Battery Analysis Pioneer: North America Has Five Years to Catch China

Chris Clonts

An overview of the entire battery development cycle, showing the value of early defect detection. (Image : Voltaiq)

North American automakers and EV battery firms have five years to erase China’s dominance in technology and manufacturing or they may face the reality of buying batteries from China for the foreseeable future. That was the message from battery-analysis company Voltaiq CEO Tal Sholklapper at a media briefing in Detroit, MI.

“We’re in the final innings now,” Sholklapper said. “If the industry around batteries and electric vehicles and all the follow-on applications wants to make it, we're going to have to change the way we play.”

That means, he said:

Battery manufacturers need to narrow their focus on making high-quality cells, bringing in outside experts on things like analytics. They must learn and iterate faster and get to scale as fast as possible. This might seem intuitive, but many of the expensive recalls and dangers in the industry have been the result of not knowing enough about the quality of a factory’s output until the batteries are already in a vehicle on the road.
OEMs, Sholklapper said, must admit that making batteries in-house is problematic, and that electrical engineers can’t just switch to making batteries. Sholklapper often refers to batteries as living, breathing beings, since they expand and contract under charge and draw conditions.

Voltaiq advocates constantly monitoring data during the manufacturing process so problems can be addressed quickly before they result in delays or monetary losses. Sholklapper said that some of today’s battery factories even gather data by plugging thumb drives into machines at each step in manufacturing before collecting it in one place for analysis. Part of Voltaiq’s work is helping clients gather that data in real-time.

Voltaiq says early learning and iteration is the key to lowering the cost of reaching scale in battery manufacturing. (Image: Voltaiq)

Eli Leland, Voltaiq’s CTO, said part of the problem OEMs have trying to scale directly to batteries in huge gigafactories is having the wrong experts on hand. “Did Tesla hire a bunch of powertrain engineers from Detroit to come and design their battery packs? We know the answer, right?” He underscored that batteries are electrochemical in nature, and it’s the chemistry part that is most difficult to master.

And unlike the consumer electronics industry, which was able to perfect batteries in low volume, high value products before scaling, those products are rare in the automotive world, Leland said, pointing to examples like the Mercedes G-class EV.

Sholklapper also underscored the importance of OEMs and battery companies taking a collaborative approach to development. “You need to focus on your core strength. And whether it's the vehicle integration, whether it's making cells… One thing that you need to do to be successful is focus on that and then bring in best-in-class providers to help you with the rest.” He also said that as long as China’s subsidized industry can produce batteries for around $50 per kilowatt-hour, it would keep pressure on North American industry.

The briefing also served as an introduction to Voltaiq’s new partnership with Novonix, a Canadian battery materials and testing company. The agreement calls for Voltaiq to handle Novonix’s analytics and support the company’s anode and cathode materials business as it nears product commercialization. Together, the companies will support customers of Novonix’s ultra-high precision coulometry equipment (that tests lithium-ion battery performance) and R&D services.

Lori Mcleod, President of Novonix, said the company had experience in learning the value of outside experts. “About a year and a half ago, we went down this path of trying to do our own thing. We're going to become software makers,” she said. “And after a year and a half of investment, it was hard to ask ourselves the question, should we be doing this anymore?” The Battery Show Booth 5433

This article was written by Chris Clonts, Senior Editor, SAE Media Group. For more information visit www.voltaiq.com .