E-Mobility Engineering 014 l InoBat Auto dossier l In Conversation: Brandon Fisher l Battery monitoring focus l Supercapacitor applications insight l Green-G ecarry digest l Lithium-sulphur batteries insight l Cell-to-pack batteries focus

Peter Donaldson reports on how this company aims to slash the time needed to introduce new batteries to the EVs industry Quick tomarket R apid development of innovative new cell technologies and a focus on tailoring chemistries to maximise the effectiveness of individual applications are at the heart of InoBat Auto’s approach to EV battery development. Now delivering its first lithium-ion cells based on NMC cathode chemistries in NMC 622 and 811 formulations, the start-up company plans to offer cells for a very broad range of EV requirements in terms of performance and cost. Cells are already being supplied by a contract manufacturer in Asia, while the first of two new plants for in-house development and production is under construction near the Slovakian capital Bratislava. The company was founded to address the issue of the available cells not being optimised for specific applications, says its CTO Doug MacAndrew, and development was slow. “The founders created relationships with a number of development partners. The aim was to change the way battery chemistry is optimised and to shorten the timeline to product introduction from the horrendous 10-year gestation period typical of incumbent manufacturers to something closer to 12 to 18 months.” He argues that this drawn-out cell development cycle is a consequence of the industry not having been pressured into change, combined with an evolutionary approach that is also characterised by research and development divided into ‘silos’. “Businesses might have 2000 or 3000 scientists narrowly focused on different types of development opportunities, and bringing these together when faced with those silos is quite a challenge,” he says. “We cut across those silos, and don’t try to pick winners among materials before we start the development process. We bring many different material inputs into the optimisation process, and compare all to all, not one to all or one to a few.” He emphasises that this approach has proved effective in the pharmaceuticals industry, where it has long been used in the drug discovery process. “In methodological terms, there’s nothing stopping you doing electrochemical optimisation in the same way,” he says. “You just change the drivers and the way in which the data is reviewed, but ultimately it is the same mechanism.” Automated analysis “We can do it more quickly because we can automate our analysis and experimentation, and we can keep open the options presented by different materials during the evaluation and assessment phases,” he adds. InoBat Auto technician with two early production pouch cells. NMC 622 and NMC 811 cathodes and graphite anodes characterise its first- and second- generation cells (Photos courtesy of InoBat Auto) 20 Summer 2022 | E-Mobility Engineering