Germany's Porsche is closing battery subsidiary Cellforce, reports say

Copyright Michael Sohn/Copyright 2022 The AP. All rights reserved.

By Doloresz Katanich
Published on 21/08/2025 - 

According to German media reports, the sports car maker has decided to largely shut down its battery-making and research subsidiary Cellforce, cutting hundreds of jobs.

German sports car giant Porsche plans to close the majority of operations at its subsidiary Cellforce, a factory for high-performance battery cells.

According to the German newspaper Der Spiegel, the sports car manufacturer plans to lay off around 200 of its 286 employees at the factory in Kirchentellinsfurt, Germany.

The cuts suggest that, at best, a small research and development unit would remain at Cellforce’s site.

Porsche declined to comment on the reports, but Der Spiegel noted that a corresponding mass layoff was reported to the employment agency in the nearby city of Reutlingen on Wednesday.

Porsche invested in Cellforce Group GmbH in 2021. At first, it was a joint venture between Porsche AG and battery cell manufacturer CustomCells.

In an effort to establish Baden-Württemberg as a leading battery location, the state also offered €17 million in funding to Cellforce in 2022.

RelatedPorsche to cut almost 2,000 jobs in Germany as EV demand declines

Porsche reports significant plunge in European and Chinese deliveries

In 2023, Porsche then took over the business entirely with the promise of producing high-performance battery cells on a much larger scale than previously planned.

However, it was a short-lived ambition. In April this year, Porsche announced that it would not continue to operate the battery cell subsidiary independently.

According to Der Spiegel, representatives from BMW visited the site at the beginning of August, and defence companies were also said to have been interested in the factory for developing batteries for military drones. Yet the latest media reports suggest that no new investors are on the horizon.

The depreciation of Cellforce's production facilities is allegedly costing Porsche €295mn.

Meanwhile, around 200 employees face unemployment because, unlike its parent company Porsche, there is no employment guarantee and no works council at Cellforce.

All employees have been invited to a town hall meeting on 25 August, at the "Cellforce 1" building in Kirchentellinsfurt. Employees are also banned from taking holiday on that day, according to reports. Michael Steiner, Porsche's chief development officer and vice president, will address the staff.

The closure of the battery business highlights fundamental challenges to Porsche’s electric strategy, pursued by CEO Oliver Blume. Cellforce was intended to help increase the firm's EV sales and profits by allowing the manufacturer to draw upon its own high-performance cells.

New AI model can help extend life and increase safety of electric vehicle batteries

Uppsala University

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Daniel Brandell, Professor of Materials Chemistry at the Department of Chemistry and Director of the Ångström Advanced Battery Centre at Uppsala University

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Credit: Tobias Sterner/Bildbyrån

Batteries in electric vehicles wear out too quickly and this is slowing down the electrification of the transport sector. Researchers at Uppsala University have now developed an AI model that can provide a much more accurate picture of battery ageing. The model could lead to longer life and enhanced safety for electric vehicle batteries.

It is not uncommon for batteries in electric cars to be the first component of the vehicle to age. This is a major waste of resources today and is holding back the transformation of the transport sector. To address this issue, the automotive industry is developing software, often based on AI, to optimise battery management and control. Researchers at Uppsala University have now produced a new model that can increase the robustness of battery health predictions by up to 70 per cent.

“Being able to learn more about the life and ageing of batteries will benefit future control systems in electric vehicles. It also shows how important it is to understand what happens inside the batteries. If we stop looking at them as black boxes that are simply expected to provide power, and instead acquire a detailed picture of the processes, we can manage them so that they stay in good condition longer,” says Professor Daniel Brandell, who led the study and is in charge of the Ångström Advanced Battery Centre at Uppsala University.

Can map the battery life cycle

Several years of battery testing are behind the study, carried out in collaboration with Aalborg University in Denmark. A database was built up by collecting data from numerous very short charging segments. This was then combined with a detailed model of all the different chemical processes taking place inside the battery.

“Altogether, this gives us a very precise picture of the various chemical reactions that result in the battery generating power, but also of how it ages during use,” says Wendi Guo, who conducted the study.

Reduces need for sensitive vehicle data

The discovery could also affect the safety of electric vehicles. The safety problems that can occur in the battery are often due to design flaws and side reactions, which can also be predicted by studying data from the battery’s charging and discharging.

“The fact that we only use short charging segments is probably an added advantage. Battery data from electric vehicles is sensitive, both for the industry and from an anonymisation point of view for users. This research shows how far you can get without needing complete datasets,” says Brandell.

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Journal

Energy & Environmental Science

DOI

10.1039/D5EE03268G 

Article Title

Uncovering the impact of battery design parameters on health and lifetime using short charging segments

Article Publication Date

20-Aug-2025

 

University of Ottawa joins the race for the commercialization of beta voltaic batteries

Batteries running for decades without recharging: Dream or near-future reality?

University of Ottawa

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“Thanks to this advance, researchers will be able to characterize and optimize betavoltaic cells more easily”

Mathieu de Lafontaine

— Assistant professor, Faculty of Engineering

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Credit: The University of Ottawa

What if you never had to worry about recharging your devices again? The University of Ottawa has just made a major advance in the area of betavoltaic batteries. Imagine a world where a heart pacemaker works for your whole life on its own. Such an innovation could revolutionize daily life!

For the first time, in collaboration with Canadian Nuclear Laboratories (CNL), uOttawa researchers have proposed three new, clear indicators to measure and compare the batteries’ performance. The goal is to facilitate and accelerate the development of super long-lasting betavoltaic batteries. CNL has been working in the field of nuclear batteries for over a decade and is well positioned in this area because of their capability to handle radioactive tritium in large amounts.

Betavoltaic batteries can generate electricity for more than 10 years without recharging and function in extreme conditions, whether in space, on the sea floor or in the Arctic. The three “figures of merit” presented — capture efficiency (the capacity of material to absorb beta energy), gain (the multiplier effect in current generation —— enable article generates more than one charge  contributing to the electrical current) and gain efficiency (the ability of the device to collect the charge generated) —  enable understanding of the internal physical mechanisms, identify limitations and offer a universal framework for a fair comparison of all betavoltaic technologies.

“With capture efficiency, gain and gain efficiency, we can finally compare betavoltaic cells simply and accurately. These tools will enable big improvements, thus making the energy transition more efficient and sustainable,” says Mathieu de Lafontaine, an assistant professor in the Faculty of Engineering and study lead author.

This step forward positions the University of Ottawa at the cutting edge of research on the batteries of the future. This new means of standardization will benefit scientists and industry, and society as a whole, enabling a faster transition to sustainable energy sources, especially for extreme conditions.

“Thanks to this advance, researchers will be able to characterize and optimize betavoltaic cells more easily. It will also help manufacturers speed up development of long-life batteries,” says de Lafontaine.

The study, titled “Figures of Merit to Quantify Betavoltaic Device Performance,” was published in Cell Reports Physical Science.

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Journal

Cell Reports Physical Science

DOI

10.1016/j.xcrp.2025.102789 

Method of Research

Experimental study

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

Figures of merit to quantify betavoltaic device performance

Article Publication Date

22-Aug-2025

 

Remote work spurs grassroots environmental action in New York City

NYU Tandon study reveals how hybrid schedules and digital tools powered a Queens community garden

NYU Tandon School of Engineering

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Remote and hybrid work arrangements enabled New Yorkers to participate in community environmental action by giving them both the time and the motivation to do so, a new study from NYU finds.

Published in the Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction and presented at the 2025 Aarhus Conference on Critical Computing, the study draws on five years of ethnographic research at a volunteer-run composting and gardening site in Sunnyside, Queens.

It found that flexible schedules and work-from-home routines made it possible for independent and creative workers to engage in hands-on environmental labor during the workday. Many reported being driven not only by availability but by a desire to counter the isolation and screen fatigue associated with remote professional life.

Conducted by Margaret Jack, Industry Assistant Professor in NYU Tandon School of Engineering’s Department of Technology, Culture, and Society, the research focuses on a site known as 45th St Greenspace, established in 2020 on a formerly vacant lot.

Volunteers — many of whom were freelance or hybrid workers in fields like design, academia, or media — organized composting operations, garden plantings, public events, and infrastructure improvements. Most lived nearby and integrated the garden into their daily or weekly routines.

“Working from home didn’t just change where people did their jobs, it changed how they lived in their neighborhoods,” said Jack. “We found that flexible schedules and a need for offline connection drew people into environmental projects, where they could turn screen time into green time.”

The study offers new insight into how technology-mediated work environments shape civic participation and local infrastructure. It contributes to human-centered engineering research by examining how digital platforms like Slack, Zoom, and Signal also alter grassroots environmental systems and collective organizing.

Participants coordinated their work using these platforms, and the project’s governance structure reflected common patterns in digitally enabled work: horizontal decision-making, collaborative workflows, and distributed leadership.

Jack frames the garden itself as a socio-technical system, one whose function and sustainability depended not just on physical tools like compost bins and raised beds, but also on the digital infrastructure and cultural norms imported from participants’ professional lives.

The project reflects how technologies designed for individual productivity are being adapted for civic and ecological collaboration, raising design questions relevant to the development of future civic technologies.

While the project was open to the public and built on values of inclusion and mutual aid, Jack found that sustained participation was shaped by access to time, stability, and professional autonomy. Parents of young children, people with rigid or physically demanding jobs, and those unfamiliar with digital communication tools were often less able to remain actively involved.

Cultural expectations around communication and conflict resolution also revealed differences within the group. Though mediation structures were developed, they often relied on middle-class professional norms, which did not resonate equally across cultural or linguistic backgrounds.

The research employed a combination of ethnographic and autoethnographic methods. Jack, a local resident and volunteer at the garden, conducted participant observation over five years, maintained field notes and reflective journals, and led interviews and a survey with core volunteers.

The project also included contributions from community collaborators and comparative fieldwork in other New York gardens. These methods, often used in the design and evaluation of socio-technical systems, allow engineering researchers to understand not only how tools function, but how they shape behavior, governance, and access.

Though 45th St Greenspace is now preparing to close due to private development, Jack sees the project as emblematic of a wider shift in urban civic engagement. As hybrid and independent work becomes more common, she argues, it reshapes how people interact with both digital platforms and the physical city, bringing new possibilities for environmental infrastructure, but also new forms of exclusion.

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Journal

Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction

DOI

10.1145/3744169.3744176 

Method of Research

Observational study

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

In the Dirt: Place-Based Environmental Action and Technology-Mediated Work in New York City

Article Publication Date

17-Aug-2025

 

Researchers use AI to turn park reviews into science

University of Florida

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Topeekeegee Yugnee or TY Park in Broward County, Florida

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Credit: Brittany Mason

Your five-star review of a park may have more weight than you think. Scientists just turned it into data, thanks to artificial intelligence.

Researchers at the University of Florida based in Fort Lauderdale used machine learning to analyze more than 30,000 Google Maps and TripAdvisor reviews for parks, gardens and greenways throughout Broward County. Their analysis identified 11 types of “cultural ecosystem services” or nonmaterial benefits provided by nature, such as beauty, recreation, relaxation and inspiration. By using this type of AI, they pinpointed which parks offer the richest mix of these services.

Their findings, published in the journal Ecosystem Services, show that parks with more trees, more space, diverse plants and wildlife and water features tend to deliver the most value.

AI also revealed that cultural benefits often overlap. For example, a trail popular for jogging might also offer birdwatching, family time and quiet reflection – all bundled together in one green pocket of the city.

“By applying AI to countless online reviews, we can now measure these cultural values and understand how park design and planning can be optimized for public wellbeing,” said Haojie Cao, lead author and a doctoral student at UF/IFAS Fort Lauderdale Research and Education Center, or FLREC.

The study’s authors suggest this AI-driven approach could be used anywhere, turning what people are already saying online into actionable insights for building healthier, happier communities.

It’s a blend of cutting-edge tech and hometown values, the same kind of algorithms driving innovation in healthcare and business are now helping decode how people experience and value nature in one of Florida’s most urban counties. For Broward, where nearly two million residents share limited open space, researchers found that certain parks offer the greatest boosts to well-being. Features like shade, trees, walking paths and water access emerged as especially important in shaping people’s experiences.

“Social media data, empowered by AI, could provide a valuable means to understand where and how urban residents benefit most from parks and track progress towards management and planning efforts to optimize greenspaces that benefit both people and nature,” said Jiangxiao Qiu, associate professor of landscape ecology at the UF/IFAS Fort Lauderdale Research and Education Center and the senior author of this work. “In some ways, the results could be considered citizen science data since the observations are right from the source.”

Among other study takeaways, findings revealed that aesthetics, entertainment and physical and experiential offerings are the most reported cultural ecosystem services provided by urban greenspaces. Authors suggest these bundled benefits are opportunities to design and manage parks in ways that enhance the user’s experience adding value to the park for the public.

Ultimately, the research offers an adaptable roadmap — powered by AI and big data — for studying, mapping and understanding the intangible cultural values of urban nature, said Qiu.

“These cultural ecosystem services are among the most valuable benefits that urban parks and greenspaces provide to its residents,” he said. “As cities grow in size and population, sustainable greenspace planning and management can be informed and empowered by AI and big data to understand where and how to allocate efforts and resources to improve their cultural values and social wellbeing and to track progress towards these urban policy and intervention goals.”

Welleby Park in Broward County, Florida

Credit

Brittany Mason

Journal

Ecosystem Services

DOI

10.1016/j.ecoser.2025.101740 

Article Title

Spatial patterns and interactions among multiple cultural ecosystem services across urban greenspaces

 

Only 37% of US states require sexual education in schools to be medically accurate

Boston University School of Public Health

While the majority of states require public school students to take at least one sexual education course, a patchwork of state-level provisions that mandate inaccurate, outdated, or politically motivated curricula may inhibit students from receiving essential information for their sexual health and well-being. 

Despite overwhelming evidence of the health benefits of school-based sexual education, no federal law requires schools in the United States to teach this subject. As a result, the decision to provide sexual education to students falls to states or local school districts, leaving a patchwork of inconsistent, inequitable, and often inaccurate instruction that could leave students ill-equipped to make informed decisions about their sexual health, relationships, and well-being.

A new study that aimed to better understand and assess current sexual education laws in the US found that while 42 states require public school students to take a sexual education course that covers at least one topic within this subject between kindergarten and high school, only 19 states mandate that this instruction be medically accurate—and 5 of those states only require medical accuracy for specific topics.

Led by a Boston University School of Public Health researcher, the study found that 34 states that mandate this education require instruction on abstinence, a method that has consistently proven to be ineffective or harmful to adolescent sexual health, but continues to be embraced and funded by the federal government. Thirty-four states also allow parents to opt their children out of receiving any sexual education instruction, while five states require parents to opt in for their children to receive this instruction. The findings were published in the American Journal of Public Health.

Adolescents are at a disproportionate risk of experiencing sexual health conditions, including sexually transmitted diseases and HIV/AIDS, as well as unwanted pregnancies, and unhealthy relationships. Many states have amended their sexual education laws over the five years, and researchers hope this new insight will spur additional policy changes that expand adolescents’ access to comprehensive, inclusive, and age-appropriate education and improve their sexual health and well-being.

“While many students in the US are required to get some form of sexual education, our study shows that substantially fewer students are likely to be getting the comprehensive sexual education that public health and medical associations recommend,” says study lead and corresponding author Dr. Kimberly Nelson, associate professor of community health sciences at BUSPH. “Only 58 percent of students reside in a jurisdiction that requires sexual education to be medically accurate, and many jurisdictions have content mandates that extend only to a few topics. This means that many US students are living in jurisdictions where they are unlikely to receive the accurate and comprehensive information that we know will help them make informed, healthy choices about their sexual behaviors and relationships.” 

For the study, Dr. Nelson and colleagues from BUSPH, Cornell Law School, and Florida International University identified and analyzed state statutes, administrative regulations, and state court decisions that mandated sexual education in public schools in every US state and Washington, D.C., and also examined sexual education content requirements and parental notice and consent policies. 

These state mandates varied by region, with all Northeast states requiring school-based sexual education for at least one topic, followed by 88 percent of states in the South, 83 percent of states in the Midwest, and 62 percent of states in the West.

In addition to abstinence, 34 states mandate school instruction about HIV, while 32 states require education about STIs, and 31 states mandate instruction on child abuse prevention. While less common, 27 states require instruction about healthy relationships, 24 states require education about sexual assault, and 21 states require instruction about dating violence or intimate partner violence.

Only 20 states require instruction about contraception, and even fewer mandate instruction about sexual orientation (12 states), condoms (11 states), and consent to sex (9 states). Two of the 12 states (Oklahoma and Texas) that mandated instruction about sexual orientation also required the use of stigmatizing or otherwise negative messaging, such as the idea that same-sex activity is “primarily responsible” for AIDS exposure.  

The researchers note that more studies are needed to understand the extent to which parental opt-in and opt-out policies, as well as parents’ rights to review or receive advance notice of sexual education curricula, limit the effect of state sexual education mandates. But they acknowledge that these policies likely serve as political compromises that may be difficult to reverse. 

“Because policy decisions about sexual education curricula happen at the state-level, state-level sociopolitical forces exert substantial influence on sexual education,” Dr. Nelson says. These forces also help explain why sexual education in school still embraces abstinence-only instruction, versus more comprehensive approaches, she says. “In states where sociopolitical forces and vocal advocacy groups push an abstinence-focused approach, that approach is likely to be seen as politically advantageous and be adopted.”

The senior author of the study is Dr. Kristen Underhill, associate dean for faculty research and professor of law at Cornell Law School.

** 

About Boston University School of Public Health 

Founded in 1976, Boston University School of Public Health is one of the top ten ranked schools of public health in the world. It offers master's- and doctoral-level education in public health. The faculty in six departments conduct policy-changing public health research around the world, with the mission of improving the health of populations—especially the disadvantaged, underserved, and vulnerable—locally and globally.

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Journal

American Journal of Public Health

DOI

10.2105/AJPH.2025.308199 

Method of Research

Content analysis

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

The State of Sexual Education: State Laws and Regulations Mandating Sexual Education in the United States

Article Publication Date

21-Aug-2025

Study finds wide variation in Amazon’s response to degradation and climate change

The research by Yale School of the Environment scientists highlights the need to reduce the “hammer” of human impact and deforestation rather than focus on an all-encompassing climatic tipping point

Yale University

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As deforestation and climate change threaten to transform the Amazon, there is growing concern that the ecosystem may be reaching an irreversible tipping point, beyond which self-reinforcing feedback loops would lock the system in a degraded state and lead to the Amazon flipping from a carbon sink to a carbon emitter. 

However, a new study, led by Yale School of the Environment scientists, found that there is no evidence of a single, basin-wide tipping point. Instead, there is wide variation in how the ecosystem is responding to human activity, and the more urgent concern in most areas is the repeated “hammer blows” to the system from direct human activities like deforestation, logging, species loss, and burning.

“The biggest concern is not the feedback loops we might have 30 or 50 years from now. It’s the sheer size and intensity of direct human impact today,” said Paulo Brando, associate professor of ecosystem carbon capture at YSE and the study’s lead author. “The forest shows massive resilience to these shocks, but we are, in many places, already surpassing that resilience.” 

The analysis by the international team of researchers, published in the Annual Review of Environment and Resources, emphasized the impacts of unsustainable land-use on biodiversity, livelihoods, and the global climate. 

The Amazon stores an amount of carbon equivalent to about ten years of global carbon dioxide emissions and across the globe, tropical forests account for approximately 55% of global forest above ground-carbon stock and 40% of the total global terrestrial carbon sink. Previous research has suggested some landscapes of tropical forests may be losing their capacity to sequester carbon.

The tipping point idea is increasingly the foundation of a lot of conservation policy in the region, Brando noted. It assumes that, beyond a quantifiable threshold, the forest would be so fundamentally changed that it could no longer sustain itself, driven by cascading feedback loops and lack of regeneration that the authors liken to falling dominos. In some drier regions, these loops include worsening fires that lead to a sparser tree canopy, the accumulation of new growth, and the spread of flammable vegetation, leaving the forest more vulnerable to the next fire. 

Yet, there was no scientific consensus of whether a single threshold exists to set off this spiral of total forest collapse. The researchers found many ecological processes in the Amazon that are interacting in different ways in different regions, making it unlikely that a single domino falling could force the entire system to collapse. While some parts of the basin, such as the southeast, may experience climate change-driven tipping points, the primary threat in most areas is more like a hammer, with activities like deforestation chipping away at the health of the ecosystem with each blow.

The study also noted that the Amazon remains surprisingly resilient. Climate change alone appears unlikely to lead to a total collapse, and vast areas of the forest have a high potential to recover — if humans stop the hammering. Brando likens the situation to the difference between a leak slowly eroding the foundation of a house versus a wrecking ball that will demolish it. 

“Your house could collapse either way,” Brando said. “But if you stop the wrecking ball, you might actually have a chance to fix the leak and save your foundation.”

These findings point to the continued need for sustainable land use and local solutions, such as reducing fire activity, promoting ecosystem restoration, and, in particular, curbing deforestation, to ensure the long-term health of the Amazon, he said.

“If we do stop these drivers of change, these hammers, then we still may give the forest a chance to bounce back,” Brando said. “Every action — little, big, short-term, long-term — may have a benefit.”

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Journal

Annual Review of Environment and Resources

Article Title

Tipping Points of Amazonian Forests: Beyond Myths and Toward Solutions