are not fully predictable at scale — a reality Voltfang itself appears to acknowledge, given its newest grid product runs on new cells and its recent project communications no longer foreground second-life. European energy storage markets are also attracting well-capitalized competitors, and profitability, which the company targets for 2026, has yet to be demonstrated publicly. But for businesses and grid operators seeking domestically manufactured, certified, and warranted storage backed by a growing operational track record — from Aldi Nord distribution centers to Stuttgart Airport — Voltfang has positioned itself as a credible answer to Europe’s storage capacity challenge.
Editor’s note: Updated July 2026: This article was revised to clarify Voltfang’s battery sourcing. The company’s requalified feedstock includes both used EV packs and factory-new overproduction modules, and its latest grid-scale product (Voltfang 3 Plus) uses new LFP cells rather than second-life modules. We thank our readers for the pointer.
