Their Revolutionary Battery Innovations Propel Italian Novac and Gipuzkoan Battbelt to Victory in the MUBIL Mobility Awards
The startup Novac, from Italy, has won the 12,500 euros first prize, ahead of Battbelt, from Guipuzcoa, which has won the 4,000 euros for second place. Both projects have also won an additional 18,500 euros in funding for the development of their projects in collaboration with agents in the Basque Country and will become part of the MUBIL Hub. In addition, they will have a work space for 12 months, as well as the opportunity to have their own stand at MUBIL Mobility Expo, the professional meeting point for the sustainable mobility industry, in its 2026 edition.
The ideas that are revolutionising sustainable mobility found their stage today at the MUBIL Mobility Awards, which this afternoon awarded two revolutionary ideas. The startup Novac, from Italy, won the 12,500 euros first prize, ahead of Battbelt, from Guipuzcoa, which won the 4,000 euros for second place. Both projects will also receive an additional 18,500 euros in funding for the development of their projects in collaboration with agents in the Basque Country and will become part of the MUBIL Hub, and will have a workspace for 12 months, as well as the opportunity to have their own stand at MUBIL Mobility Expo, a professional meeting point for the sustainable mobility industry, a benchmark at European level, in its 2026 edition.
Both projects, which have finally won out among the 56 applications submitted, 23 of them international, have demonstrated enormous potential to lead change in a key sector for the future. Novac's proposal is committed to implementing solutions for electric vehicle manufacturers to improve the efficiency and performance of batteries through the use of solid supercapacitors. In defending his project, Alessandro Fabbri explained that his proposal involves combining energy batteries and supercapacitors (capable of releasing all their energy in a few seconds) to obtain autonomy and power at the same time. In this way, they manage to reduce the weight and volume of the batteries, while increasing the efficiency of the system. In addition, by using solid supercapacitors, the batteries are much safer and more mouldable.
For its part, Battbelt has presented a mechanical management system for the compression of batteries capable of extending their useful life. In his presentation, Javier Zurbitu, head of Battbelt, explained the revolutionary system based on superelastic smart materials that he has devised, which allows the compression of the individual cells that make up the batteries to be kept constant, thus extending their useful life and obtaining a more accurate monitoring of the remaining useful life.
During the morning, before the awards ceremony held at Tabakalera (Donostia/San Sebastián), the two winning initiatives defended their proposals before a panel of experts along with the other four finalists; Newky (Turkey), which has devised a system that is integrated into all land vehicles and offers active protection against cyber-attacks in their environments, guaranteeing the safety of life and property; Asistobe (Norway), which has opted to use AI to accurately predict and optimise public transport services in cities based on real-time information and changing needs; Voltaage (France), which has created a web platform to optimise and automate data from thousands of electric vehicles and charging stations, maximising everything from charging infrastructure to daily maintenance; while Madrid-based startup H2drone Energy has presented an electric energy propulsion system using hydrogen fuel cells for drones capable of tripling flight time.
The award ceremony was attended by Eider Mendoza, Deputy General of Guipúzcoa; Ane Insausti, Deputy for Economic Promotion and Strategic Projects of the Provincial Council of Guipúzcoa and President of MUBIL; Eneko Goia, Mayor of Donostia; and Jaione Ganzarain, Deputy Minister of Technology, Innovation and Digital Transformation of the Basque Government.
Eider Mendoza congratulated the winning start-ups of the MUBIL Awards - a competition with an ‘increasingly international’ projection - for their ‘highly innovative’ proposals and their ‘extraordinary presentations’, welcoming them to the existing ecosystem in Guipuzcoa in the field of sustainable and smart mobility. As demonstrated by the MUBIL Mobility Awards, he said, it is an ‘open ecosystem’, which continues to contribute decisively to the strengthening of an ‘advanced and innovative economy, which generates opportunities for people and companies, for those who promote business projects with a clear purpose, with meaning, improving our society, our economy, our planet’. ‘The materialisation of the definitive headquarters of the MUBIL centre in the coming months will generate opportunities for the companies that form part of this ecosystem, with its benchmark testing laboratories for energy storage, power train and hydrogen fuel cell. In addition, an important innovation hub is developing around it, which will generate new opportunities and help our industrial SMEs to adapt to the changes that sustainable and intelligent mobility will bring with it. Guipúzcoa is taking important steps, but more will come in the future and we will do so in collaboration with institutions, companies, technology centres and universities’, he said.
The event, broadcast by streaming in Basque, Spanish, English and original version, was hosted by Antonella Broglia, an international reference in the field of social innovation, who stated that MUBIL is a network of more than 100 organisations in the Basque Country that includes public administrations, companies and research centres, ‘all working together to become a global benchmark for smart and sustainable mobility’.
The Jury
For this edition of 2024, the jury was made up of experts from the sector and the field of entrepreneurship, such as Carolina Rodríguez Arias, Head of Promotion at ENISA; Jokin Lopetegi, Head of Corporate Development and New Business at CAF; Luis Alonso, Scientific Researcher at MIT City Science; Marisa Arriola, Managing Director at BIC Guipúzcoa; Noshin Omar, Founder and President of ABEE Group; and Yolanda Pérez, Director of BStartup and Hub Empresa at Banco Sabadell.
About MUBIL
MUBIL, which brings together the efforts of public and private agents that promote initiatives in the field of intelligent and sustainable mobility in the Basque Country, was created within the Etorkizuna Eraikiz initiative of the Provincial Council of Guipuzcoa and is supported by the Basque Government and the EVE (Basque Energy Agency). The preparation and start-up of MUBIL's definitive headquarters in Donostia-San Sebastian is currently nearing completion. It will house 10,000 m2 of technologically cutting-edge facilities and testing laboratories, as well as spaces where mobility companies belonging to the MUBIL Hub will carry out their activities. It also has a further 38,000m2 of space in the surrounding area where other initiatives are being set up by other agents such as CIDETEC, TECNALIA, VICOMTECH and the City Science Lab Guipúzcoa project in collaboration with the MIT Media Lab group.
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