Echandia, a Swedish startup making batteries and electronics to power maritime vessels, is opening a manufacturing and sales facility in Western Washington — its first site in North America.
“This is putting our foot on the ground in the U.S.,” said CEO Fredrik Hellström in a call with GeekWire.
The company is celebrating the opening of its new operations on Tuesday with a ribbon-cutting event in Marysville, Wash. Gov. Jay Inslee, who is scheduled to attend the event, has pushed for the electrification of the state’s ferries. Washington operates the largest ferry system in the U.S. and is taking steps to begin converting its fleet to hybrid-electric power by 2040.
“We would definitely be a contender in that arena,” said Trevor Small, Echandia’s director of sales for North America.
Echandia partners with shipyards to build and retrofit vessels to make them all-electric or hybrid-electric powered. The startup has customers in Europe, India and New Zealand and is working on ferries, naval vessels, merchant ships and offshore vessels.
The startup’s batteries use a lithium-titanate-oxide chemistry that Small touted as safer and faster charging than traditional lithium-ion options.
Echandia will be the first tenant in the Marysville Corporate Center, occupying 20,000 square feet of the 53,000-square-foot facility, with plans to double its footprint in the space over time. The company will start hiring immediately for jobs in sales, administration and manufacturing. The total headcount for Marysville is in flux as new orders are coming in, Small said.
Washington’s effort to cut the carbon footprint for its ferries includes converting six existing vessels to hybrid-electric and building 16 new hybrid-electric vessels, plus adding shore charging infrastructure to 16 terminals.
The ferry system burns roughly 19 million gallons of diesel each year and is the largest producer of greenhouse gases among Washington’s government agencies.
In May, the state put out to bid its contract to build five new ferries. Washington State Ferries expects to select one or two winning shipyards early next year, and the first two vessels should be completed by 2028.
The agency notes that more than 70 ferry operators in northern Europe have converted their vessels to hybrid-electric power in the past decade.
The Washington project has an estimated cost of roughly $4 billion, some of which comes from the Climate Commitment Act, a law that puts a price on carbon pollution for the state’s biggest greenhouse gas emitters. A November ballot measure titled Initiative 2117 would eliminate the funding source.